The cost of visiting the most remote islands on earth

There are an estimated 100,000 islands around the world which are home to about 10% of the earth’s population. The majority of islands are occupied and home to everything from isolated fishing villages and oil plants to tiny island nations like Comoros and Vanuatu. We can travel the globe and set up shop wherever we want, so why are there so many islands unoccupied and what would be the cost of visiting the most remote islands on earth?

Tristan da Cunha

£1300 – £1500

This tiny British overseas territory is the most remote-occupied island in the world and home to a population of just over 250. The only way to get to Tristan da Cunha island is first to fly to Cape Town in South Africa before finding a boat that will make the 1750-mile trip into the South Pacific Ocean. There is a ferry that can be booked to make the 6-day trip but fishing boats and some cargo boats on their way to South America will sometimes take passengers. A flight to Cape Town from London will cost around £700 followed by a cost of between £600 and £800 for a one-way journey on a ship.

Bouvet (Bouvetøya) island

£2200 minimum

1600 miles southwest of Capetown is a sub-antarctic island known as Bouvet Island to most, or Bouvetøya Island to the Norwegians who own it. The island is nothing more than a steep series of mountains covered by a large glacier in the middle, making it very hard to live there. Bouvet island doesn’t have a permanent population because it’s impossible to grow crops there and the whole island is completely bare of trees and shrubs. To visit this frozen rock you must first get to Cape Town (£700) and then find a ship willing to take you to the island, which might be tricky because, unlike Tristan da Cunha, it isn’t on the way to anything. The cost of hiring a boat, captain, and crew to take you 1600 miles and back would probably run into the thousands.

Rudolph island

£3000 minimum

Sitting high up in the Arctic Circle in the Barent Sea is Rudolph Island, a small land mass that’s part of over 2 dozen islands about 600 miles north off the Russian coast. Because it sits so far up in the Arctic Circle and the island lacks any kind of trees or useful plants, it’s completely unoccupied apart from a few researchers that visit each year. To get to Rudolph Island first you must make your way to either Norway or Russia which should cost between £300 and £500 to get to the northern coast, but after that, it isn’t as simple as jumping on the first boat you see. The problem with this island is that it is permanently surrounded by sea ice and a special vessel capable of handling the conditions and a skilled crew would be required. The expense could run into the thousands as there’s nothing close to the island a ship would be visiting anyway, requiring a privately rented vessel to take you the 1,200-mile round trip from the Russian coastline.

Meighan island

£4000 minimum

Flying to Canada would be the easy part, and finding a port far enough north, deep within Nunavut territory would be hard but doable, but finding a ship willing to take to Meighan island would be very difficult indeed. The island itself has a land area of 369 sq miles and is one of the smallest islands in the chain that sits north of Nunavut Canada and west of Greenland. This island is the hardest to get to out of all the islands in the region because the sea is permanently covered with ice for around 1 mile off the coast, making it difficult and dangerous to get to. This is one of the few islands that has never had an Inuit population and appears to have never been inhabited. Getting to the north Canadian coast from the UK would cost up to £1,500 but a specialist ship capable of handling the sea ice and safely getting you onto the land would be very expensive indeed.

French southern and Antarctic lands

£5000 minimum

Located 2,500 miles southeast of Australia and 2,700 miles southeast of Cape Town are the French southern and Antarctic lands. This volcanic island has a population of between 150 and 300 researchers and military personnel, but no registered civilian population due to its complete lack of a livable environment. The whole island is very rocky and freezing cold with a lack of any sort of farming ground, and combined with the huge distance to the nearest major population it makes it one of the least visited islands on earth. After flying to either South Africa or Australia, a two-week return boat ride would have to be paid for after securing permission from the sovereign state of France that owns the islands, which would be very costly indeed.