Nan Madol

Mysterious ancient city built on coral rocks on the SE corner of Pohnpei. You can either get a boat there (nice approach from the sea) that can be arranged via Pohnpei Surf Club (google them) or drive about 1.5 hr to get there. I will talk about the second method since I did not take a boat. A taxi will cost you US$80 for one person and a bit more for the whole car if more than one person. I went with the taxi driver named Augustine (691)9264085 who is recommended by many on Facebook EPS. For US$80, he can drive you to multiple sites all over Pohnpei for a full day.
I do not suggest you drive yourself due to the complexity of finding one’s way to the ruins from the car parking area. Your taxi driver can guide you to the ruins, especially on a foggy or rainy day when the very rough footpath (around 500m) becomes hazy and unclear. At the car parking area or shortly after, one will be approached by 2 separate locals asking for “entrance fees” of between US$1 and US$3. They are supposedly the local squatters and representatives of the traditional tribal ruler. The footpath is rocky (some parts of muddy) and slippery, and in my opinion, can potentially be dangerous for the elderly. At the end of the footpath is a narrow sea channel by the main ruins. Depending on the tide, the water can be between 20cm and 1 meter or …

Like others here, I arranged a trip with Pohnpei Surf Club for a vehicle from Kolonia to take us to Nan Madol. After getting near the site, we paid about 3 USD to the family who lives there, before walking about 15 minutes on a stone path (very slippery when it's pouring rain, like it was the day we went). As we get closer, huge walls made of columnar basalt seem to emerge out of the jungle. Finally, we approach the main islet - Nan Madol is made of several artificial islets criss-crossed by a series of canals, but most visitors only go to one islet, Nan Douwas - and what an islet it is! Enormous, imposing walls surround a central tomb, built for the first member of the dynasty that created Nan Madol, and a further set of outer walls as well, with remnants of structures in between the two walls. If this were in most other countries, it'd be a standout hit with tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors, but because Micronesia is so hard to get to, it gets very few - we were the only visitors we saw at the site that day. The temptation to make a comparison to Easter Island is obvious - while nothing on Pohnpei quite matches the artistry of the moai, no structure I saw on Easter Island matches the ones built at Nan Madol.

Time of visit: August 2018

Duration of visit: 3 hours

Mode of transportation: within Pohnpei - a 1.5hr drive from Kolonia, followed by a channel crossing by foot; to Pohnpei, from San Francisco, then Honolulu, via the United Pacific Hopper flights through Majuro, Kwajalein, and Kosrae

Review and experience

The primary focus of my 2 days on Pohnpei was scuba diving - truly a diamond in the rough and underrated dive location. I was so close to choosing Chuuk over Pohnpei, as Chuuk had some impressive WWII dive sites and I could only select one stop-over along the United Pacific Hopper flights without extra costs, but Nan Madol ended up being the tie-break for selecting Pohnpei. 

I'd like to think of Nan Madol as a sleeper hit WHS. Despite having taken a handful of archaeology courses in college, I hadn't heard of Nan Madol and the Micronesia dynasties! Perhaps I was asleep in class if one of my professors covered it for a brief few minutes, and if so, shame on me... While Nan Madol may not be as impressive as the likes of Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza, or the Great Pyramids, its truly lives up to its OUV in my perspective - a one of a kind cultural masterpiece. An added bonus to the experience was that I was the only visitor (aside from my guide/driver) to the site during my time there, so the experience was intimate and undisturbed by others. Venice of …

Nan Madol, on the island of Pohnpei, came as a wonderful surprise to me as part of my trip flying on United's Island Hopper flight between Honolulu and Guam. It was a small city, constructed of stone on artificial islets along the coast of Pohnpei. Construction is dated to the late 1100s and it served as the capital of the Saudeleur Dynasty of the islands until 1628. The scale of it all is truly amazing. Great stone buildings separated by a series of ocean canals, protected by a large breakwater wall. The most impressive remnant is the tomb complex in the center, where the building's (palace's?) remaining walls are over 20 feet tall in spots. And what incredible walls these are! It is constructed of a mix of massive basalt boulders and huge hexagonal basalt crystals. You might be familiar with these hexagonal crystals from the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. Here, long pieces of them are stacked to form walls, reminding me of a set of heavyweight Lincoln Logs, stacked in bunches to form these formidable walls. But the mystery of how this small island civilization constructed all this gets even better, because this type of basalt rock and crystal form is only found on the opposite side of the island! Some of these stones weigh many tons each. The local legends say that the stones were magically flown through the air from the other side of the island to build this city. However they managed to accomplish it, …

I visited Nan Madol in 2007 and ever since I had thought it was not only worthy of world heritage status but probably the most deserving site I had been to which wasn't listed.

Getting to Micronesia isn't easy, and getting to Nan Madol takes a bit of effort once you are on Pohnpei, but it is well worth the effort. Expect to be alone when you visit or be among a very small number of tourists.

It has been called the "Venice of the Pacific" for good reason. The small islands and structures separated by canals evokes images of Venice.

I think that Nan Madol is the top attraction in the Pacific, perhaps even surpassing Easter Island.

Read more about Nan Madol: Ceremonial Centre of Eastern Micronesia on my website.

In December 2015, I spent a couple of days in Pohnpei at the Mangrove Bay Hotel, a short walk from downtown Kolonia, the capital of Pohnpei. Kolonia is not a very interesting place, but I did manage to find a couple of historic sites like the Spanish wall, built in 1899 as a boundary for Fort Alphonso XII. The wall is one of the few remaining remnants of Spanish control and now serves as the outfield wall for the baseball field. I also wandered around and found the Catholic bell tower and adjoining masonry apse, all that remain of a church built in 1909 by German Capuchin missionaries, when Pohnpei and the other Caroline Islands were administered as part of German New Guinea.

I organized a trip to Nan Madol with Pohnpei Surf Club, which is located on the ground floor of the Mangrove Bay Hotel (www.pohnpeisurfclub.com). I paid US$125, which accounts for solo travel on Christmas (it should be less expensive with a group).

There is a tide chart stapled to the Pohnpei Surf Club's door, so you could time your visit to Nan Madol for low tide, as I did, when I was able to wade across the channel that separates the complex from the main island (at high tide, a visitor would need to swim or arrange for a kayak, which I heard is difficult to arrange).

From the Mangrove Bay Hotel, it was a 45-minute or so drive to the beginning of the footpath to Nan …