Exploring the World's Most Inaccessible Island.. known as Inaccessible Island

So here we are on Inaccessible island, and it's actually gained some notoriety, of course, due to its name being Inaccessible island, but it's a relatively unknown island in the archipelago of Tristan da Cunha. I recently covered Tristan da Cunha in a previous video, but I figured it'd be a good idea to go around and check out all the other neighboring islands around this archipelago and just to see what we can learn about them. This archipelago includes Tristan da Cunha, Inaccessible island, the Nightingale Islands here, which actually have a handful of more islands as well as. And then once we back up and come down a little bit, we're actually able to find Go island or Gough island, not completely sure how it's supposed to be pronounced. So today we're going to explore Inaccessible Island's history, if it's currently inhabited, like Tristan da Cunha, and if you're actually able to access Inaccessible Island. So to give some perspective on how large Inaccessible island is, we can go ahead and see here that it is roughly 3.42 miles across. So it's a pretty small island. And when we come over to Tristan da Cunha to do the same thing, we can see the island is roughly 7.23 miles. So it's a good bit larger, about double the size. So as far as Inaccessible Island's distance from other islands, we can go ahead and see that Inaccessible island is roughly 20 miles away from Trissa da Cunha and is roughly 11 to 12 miles away from the Nightingale Islands. And then once we back up, we can see just how far away this place is from everywhere else. And it's essentially in the middle of nowhere. So once we grab the ruler again and see how far away Inaccessible island is from Cape Town, South Africa, we can see that it's 1,750 miles away. So it's extremely remote and there's a reason why nobody really comes here. So if we want to know the next closest landmass from Inaccessible island, we actually come down here and we're able to find this other super small island called Bouvet island or Bouvet, something like that. So now that we finally made it to Inaccessible island, when you take a look around, you're eventually going to come across this building here on the northwestern part of the island. So this naturally brings up one of the other most frequently asked questions about Inaccessible Island. Is it inhabited? And at one point in time, yeah, Inaccessible island was inhabited, but at this point in time, nobody actually lives there. So if no one lives on the island, Then who built this building and what was its intended purpose? So according to this website that I came across called explorando.info, we can see that they say between 1982 and 1983, Denstone College in England carried out the longest scientific expedition to date on the island with a three month stay in which the flora and fauna were studied. Then further studies were carried out to have geological maps of the island. And this is probably the best photo that I've come across for this building. And we can tell that the elevation gain starts to get pretty crazy because even at the base of this island you can see that it starts to rise up pretty quickly. So why did they actually choose this location for the building? And I found that as well. The main party was put ashore from the South African ship and established a base on the only part of the island from which there's access to the interior. So coming back over to Google Earth and backing up, you can see that the elevation is absolutely insane. And they weren't kidding. This is probably the only part of the island that you even have a shot of climbing this massive cliff. Because as I back out, you can tell that this is the only spot that has somewhat level ground. Because as I start to go around, look at these massive cliffs, they're dang near vertical. And again, there's almost nowhere with a flat part of the island. So yeah, now that we've made our way around the island gives you a lot better idea of exactly why they chose this location. Because it was straight up impossible anywhere else. Maybe not impossible, but it would be stupid to choose anywhere else, considering this is just the easiest place to get to. And again, it's the easiest place to access the interior. And I'm not sure if this is the specific trail that they take, but it does look like there's some sort of trail going up the island. But most likely it's just water runoff, but we'll just go with it. So this is the building here, and you can see just how steep this incline is. And if a hypothetical landslide were to happen, this building would get absolutely flatlined. So if someone here is good at math, please leave a comment and let me know how devastating a landslide would be to this building, because I would have to assume it'd be pretty bad. And the reason Inaccessible island has these massive sea cliffs is because this actually used to be an active volcano around 6 million years ago. The so all of this leads us to the most important question about the island. How do you actually access an Accessible island. Well, after doing some research, I return back to the Tristunha website, which actually has everything you guys need to know about traveling to Inaccessible island or to Tristyn da Cunha. It's pretty straightforward, but it's going to require that you do plenty of planning, since not only you're going to have to coordinate your travel to South Africa and then plan for the ship that takes you from South Africa to Tristan da Cunha, then you'll have to take a ship from Tristan da Cunha over to an accessible island. But prior to even arriving, you're gonna have to contact Tristan da Cunha's government for authorization just to access and to even set foot on an accessible island. Okay, so how long is it going to take you to get from Cape Town, South Africa, over to Tristan da Cunha? Well, it's going to take about seven days. And then on top of that, you're going to have to take another ship over to Inaccessible island, which is going to add another, I don't know, two to six hours to your trip. So you can see this is a massive endeavor. It's going to take weeks, if not months, to plan accordingly. We also have to keep in mind that because these places are so remote that you're going to have to abide by the weather, because if it's a bad weather day, you're not going anywhere. And again, they lay all of this information out for you when you want to go. Your first task before planning a visit is to email the security to the administrator to outline the full purpose of your visit, proposed dates, your nationality and age, preferred shipping and accommodation sought. So there's an entire vetting process to this because they want to know who you are, why you're coming, and what the point of your trip is. And the reason I believe that you have to go to Tristan da Cunha before you can go to Inaccessible island is because of this right here. Vessels wishing to land passengers at Nightingale island or Inaccessible island must first call at Tristan to obtain clearances and embark local guides at a ratio of one guide to eight participating passengers. So whether you have a private vessel or like your own private ship is kind of irrelevant. They want everybody who's going to step foot on the island to go through