Unless you're on a yacht sailing between Fiji and the Marshall Islands, you'd really have to make a big effort to find yourself on one of the Tuvaluan islands. Tuvalu (formerly the Ellice Islands) is variously declared the second, third or fourth smallest sovereign nation in the world and, according to the UN, is one of the least developed.

With global warming focusing the international spotlight brightly on Tuvalu, more and more people are visiting this remote and small Polynesian nation. This Web site gives an indication of what the visitor can expect, and how to make the most of a visit to Tuvalu.

Life in Tuvalu is relaxed and easy going. The people have an ancient and rich cultural heritage that manifests itself in the beautiful yet most entertaining and colourful Tuvalu dance as well as the unique and striking handicrafts. The visitor to Tuvalu needs to adjust to the unhurried pace of life on these small islands and in doing so should endeavour to sample as much as possible those wonderful things that are uniquely Tuvaluan.

The cool calm waters of the Funafuti lagoon are ideal for all water based activities such as swimming, snorkelling, fishing, skin diving and boating. Be on the look out for the local people who enjoy getting together and simply cooling themselves in their lagoon while they eat and catch up on the latest news as well as planning family activities and their entertainment for the evening.

With a population of over 4000, the Tuvaluan capital, Funafuti, remains a pretty low-key town. With no heavy industry and only two manufacturing facilities (textiles and soap), the air remains pure and the pace of life measured. Funafuti is an administrative centre, hosting a cluster of government buildings near the airport (the landing strip of which is also the town’s main soccer pitch) and a church.

Ten minutes walk north of the centre is the island’s main village, while a further ten minutes on is the deep-water wharf. The huge lagoon is a visual highlight, but tread carefully, as the lagoon beach doubles as a public toilet for some locals. With a population density of 1454 people per sq km, the island is comparatively crowded.

If you’ve got no access to a private yacht and no patience to wait for other island-hopping options you can charter a boat to Funafala Island or one of the other uninhabited islets at the south end of the lagoon for a more unspoilt scene.

Tuvalu’s environment shapes its people’s lives. The atolls on which Tuvaluans live are invariably small, isolated and poor in resources, even such basic resources as soil, fresh water and timber. But the overwhelming feature that a visitor notes, and the feature that puts Tuvalu’s very existence at risk, is the low profile of the atolls.

Nowhere in Tuvalu does the land rise more than 5m above sea level, and with sea levels predicted to rise a metre or more in the next hundred years, Tuvalu may be one of the first countries to be rendered uninhabitable by the runaway ‘greenhouse effect’ and climate change.