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Oceania : Wallis and Futuna

Wallis and Futuna

Wallis and Futuna is an overseas community of France consisting of two small island groupings in Polynesia, near Fiji and Samoa.

Islands

Wallis and Futuna comprises two archipelagoes:

Hoorn Islands group (also known as the Futuna Islands, and as Îles Horne)

Alofi Island is the smaller of the two. According to legend it was as densely inhabited as Futuna up until the 19th century, when the Futuna people slaughtered and ate the population in a single raid.

Wallis Islands group (also known as ʻUvea, as is Wallis Island)

Wallis Island is surrounded by 15 smaller islands, all of which are uninhabited.

Villages

  • Mata-Utu (Matāʻutu) - capital of Wallis and Futuna, also capital of Hahake District, on Wallis Island
  • Leava - the capital of the Sigavé chiefdom, and the third largest village on Futuna Island

Understand

Although discovered by the Dutch and the British in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was the French who declared a protectorate over the islands in 1842. In 1959, the inhabitants of the islands voted to become a French overseas territory. There are still three ceremonial kingdoms within the territory: Alo, Sigave, Wallis.

The islands are volcanic in origin, with low hills, and fringing reefs. The highest point is Mont Singavi, at 765 m. The climate is tropical: hot, rainy season (November to April); cool, dry season (May to October); rains 2,500-3,000 mm per year (80% humidity); average temperature 26.6 degrees C.

Get in

By plane

Uvea and Futuna each have an airport.

By boat

The port of Mata-Utu is located on Uvea. Leava (Sigave) is on Futuna.

Get around

Uvea has 120 km of roads, 16 km of which is paved. Futuna has 20 km of unpaved roads.

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Costs

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Contact

This page was last edited at 20:30, on 12 March 2009 by Wikitravel user Ypsilon. Based on work by Ian Sergeant, David, Wandering, Todd VerBeek, Felicity T and Evan Prodromou, Wikitravel user(s) Episteme, InterLangBot and CIAWorldFactbook2002 and Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel.