Salt Life

Globe Trotting

Growing up as a kid in the 70's we didn't have all the neat gadgets kids have today. I know I'm sounding just like my parents when I say we had to invent things to do. I can, however, say that playing with a stick was not one of the things on our list of activities! I can go one better...a globe. My brother and I used to spend many afternoons and evenings making up games with a globe and one of our favorites was to spin it and point your finger to a random place on the globe and pretend you were going there. I remember daydreaming about the many places my finger went and wishing I could actually go there and see those wonderful places in person.

As an adult, I'm not much different in my daydreaming adventures. I just have a bit more technology at my fingertips a la the "World Wide Web"! So now instead of spinning a globe, I surf the web for endless geographic destinations.

This week during one of my virtual trips I discovered three islands I had never heard of... St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan de Cunha. They are not very close to one another, but they are, according to my research, connected economically and, therefore, dependent on one another. St Helena is where Napoleon was exiled and the home he lived and died in still stands. There are only about 4,000 who currently live on this island that is only accessible by the island's own ship. The Royal Mail Ship, St Helena, can be boarded at Cape Town and several days later dock at its namesake. Oddly, there's very little tourism on any of these three bits of land in the middle of nowhere.

There are many more interesting facts and statistics about these three little islands that, as a home school mom, I could bore you with, but will leave it to you to dig if you really want to know how many hotels and restaurants are on St. Helena Island.

What are some little known places you'd like to visit or maybe have visited?

Labels: fun facts

posted by Kushmama @ 6:18 PM