Kuria

Kuria doesn’t get many visitors, and I mean that literally — the immigration officer who processed my arrival in Tarawa seemed genuinely curious why I’d chosen it, since most of the outsiders who make it out to the central Gilberts head for Abemama or Maiana instead. Kuria is a small atoll made up of two main islets, Buariki and Oneeke, connected by a causeway that’s walkable at most tide states, and the whole place felt refreshingly free of any sense of performance for visitors, mostly because there are so few visitors to perform for.

I crossed the causeway on foot on my first morning, timing it against the tide table a village boy had sketched out for me the night before with more precision than I expected, and stood in the middle with shallow, absolutely clear water spreading out on both sides toward the two islets. A group of women were harvesting seaweed near the causeway’s edge, working methodically through a bed of it with hand rakes, which I hadn’t seen elsewhere in Kiribati and learned was sold in small quantities to visiting traders as a minor but valued source of income for households here.

Kuria’s real draw, if it has one in the conventional sense, is birdlife — the more remote stretches of Oneeke islet host significant numbers of terns and noddies, and a local guide walked me out at dawn to a nesting area where the noise alone, before I could even see the birds clearly, was more overwhelming than anything I’d experienced on the more populated islands. We sat at a respectful distance for close to an hour while he pointed out species by name, some of which I recognized and most of which I didn’t, and I left with a small notebook full of half-legible descriptions and no photographs that did the scene any justice.

When to go: April through October for calmer boat crossings from Tarawa or Abemama. There’s no formal accommodation; a homestay arranged through a Tarawa-based contact is essential, and patience with an unpredictable inter-island boat schedule is non-negotiable.