Trip Report: Tuvalu – Country #100

Stuck in Tuvalu

Date of visit: January 2020

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Since I made it my goal to travel to every country in the world, it was always clear that my number 100 had to be something special. I wanted the number 100 to be something difficult.

By difficult I mean 1) the country is politically unstable (Yemen, Mali, South Sudan etc), 2) getting the visa is notoriously difficult (e.g. Eritrea or Equatorial Guinea), or 3) the country has a very remote location.

As a trip to Oceania marked the end of the travel year 2019 (and the beginning of 2020), the third option won and Tuvalu became my 100th country.

Tuva-who? Most people have probably never heard of Tuvalu. It is the fourth smallest country by area (26 km²) and the third smallest country by population (10’600). This tiny island state is located in the middle of nowhere in the South Pacific Ocean and belongs to Polynesia. Moreover, it’s a country that has arguably the strangest outline of any country in the world.

Tuvalu consists of nine islands (six of them are atolls), ring-shaped coral reefs, which surround a lagoon, and the highest point of the country is only three meters high. The sad story is that the country will not exist for much longer. Due to global warming and rising sea levels, scientists expect Tuvalu to disappear under the sea in the next few decades.

With only three flights a week, all from Fiji’s capital Suva, plus one irregular flight from Kiribati, Tuvalu is also pretty much the most isolated country in the world. The airfares of 600 USD or more for a return ticket are probably another reason that Tuvalu is the least visited country in the world. According to statistics, only Yemen and Libya receive fewer tourists than Tuvalu. But considering that there is war in these two countries, Tuvalu is the country that would have the fewest tourists under normal circumstances.

If that doesn’t make Tuvalu a perfect number 100, then what? There were also other reasons why Tuvalu was a worthy number 100. I recently read about a guy who had visited every country in the world and named Tuvalu as his favorite country in Oceania. Plus, the tour operator Young Pioneer Tours also organizes tours through the South Pacific and describes Tuvalu as the highlight of the whole trip. My excitement was therefore enormous.

Tuvalu, the country for hardcore travelers

Tuvalu’s airport in Funafuti, the country’s main atoll where our little Fiji Airways plane landed, has no baggage carousel and is one of the smallest I have ever seen. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of people waiting for the visitors to enter their country. The (rare) landing of an airplane is always a big spectacle in Tuvalu, which many locals attend.

Unsurprisingly, it goes quite fast until you enter the country after landing. Two Immigration Officers are standing between the runway and the terminal, who quickly stamp the passport, and then you wait in the terminal for the airport staff to bring your luggage to the terminal themselves.

The fact that I have just entered my 100th country was not the only reason why I was happy. The Suva-Funafuti air route is considered one of the most unreliable in the world. Flights are often canceled and I have read about people who did not make it to Tuvalu on their first attempt and needed an extra trip to Oceania to do so. Fortunately, it worked out for me on my first try.

Tuvalu is also the perfect country to meet like-minded people. After all, it’s not a classic travel destination where “normal” tourists go. While we were waiting for our luggage, a Russian approached me and asked if I was a member of the group “Every Passport Stamp”, an exclusive Facebook group of people who all want to visit every country in the world. Later, in our hotel, we also met a guy from Finland who has the same goal.

However, I have noticed that for most people who count countries, Tuvalu is one of the last countries they visit. For some, even the very last. So it’s kind of like the end boss in a video game, if you will. The Russian told me that he still has 20-30 countries to go. For the Finn, Tuvalu was country number 150.

So I felt a bit like a newbie among the other travelers, as not many travelers have visited “only” 99 countries before they came to Tuvalu. Even more special was the case with my girlfriend Kati, for whom Tuvalu was the 26th country. She probably belongs to a very small group of people who have only seen 26 countries and Tuvalu is one of them. She could even be the only one in the world.

Most people who travel to Tuvalu do so for business reasons anyway. Most of them are aid workers, military personnel or people who work in construction. For all these people plus the few tourists, there are six or seven hotels in the country, whereby the word hotel is actually exaggerated in all cases. They are rather very simple guesthouses. Our hotel, the notorious L’s Lodge, falls into this category as well.

I booked the L’s Lodge through their Facebook page, as the hotel has no website. The conversation with the hotel was generally difficult and some questions were not answered in advance. Due to this reason I had zero expectations, although L’s Lodge has the reputation of being the best place to stay in the country.

