Washington - This is one island you don’t want to visit. Off the shore of São Paulo lies an island forbidden to visitors, by order of the Brazilian Navy. They have a good reason: Ilha Queimada Grande, “Snake Island,” is covered with deadly Golden Lancehead vipers.
Unique to the island, this species of serpent is believed to have the fastest acting venom of any Lancehead viper. The effects of its bite include bleeding orifices, brain haemorrhaging, and kidney failure.
The density of snakes on the island is estimated at one per square metre, many of which are found overhead, hanging from the trees.
Locals in the coastal towns near the Queimada Grande happily recount grisly tales about the island. In one, a fisherman unwittingly wanders on to the island to pick bananas and is bitten only moments after stepping ashore. The fisherman manages to stumble back to his boat before dying in a pool of his own blood.
ANOTHER ISLAND TO AVOID
If any group of people qualifies for the term “lost tribe” it is the Sentinelese. Like other Andaman island natives, they have managed to live for thousands of years near one of the most ancient sea routes while avoiding any influence from outside civilisations.
Situated in the bay of Bengal, the Andaman islands have been known to outsiders since ancient times. Andaman islanders respond with intense hostility at any attempt of outside contact, hurling arrows and stones at any unlucky visitor approaching their shores.
Early Arab and Persian documents report that Andaman islands were inhabited by cannibals – an exaggeration probably originating from the ferocity of attacks with which these travellers were greeted. Later Indian and European explorers steered clear off these islands to avoid the hostile inhabitants.
Things began to change during British colonial rule in India and Burma. The first permanent European settlement, a penal colony, was established in the 1700s on Great Andaman. One by one, local tribes slowly broke their isolation, the latest being the Jarawa, who established the first peaceful contact with the Indian government only in 1997.
The Sentinelese, the inhabitants of small North Sentinel island, are the only remaining tribe in the Andaman chain to maintain their isolation. Since 1967 Indian authorities have attempted to make peaceful contact with the Sentinelese under the auspices of anthropological research. These “contact expeditions” consisted of a series of visits in which gifts such as coconuts were left on the shores, in an attempt to coax the Sentinelese out of their hostility to outsiders. Almost all of these attempts were greeted with showers of arrows and stones.
In 2006, Sentinelese archers killed two fishermen who were fishing illegally within range of the island, and drove off the helicopter that was sent to retrieve their bodies with a hail of arrows. There are currently no planned attempts to contact the Sentinelese and access to North Sentinel island is strictly forbidden.
All knowledge about the Sentinelese is derived either by observation from a distance or from comparison with other Andamanise tribes. They are classified as Negritos, a loosely connected group of peoples inhabiting isolated regions in South East Asia, who exhibit physical characteristics more commonly found in Africans, such as very dark skin tone and peppercorn hair.
Sentinelese wear no clothes, but wear leaves, fibre strings or similar material as decorations. Headbands made from vines appear to be fashionable items among men. There are no signs of agriculture on the island. Although most of their tools and weapons are made from stone and animal bones, the tribe seems to make use of metal fragments that wash up on their shore.
The population of North Sentinel island is estimated at 250 individuals.
And another…
Miyakejima, an island 170km south-west of Tokyo, is known for its bird watching, hot springs, and the requirement that visitors carry a gas mask at all times. The island centres around Mount Oyama, a volcano that spews lava, ash, and toxic sulphur dioxide roughly every 20 years. The last series of eruptions, which occurred in 2000, forced an evacuation of the entire population.
Five years after being forced from their homes, 2 800 residents of Miyakejima returned to the island to find their cars rusting, their schools buried under hardened lava, and 60 percent of the forests destroyed. Today, one-third of the land remains off-limits due to the high concentration of poisonous gases. Which is where the masks come in. Visitors to the island must always have one on hand in case of a sudden increase in sulphur dioxide. Sirens indicate when masks need to be donned.
Faced with the changed landscape, locals and visitor organisations have embraced volcano-themed tourism, offering sightseeing trips to abandoned buildings, lava-coated landscapes, and half-buried shrines. - Slate
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