lf you want to disappear for a while, head to Tuvalu. On average, it receives fewer than a thousand tourists a year, so you’re likely to have the beach to yourself. The tiny group of islands, however, are seriously endangered by rising sea levels caused by global warming, so you’d better be quick.

May to September, when the easterly winds spring up

Joining in a game of soccer on Funafuti’s pitch, which doubles as the airport landing strip Snorkelling in Funafuti Marine Conservation Area to gawp at tropical fish and cavorting turtles Wreck-spotting on Nanumea Atoll for remains of several US landing craft and a B-24 bomber Worshipping at the only remining pre-Christian altar buried in the bush of Nukulaelae Atoll Training in the Tuvaluan martial art of wielding the katipopuki (hardwood spear) on the island of Niutao

Read The People’s Lawyer by Philip Ells-an amusing and insightful account of a young Voluntary Service Overseas lawyer’s spell in Tuvalu, or The Happy lsles of Oceania-Padding the Pacific, by the notorious Paul Theroux

Listen to Tuvalu: A Polynesian Atoll Society-a good sampler with chants from several different islands

Watch Pacific Women in Transition, featuring a Tuvaluan woman adapting to the changes of modern life on the island

Eat your fill of seafood at a fatele, the mega-feast that always involves dancing

Drink toddy, the fermented coconut sap that delivers an alcoholic kick

Se fakamasakoga fua o fai se fatele (any excuse for a fatele)

Fine-sand beaches on clear seas; indigenous dot.tv millionaires; first-rate snorkeling around atolls; isolation; rising sea levels

Although Tuvalu literally means ‘cluster of eight,’ there are nine islands in the nation; the highest point on Tuvalu is just 4.6m (15ft) above sea level

The greenhouse effect is the issue that dominates Tuvalu’

S future. ln face there’s a very real possibility that as the greenhouse effect takes a grip on the world’s climate over the next century, Tuvalu could cease to exist altogether.