I only knew that I had to have cash with me. There is neither an ATM nor can you pay by credit card in Tuvalu. Kati and I took 800 Australian dollars with us (about 530 USD) for two days. The hotel cost AUD 100 per night, so we had AUD 600 for other activities. 100 AUD for the hotel was not really value for money, though. The rooms were dark, dirty and without hot water, but it would be okay for two nights.

Exploring Funafuti

With almost 48 hours in Tuvalu, we started to explore the island in the afternoon after our arrival. Since we had more than enough time in this tiny country, we took it easy and walked up and down the streets a bit.

Our first impression was that Tuvalu has nothing in common with a typical tropical getaway, as one would probably expect from an island in the South Pacific. In contrast to countries like Fiji, Tonga or Samoa, which gave the impression that they were doing okay (although they didn’t looked wealthy either), Tuvalu was third world. Third world meets the South Pacific.

This was not surprising, however. Measured by gross domestic product, Tuvalu is the poorest country in the world. The country highly depends on international aid, as there is no real functioning economy. The main sources of income are the sale of fishing licenses, postage stamps and the internet domain .tv (no joke!).

So, what can a tourist do in Tuvalu? There are not many activities to be honest. Although Tuvalu sounds quite exciting because of its geography, its economy and its not particularly bright future, it’s not a country that offers as many things to do as other island destinations in the South Pacific.

Funafuti has the shape of an L. From one end of the atoll to the other it is about 20 kilometers. This distance can either be done on foot in a bit more than three hours or by motorbike in 15 minutes or by bicycle in 30 minutes. The town or village is located in the middle. In order to walk from one part of town to the other, you need maximum 10 minutes.

Sights? There aren’t any. Neither a church, nor a statue or anything else that you would call a real tourist attraction. Some people may now think that on a South Pacific island you don’t need a church to visit anyway. This is true. But the problem is that there are no nice beaches either.

Funafuti is a coral reef that is not really suitable for swimming. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that the shore consists, as the name already says, of dead corals. Thus, you cannot simply roll out your towel and lie down. At least not without pain. On the other hand, Tuvalu has a serious waste problem. The country does not know where to put its imported plastic packaging, which leads to a shore full of garbage.

We had around 32-33°C with extreme humidity. It was not possible to jump quickly into the sea for refreshment. The only place we could cool down was our dark, but air-conditioned room. The locals therefore take a nap every day from about 11 to 15 o’clock. During this time, the sun is unbearably hot, so that you can hardly walk around outside.

As harsh as it may sound, for Kati and me it was clear after a few hours that this tiny country did not excite us much. While Tonga and Samoa were already slow countries, Tuvalu was super slow and we were having a hard time to find the ‘fun’ in Funafuti.

However, we found the fun in the evening on the runway of the country. Since only three flights a week land in Tuvalu, the runway is also used by the locals for other purposes. Thus, Tuvalu is the only country I know where you can walk on the runway in the afternoon and take pictures.

In the evening the runway is the meeting point of Funafuti. People play football or other games here, some of them just meet to talk. Even prisoners can be seen on the runway. In Tuvalu there is a prison with five prisoners. During the day the prisoners are allowed to go out fishing, in the evening they can play football against the guards on the runway. This is also a curiosity that you can probably not find in any other country in the world.

On the second day we went by bicycle to the tip of Funafuti. As soon as you leave the village, Tuvalu gets a little more attractive. Cool is that from a certain point on the road you can see the ocean on the right and the lagoon on the left. Both only about five meters apart.

There are places that may not be the most exciting in terms of sightseeing, but which can impress with their culinary delights. Unfortunately, Tuvalu does not fall into this category either. There are hardly any dining options in Funafuti. I counted three. All three serve Chinese food and none of them was really good.

Thus, we simply wanted to make the best of the remaining 24 hours somehow.

But that plan failed.

The shock

“Our flight is canceled!”

These were the words of Juha, the Finn, who just received a message from his travel agency. It was Wednesday afternoon and our flight was scheduled to leave the next day.

Strangely enough, Juha was the only one who received a notification. On Flightradar24 the flight was also shown as canceled. But there was no information from Fiji Airways, neither by e-mail nor on their website. Also the Russians, who were sitting next to us, had not received any info.

