Photos: © 2000 Manuel Bauer. Text: © 2000 Christian Schmidt.
Tristan da Cunha is the most isolated inhabited island in the world: 3'000 km away from the nearest mainland, its stands alone in the middle of the South Atlantic, halfway between the southern most point of South Africa and South America.
Tristan and its uninhabited neighbours - Inaccessible, Nightingale, Stoltenhoff and Middle islands - are tips of a gigantic underwater volcano which erupted to break the surface of the Atlantic one million years ago.
Situated on the island's only low-lying flat plateau, lies Edinburgh, the island's only settlement: home to 7 families, numbering some 300 people. Jammed between the constant stormy sea and the steep sloping side of the 2000 m high (6,760 feet) volcano, it's no surprise that there is neither an airport nor a harbor. Indeed the only way to get to the island, is when in calmer seas, Tristan's fishing boats are able to approach one of the few container or ice-breaking ships that pass during the course of the year, bring much needed food and medical supplies.
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