Inside the ‘Most Isolated Islands on the Planet’: The Untouched Marquesas (Video)

Per the video description:

“1,300 kilometers northeast of Tahiti, 5,500 from the coast of California in America, the nearest continent, the Marquesas archipelago is the most isolated island in the world. Just a few rocks above the Pacific. The domain of wild horses and goats. A native of the Shetland Islands in the United Kingdom, an Irish monk, or a Patagonian gaucho wouldn't feel out of place in the Marquesas; at most, they would be surprised by the coconut trees that nature has grown in this most unexpected part of Polynesia.

“A people scattered across more than a hundred islands, these are the Polynesians, a people spread across a vast and diverse area: sometimes on a tiny strip of sand at water level in the Tuamotus, sometimes at the foot of a rock as mineral as massive as Maupiti, this island to the far west of Tahiti in the Leeward Islands.”

In high school, as part of the Surf Team, I actually had the opportunity to visit the Marquesas Islands. It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, staying with local families, surfing strange, wedging novelty waves with waters filled with stinging jellyfish, and eating fresh tuna cut up and drizzled with lime straight from the hook. A magical place.

And despite the history of cannibalism – a German tourist was allegedly killed and eaten as recently as 2008 – the people were some of the kindest I’ve ever encountered. We were merely teenagers, thousands of miles from California, no parental supervision, living with locals we had just met, and yet the magic of the Marquesas made us feel right at home.

The Marquesas Islands – an untouched paradise, one of the world's last remaining.