The day before our departure to Tuvalu we learned that a cyclone is expected to hit Fiji in the next few days. The owner of our hotel in Fiji wished us good luck for our return flight. At that moment, however, I wasted no thought that we could be affected in any way. Somehow everything would be fine. At least I believed so. I was aware that it was cyclone season in the South Pacific, but this usually does not stop me from visiting a place. After all, chances are still better that you will not be affected.

The fact that only one and not all of us had received the information about the cancellation raised a little bit of hope. Maybe Flightradar24 was a bit too hasty and the travel agency that had informed Juha was too hasty as well. Nevertheless, the two Russians, Juha, Kati and I went to the airport immediately to get some information. But nobody seemed to know anything. Moreover, nobody seemed to be able to do anything to get the information. There was not even a telephone at the airport.

A few hours later the confirmation finally came by e-mail. Because of the cyclone there will be no flight from Tuvalu to Fiji the next day. As I already wrote, there are only three flights a week from Fiji to Tuvalu. The next flight would leave on Saturday, so three days from now. And it was more than likely that it would be canceled as well, because the cyclone was predicted to hit Fiji with full force on Saturday.

This was a problem for us in many ways. First, there was now a serious risk that we would miss our flight back to Europe. Second, and this was the far greater problem, we would be stuck in Tuvalu and just had to wait…

Imprisoned in Tuvalu

Thursday morning began with two noteworthy events.

We first received a letter from the airport that a) our flight was canceled and b) that Fiji Airways would not provide us with any accommodation or food, as a cyclone would be something outside of their control.

This led to another problem: did we have enough money with us? As already mentioned, there is no ATM in Tuvalu and credit cards are not accepted anywhere. We briefly checked our cash. Of the 800 AUD we had brought with us, we still had about 550, and every day we had to stay longer, 100 of that would be deducted for accommodation.

Our hotel was not really willing to cooperate here. They did not show themselves affected when we explained that we might not have enough cash with us. In all fairness, I have to say that this was not the fault of the lady at the reception but of the owner of the hotel. He was somewhere out of the country and seems, as I understood the receptionist, not really willing to give a discount in such emergency situations.

The second incident was at least more pleasant, as we only discovered on the third day that our hotel had a common area. This room was located at the first floor of the hotel and looked much nicer than our dark and dreary room at the ground floor. From now on, the room would become our home for the next days.

While in the days before, all hotel guests did their own thing, we got to know each other a little from this time on. Thus, a kind of community among the guests of the L’s Lodge developed. The community consisted of Mike, an English aid worker, the Finn Juha, the Russian Mikhail, who already approached me at the airport, and his travel buddy, whose name I don’t know, plus two Taiwanese business travelers as well as Kati and me.

In German there is a saying that when several people suffer because of the same thing, the suffering of the individual decreases. It was the same in Tuvalu. We were all stranded on that island and nobody knew exactly when it would end. However, everyone shared new information as soon as they got any. So it was also one of the Taiwanese who brought the news that Fiji Airways canceled the next flight on Saturday as well. So actually what we had expected anyway.

The next flight was on Tuesday! At the moment it meant that we would be on this island for seven days. At least! Because it was still unclear if the weather would be significantly better on Tuesday.

Besides, there was still the question if there would be enough free seats on the next flight. It could be, for example, that a construction company withdraws all its workers from the island, so that the flight is already fully booked. Or almost fully booked and only some but not all of the stranded guests can leave with the next plane. And if that happens: who would get the free seats?

These thoughts drove me crazy. In the very worst case, we would be stuck in this place for another two weeks. I have actually read about people who had to spend more than a week in Tuvalu against their will. To be on the safe side, I already informed my company that – and this was 100% certain now – I would not return to work in time from my five-week vacation. The only question was how much delay I would have.

In general, my frustration with the situation met with little understanding from the people at home. Everyone who heard about this story commented that “there must be worse places to get stuck than a tropical island.” The truth is: Tuvalu is not a tropical island like Fiji or Samoa with lots of activities. Plus, as the weather got worse every day, we couldn’t even really leave the hotel. And so we basically had no choice but to accept the situation and wait. We were in for the longest days of our lives.

However, Thursday still had a joyful moment. Fiji Airways informed us by e-mail that they would provide a supplementary flight on Sunday and that we would all be booked on that flight.

