Bounty Islands - myth or reality?

2024 Author: Harold Hamphrey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:06

We are familiar with the Bounty Islands thanks to a promotional video offering to enjoy a chocolate bar with delicate coconut filling. When we think about this advertisement, we immediately see a picture of a deserted island with clear blue water, white sand, green palm trees. But few people know that in fact, not the Bounty Islands, located in the southeast of New Zealand, but the Thai island of Koh Samui were used for filming the advertisement.

Why did the creators of the chocolate bar choose such a name for it and confuse the traces by picking up a delightful picture with tropical landscapes and giving it a completely alien name? It's like calling Antarctica Africa, because the real Bounty Islands have nothing to do with azure clear waters, warm sands, palm trees with coconuts. The bar manufacturer probably just picked the most euphonious name anddreamed up a desert island for all this, where you can hide from all problems and worries.

Bounty Island is made up of 13 small rocky patches of land. Many people will be interested to know where this miracle is located, but few people suggest that you need to look for it 650 km southeast of New Zealand. There are no palm trees here and close, the vegetation is very sparse, because the climate is quite severe. The air temperature usually does not fall below 0 °C, but it does not rise above 12 °C either. Of all the mammals, seals can be found here, and flocks of penguins and albatrosses have also chosen impregnable rocks.

It's hard to call Bounty Island a paradise on earth. Prices for tours to this godforsaken place are unlikely to interest tourists, since impregnable coastal cliffs do not contribute to the disembarkation of passengers passing by ships. However, no one is allowed here except members of research expeditions, since the Bounty is under the protection of UNESCO. In the 19th and 20th centuries, hunters often visited the islands, attracted by a large number of seals, as a result of which almost the entire population of mammals was exterminated. Now these animals live quietly here and breed, nothing threatens their lives.

Many are interested in why the Bounty Islands got such a name, what contributed to this. It turns out that they were so named after the English ship "Bounty", which passed in 1788 past a piece of land that had not yet been discovered at that time. Perhaps this name would remain for few people.famous, if not for the incident that occurred on the ship in 1789. Then a riot broke out on the ship, the rebels landed the captain and his followers in the boat and let them sail freely on the ocean. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and after 7 weeks of wandering, the unfortunate people were rescued.

The Bounty Islands remain uninhabited to this day, except for members of expeditions who from time to time come to these harsh places to conduct research, and colonies of penguins, flocks of albatrosses and clumsy seals. This is a real uninhabited piece of land, but it has nothing to do with warm sunny days, clear water, snow-white sand, charming greenery.