Kiribati Travel Guide

Kiribati OVERVIEW

If you measure Kiribati by land size you'll arrive at a humble 810 square kilometers. When it comes to the span of its 33 atolls over the Pacific Ocean though, the figure grows to a 3.5 million-square-kilometer vast expanse dotted with tiny islands ringed with golden sandy beaches and crystal clear turquoise lagoons. Kiribati snakes its way above and below the Equator encompassing three major island groups, the Gilbert, the Phoenix and the Line Islands. They were first sighted on the turn of 19th century by British ships crossing the archipelago on route to China around 1788.

The country belongs to one of the world's most remote and thus tourism is very much at its teething stage here. It was after Kiribati changed the International Dateline to make its uninhabited Caroline Island the ‘first to usher in the new millennium' that the country received publicity it needed to move into the travel spotlight and increase the tourist arrivals. Kiribati's colonial past and WW II history didn't affect significantly the outer regions where still today people subsist on fishing as well as coconut and breadfruit plantations. The western influence is more conspicuous on the main island of Tarawa, where cars, bars, movies and the Internet access are more and more commonplace. It is also here where the war remnants and memories are most evident. A number of artifacts like bunkers and vehicles scattered throughout the atoll remind of the 1943 Tarawa Battle when over 20,000 US Marines defeated the Japanese forces after days of heavy fighting and bloodshed. A monument of the past and a wealth of war history, Tarawa and the islet of Betio are among the most visited sites in Kiribati.

Kiribati is not only a tropical island paradise with a 100 per cent dream holiday guarantee and a luring promise of perfect diving opportunities in the coral reef, relaxing moments with a glass of soothing exotic cocktail sipped under a palm tree and carefree rollicks on the sun-baked beaches. Naturalists will find the region's multitude of wildlife truly fascinating. If you're one of them, don't miss out Kiritimati, a bird's watcher heaven and an important habitat for many feathery species, and take a deep plunge into the clear azure waters to marvel at the much unexplored underwater sanctuaries.