That at least provided a little clarity, which was extremely valuable for the psyche. So we knew that we would be on this island not seven but five days. It was also clear for us that we would arrive home with only one day delay. Unfortunately, the journey home to Europe would be almost non-stop from Tuvalu. The two nights in Fiji would become one night in an airport hotel. The two days Hong Kong would become a 10-hour layover.

Sunday was still far away. It was only Thursday. And we had to kill time. A lot of time. My daily ritual describes well how boring our time during the cyclone was. Every day I walked once to the runway to shoot a selfie. This activity shortened the day by about ten minutes. However, most of the time the wind and rain were too strong so that we could not leave the hotel anyway.

Others had their daily ritual as well. For example, Juha walked to the airport several times a day, because that was the only place where his mobile internet worked. The internet in Tuvalu is one of the slowest I have seen so far anyway. The local SIM cards only worked on some mobile phones (it worked on mine, but not on Kati’s). And the WiFi vouchers you could buy worked practically nowhere. Except just at the airport.

Besides, the data packages were rather expensive. And since we weren’t really sure if our flight would actually leave on Sunday, we had to use them sparingly. Needless to say, this limitation is terrible when the day hardly ends.

What almost bothered me most about the situation was the food. As I already mentioned, there are only three restaurants Chinese restaurants in the country. The food was average at best, but the hygiene standards left a lot to be desired.

In the biggest restaurant called 3T’s, which is run by a Chinese man and his wife, it was the nice but a bit grubby host who ruined my appetite. So I saw him once, how he completely sweaty brought the plates to the guests, scratched himself extensively under his armpits and then touched the plates with the same hand. In the same restaurant Kati had the feeling that some of her chicken wasn’t properly cooked. After two dinners at 3T’s I knew that I would not go there anymore.

And so we decided from that point on to cook by ourselves. Although the kitchen in L’s Lodge was a little dirty as well, it still seemed to be the better option than eating in the other restaurants. Self-cooking wasn’t the easiest task, however. There was one supermarket with approximately 100 food products. So, it wasn’t as we had tons of options. For the first dinner we had pasta. It felt like heaven.

The longest days of our lives

Friday morning began with a real thrill. Shortly after breakfast, an airport employee came to our hotel with a few pieces of paper. “There are two supplementary flights from Funafuti to Suva. One will depart on Sunday and one on Monday. Check the list to see what flight you’re on.”

At that moment my heart almost stopped beating. We were expecting to leave on Sunday and now there was a real possibility that our flight would have a delay by another day. Another day that would consist of doing absolutely nothing.

The imagination was pure horror. That wasn’t the only problem, because on Tuesday there are no flights from Fiji to Hong Kong. In other words, we would bee stuck in the South Pacific for even longer. Not in Tuvalu, but in Fiji.

Fortunately, I quickly spotted our name on the Sunday list. All guests of L’s Lodge were on the Sunday list. Except Juha. He was neither on the Sunday list nor the Monday list. Such uncertainty can drive you crazy. Of course the staff at the airport didn’t know when he was flying and Fiji Airways didn’t answer his e-mails either.

That was the only thing that happened on that day. And it was only 9 o’clock or so. The rest of the day went the same as Thursday. We sat in the common room, played some games on our cell phones, read books and waited for the day to end. On these days I sometimes had the feeling that the day consisted not of 24 but of 40 hours. The time hardly went by.

My cigarette consumption also increased enormously and almost reached an alarming level. But at least I could kill another five minutes with every smoke. And I could observe the weather on the balcony.

The storm had meanwhile a considerable strength. The trees swayed back and forth. As we found out later, some palm trees also fell down by the wind. Later we saw in the news that the storm had driven a ship that had dropped anchor somewhere in the lagoon to the coast. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.

In the meantime, the storm or something else has tempted a rat to visit our living room. It happily ran from the bedrooms to the kitchen and hid there behind a piece of furniture. It was one of the most exciting moments of the day.

The only joy I had that day was dinner. We still had pasta from the night before and tomato sauce. Mike wanted to spice the sauce up a bit and went to the supermarket to buy vegetables. Fifteen minutes later he came back. With a carrot. The only vegetable that he could find in the supermarket.

And so we had pasta with tomato sauce, which also had a chopped carrot and onions that Mike had bought the day before in it. This simple dish was a feast at that time and the best we had eaten in Tuvalu.

