Juan de Nova

Juan de Nova sits in the narrowest part of the Mozambique Channel, a low island of casuarina woods and white beaches ringed by a reef. Its guano was mined for phosphate for decades, and the workings are still there, a hangar, rails, workers' houses and a jetty falling apart in the sand. The rusting wreck of a steamer lies on the reef off the north shore. Sooty terns nest here in one of the largest colonies of the western Indian Ocean. A small garrison keeps the island, and visits need a permit from the territory.