New Zealand · NZ

Rangitoto ki te Tonga / D'Urville Island

Rangitoto ki te Tonga / D'Urville Island is the rugged outermost sentinel of New Zealand's Marlborough Sounds, a 163-square-kilometre landmass where ancient beech forest meets wild western seas and just fifty-two people live year-round. Named after French explorer Jules Cesar Dumont d'Urville, who nearly lost his ship Astrolabe threading the violent currents of French Pass in 1827, this island rewards visitors willing to trade a short water taxi ride for a genuine sense of remoteness. The Māori name Rangitoto ki te Tonga evokes a red sky, either from dramatic sunsets or an ancient fire, and the island sits at the intersection of deep human history and extraordinary natural recovery. Because the island is free of possums and ship rats, its native forests ring with birdsong that early European visitors described as impossibly beautiful. Joseph Banks, botanist aboard Cook's Endeavour, wrote of a nearby sounds' morning chorus as the most melodious wild music he had ever heard, almost imitating small bells. On D'Urville today, that dawn chorus is loud enough to wake the deepest sleeper, with tui, bellbirds, robins, weka, and kākā filling the canopy.