Groundhog Day

The time in Tuvalu was a bit like the classic movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. During the last days life was almost identical and it was just frustrating. Furthermore, the weather didn’t give us too much hope for the flight tomorrow. It was as stormy and windy as in the days before.

This also had an impact on our further planning. The onward journey from Fiji to Hong Kong was not the problem, because that flight was with Fiji Airways just like the flight from Tuvalu to Fiji. Here we knew that they would simply book us on the next available flight at no extra cost.

More problematic was the flight from Hong Kong to Zurich, because it was with Lufthansa. It was already 100% certain that we would miss it. However, we were not sure whether we should change our booking immediately to the next possible date or whether we should wait until it was absolutely sure that we would actually fly on Sunday.

“Being stuck in this hotel is actually like being sick at home,” I said. But then the veto of the others came quickly. If you’re sick, you can at least watch movies or do something online was their argument. That was true. In Tuvalu, our online activities were limited due to the expensive data package prices and poor coverage. And the only available tv channel, Tuvalu TV, reported most of the time about the Australian bush-fires.

It was our fifth day in Tuvalu. Five days in this tiny country. I saw great countries like Algeria or Eswatini in two days in the months before and was annoyed that I was only there for such a short time. And now I was in Tuvalu for five days, imprisoned in a hotel. I can’t remember ever having wasted so many days of vacation.

“At least no one can say now that you haven’t seen Tuvalu,” said Juha. If you have the goal of seeing every country in the world, people will constantly confront you with the fact that you “didn’t see the country properly” because you only spent five days in Laos for example instead of five weeks. We haven’t lost our sense of humor yet.

Saturday was another day that hardly wanted to be over. However, we were now used to these long days, so that every new day was less bad than the previous one. At least I felt like that.

And the hope that we would actually get off this island the next day did not die either. When we didn’t get any information about a flight cancellation in the afternoon, we were quite optimistic that we would actually leave Tuvalu the next day.

For this reason we then contacted Lufthansa. Rebooking the flight turned out to be more expensive than buying two new tickets for a direct flight with Cathay Pacific. The costs were 700 USD per person. To be honest we didn’t care about that at that moment. We just wanted to leave.

Tuvalu was my worst travel experience so far

It was Sunday, the day of decision. And for our benefit the sky was blue and there was almost no wind. It looked good. I still spent a large part of the morning tracking the flight from Fiji to Tuvalu to make sure nothing went wrong. That the wish to leave would burst at the last second was a horrifying thought for all stranded people.

But then, the time had finally come. We were actually able to leave Tuvalu at 2 PM. So the delay was only 74 hours in the end. By the way, we left Tuvalu with exactly 50 AUD. Before the trip we had calculated with two days. It turned out to be five. Juha also didn’t have enough money with him, but luckily he could pay with Euro.

My 100th country was supposed to become something special. Unfortunately, it didn’t. Because of the very nice locals I am sorry to write such a thing. We had met many Tuvaluans and had wonderful conversations with these hospitable people. It was not their fault that our flight got canceled, but being stuck on this island was still my worst travel experience ever (from which you can conclude that I haven’t had a REALLY bad travel experience so far).

Admittedly, if the flight cancellations hadn’t happened, Tuvalu wouldn’t have been my worst travel experience. But even then Tuvalu would be a country that I would not visit again. I mean, if I compare Tuvalu with the other countries I did not really like, for example Kuwait, Nigeria, Guinea or the Gambia, I would still rather be stuck in each of those countries than in Tuvalu. After all, you can do one or two things there that are fun.

The five days in Tuvalu, which basically consisted almost entirely of doing nothing, eventually put me into a lethargy and took away all my energy. I was actually tired of traveling. So I am glad that Tuvalu happened at the very end of this five-week journey and not at the beginning. It would have been difficult to continue planning the trip and travel normally as if nothing had happened.

In retrospect, I look back on a country that had cost me almost $2,000 (luckily my insurance company reimbursed me a part), that stole one day of vacation from me because I came back to work too late, and that destroyed my Fiji and Hong Kong stay.

In the end, tastes are different and there are a lot of people raving about Tuvalu. But if you travel to every country in the world, it is inevitable that you will had a better time in some countries than in the others. Tuvalu was a country that did not work out for me, but that’s okay. I am sure that other travelers will visit this tiny country in the future and have a great time there. For me, however, it is a country that will not see me a second time.

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