Secluded St Helena opened up to tourists

ST HELENA: One of the remotest islands in the world is about to enter the modern tourist age.

When the British exiled Napoleon Bonaparte to St Helena in 1815, it took the conquered emperor 10 weeks to reach the island. Two centuries later, it’s still a five-day trip by mail boatassuming – you happen to be starting from somewhere as close as Cape Town, South Africa.

But on October 14, the tiny British overseas territory will get its first scheduled flights. Two weeks later, St Helena’s first luxury hotel, a 30-room property, will open.

Located about 2000km off the western coast of Africa, St Helena is best known as the place where Napoleon was banished after being defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. The house where he livedcomplete with the original furnishings is one of the island’s main tourist attractions.

But it’s not the only draw. The 120 square-kilometre tropical island offers mountainbiking, sportfishing, and scuba diving in waters where visibility is up to 30m.

St Helena is one of a handful of places in the world where humans can swim with massive (and passive) whale sharks. It’s home to a 185-year-old tortoise named Jonathan, the world’s longest straight staircase, and a doublehole golf course that players go around twice, trying not to hit any goats along the way.

Because of the limited transportation options, only a couple of thousand tourists make it to the island each year. The Royal Mail Ship St Helena, a combination cargo-passenger ship, makes the trip just a few times a month. And until now, the airport was able to accept only private flights.

‘‘The world’s most useless airport,’’ as some have called it, cost £285 million (NZ$527M) and was meant to push St Helena toward economic self-sufficiency. A month before it opened in 2016, test flights revealed dangerous wind conditions, and commercial flights were put on hold.

But now, South African airline Airlink will run weekly from Johannesburg. To keep the plane light enough to use less of the runway and avoid the spots with most dangerous winds, it will fill only 76 of the 99 seats. – Washington Post