So I was looking at time zones today on my iPhone, and I saw that an "Adamstown" is just one hour behind Los Angeles. I thought to myself, "Aside from Alaska, I didn't know there was anything on earth that was 1 hour behind Los Angeles. I thought it was all ocean!"
So I looked up Adamstown, and found a pretty fascinating story.
Adamstown is the only city of the Pitcairn Islands, which are a British territory. Only one of the islands (the one with Adamstown) is populated. The islands are located in the South Pacific, but are far from everything. The closest two islands to it are Easter Island and Tahiti, but both are more than 1000 miles away,
However, the population is only 57, and the vast majority of people are over 50 years old, leading to a concern that soon they will die off and the island will cease to be populated.
The Pitcairn Islands have no paved roads, no airport/airstrip, no hotels, and no gas stations. They receive supplies about once every 3 months by ship.
They do operate a general store, and there is one restaurant called Christian's Cafe.
The islands subsist mostly upon government handouts from the UK.
They also are openly soliciting new residents and giving them free land, but this seems like it might be a scam. It requires a New Zealand $500 (about $350 US) non-refundable application fee, at which point your application is reviewed. If you get rejected, you don't get the $500 back. You are also required to spend a good deal of money to build a house on your free land, and then the elders of the island have a right to kick you off the island anyway after 2 years, causing you to have wasted the money building your new house!
If you want to move there, you can go here for info: http://www.immigration.gov.pn/
For this reason, I am skeptical that they are serious about repopulating the island with younger people, and instead are just looking for either suckers to apply (and keep their $500) or rich people to move there.
Pitcairn Island is best known for a child sex scandal which occurred in 2004. Apparently a British missionary visited there, and noticed that his very underage daughter (who was like 12) was being hit on by the older men on the island. He noticed this seemed to be a common and accepted practice, and not just the actions of one or two pedos. He reported this back to the British homeland, and a major trial took place, causing seven people -- half the adult male population at the time -- to be incarcerated.
Many defended the men, including some of the victims, who insisted that early-life sexual encounters were part of Polynesian culture, and they did not feel victimized. It appears that girls as young as 12 were being used for sex by the old pervs on the island.
This brought a lot of people's attention to the island, and also caused a lot of skepticism as to why Britain was sending so much money there to support a tiny community of pedos.
Here is a 2004 NY Times article about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/20/wo...vity.html?_r=0
Despite this scandal, the island is still making an effort to promote tourism there.
They have a tourism website: http://www.visitpitcairn.pn
They have complicated instructions on how to sail there: http://www.visitpitcairn.pn/go_there...irn/index.html
They explain that you can stay in people's houses and eat meals with them, because there are no hotels: http://www.visitpitcairn.pn/go_there...ion/index.html
A few cruise ships actually visit Pitcairn each year, despite the lack of services or anything to really do there. This includes high end lines like Crystal: http://www.visitpitcairn.pn/cruise_s...ule/index.html
Pitcairn is pretty, but it rises 1100 feet out of the water, and there is no usable beach:
They actually do have internet service there, but it's metered, and they charge you big time for large downloads or uploads. So you're not going to be able to just sit around on the internet all day.
However, they don't have sewer service, and some homes don't even have running water.
There are some joke Google reviews for Christian's Cafe from people who haven't actually been there: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourcei...182b52c23af5,1,
You can also find some fake reviews for fake hotels listed there such as "The Bounty Anchor Hotel", but you need Google Maps to find that, because I can't find the reviews on a regular web search.
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Originally Posted by limitles