them, which, honestly, it makes sense. I also read through the terms and conditions just because I feel like I should have. And once you get to 29, you can see that no visitor will be allowed to visit Inaccessible Nightingale or go island without the necessary permits from Immigration and conservation departments. So I've done a fair bit of research on this and you can tell that they're not playing around because there's literally over 30 different things you have to agree on before you even sign this. So after I started taking a look around the island, you can see here that there's this massive waterfall on the other end of the island from where that building was. I believe this is the same waterfall that's on the Tristan da Cunha website. And it says that the waterfall has a 230 meter drop. So when you trace the waterfall source all the way up, you can see that there's a ton of different lines in the mountains just from all of the runoff that has happened from the snow caps. So during the winter season there's plenty of snow. And then of course, once it starts to heat up during the spring and summer, that causes a lot of glacial runoff which eventually leads to this waterfall right here. So as we make our way up this peak, we can actually come to the very top. And it's actually called Cairn Peak. It's the highest point of elevation on Inaccessible island, standing at 1400ft or 440 meters above sea level. So once we come down from the peak and down to the slopes of the island, we can see that there's a ton of whitewash. So if you were somehow unlucky enough to get stuck in this little cove right here, imagine getting slammed up against the island over and over and not being able to breathe. So besides taking the tour from Tristan da Cunha, the only real other way that you can access an accessible island is from a private charter or from a private boat that you own. And I don't mean physically get on the island, but of course just go around it. So if you take your own private vessel, you're definitely going to have to watch out for these reefs that are popping up because it makes visiting the island extremely dangerous. Hence the name Inaccessible island. Alongside the pop up storms and strong currents, because these pop up storms can be extremely violent as Inaccessible island lies at 37 degrees south latitude and is inside the zone known as the roaring 40s. So the zone is notorious for high winds and waves that can reach up to 30 to 50ft and partially because of the lack of land masses to actually break the high wind. But what kind of wildlife is found on this island? They're famous for having the world's smallest flightless bird, which is actually called the inaccessible flightless rail and it measures at only 5 to 6 inches long. And is only weighing in at 40 grams. And we can see on Tristan da Cunha's website that they actually have an entire article dedicated to this bird. So Inaccessible island is also known for the penguins that like to frequent the island, whether it's for breeding or whether it's for them to just have a stopgap in between Antarctica. Because besides those penguins and the flightless bird, there's really not too much else on this island as far as mammals or insects. As far as I know, there's actually no mammals or insects on this entire island. So I mentioned that as part of the Tristan da Cunha Archipelago. But does that actually mean that they own Inaccessible Island? Well, yes, Tristan Acuna effectively owns and manages an accessible island, but it's under the umbrella of the United Kingdom, since they own the whole archipelago and it's considered a British overseas territory, per usual, the British are pretty good at taking things and then keeping them for a prolonged period of time. So essentially, if any issues pop up with an accessible island, then the local government of Tristan da Cunha typically handles it. But if it becomes an issue that's well over their head, then they end up calling the UK government in. But even if they were to call the UK government, it's not like they'd be able to pull up for a long time, since it takes literally a week to get up to the island. So if we dive a little more into the history of Inaccessible island, we can see that it's been discovered for a while. It was initially spotted in January of 1656, but landfall would be made in 1803 by some US sailors. And then finally, in 1871, two German brothers, Gustav and Frederick Stoltenhoft, would reach the island and live there. But not for long, because after about two years, the brothers were rescued in 1873 by a ship which had come to the island for research, as it would have been a tough way to live given the lack of food and tough climate. So not only did the brothers live on Inaccessible island, but they also had some influence on the other islands, because, as you can see here, this other one was named Stolenhof Island. It's along the Nightingale island chain. So if we were to see how far away Inaccessible island is from it, we can see that it's roughly 10 miles away, so not too bad. And we can see that Stoltenhof is extremely small, because when we get the ruler out, we can see that it's not even half a mile long. But again, I'm gonna make a Follow up video on all of these and just like most remote islands, they tend to have reefs surrounding the island and there's been a handful of shipwrecks, but unfortunately we can't see any of them because they all happened in the 1800s and of course they used wood at the time, no steel, so there's no remnants laying around that we can actually view. But if they were made out of steel, like with the shipwreck on the northwestern part of North Sentinel island, then we'd definitely be able to spot them on Google Earth. But one of these shipwrecks would be a bit more famous than the other ones as they would have 50 survivors stranded on Inaccessible island after their 450 ton ship would wreck on 23rd July 1821. This would be known as the Blended Hall Shipwreck. They would eventually run ashore because of a heavy swell with foggy weather and it would lead to 50 survivors living off of fish, seabirds and penguins before reaching Tristan on a makeshift salvage boat. So imagine having to take a makeshift salvage boat all the way from Inaccessible island to Tirsna Cunha, which like I said is about 20 miles. I also wanted to say thanks for everyone who watches my videos because as you can tell, these videos are a lot more laid back, a lot more chill and I try to just give people history and knowledge of these islands that I cover. Social media now is all about fast paced stuff, screaming and yelling and there's nothing wrong with that. And I'm not about to say that I hate on it or anything, but I just think that it's really important that while you have that stuff over here that you should also have very entertaining and pretty relaxed historical and knowledgeable stuff like my channel over here. So again, I really appreciate you guys for watching my videos because I do all of this myself. I write the script, I find places to visit, I upload, I promote. So it's all me. And as always, all the links for the articles that I talked about are in the Description as well as the Discord Channel and my other social media links. So thanks a ton for watching. Let's get to 10k subs and I'll see you guys in the next video. Peace.