The island
Nguna lies in Undine Bay, north of Efate. Pele is its neighbour to the east and Moso its neighbour to the west.
Nguna is an outer island of Efate, in Shefa Province. Two extinct volcanic craters shape it. The highest point is Mount Taputoara, at 593 metres. The name is spelled in more than one way, including Taputoara and Taputaora.
Thirteen villages stand on the north, east and south of the island. The west is largely uninhabited. A 2024 report by Vanuatu's Right to Information Unit names nine of them:
Most of the visitor bungalows are around Taloa, in the south.
The Nguna Area Council covers Pele as well as Nguna. It counted 1,790 people in the 2020 census. That figure is for both islands together, not for Nguna alone.
| Year | People |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 1,179 |
| 2009 | 1,576 |
| 2016 | 1,728 |
| 2020 | 1,790 |
Linguists describe the Nguna variety of the Efate languages, which is also called Nakanamanga.
Rev. Peter Milne, a Scottish Presbyterian missionary, arrived on Nguna in 1870. He served in the New Hebrides, as Vanuatu was then called, for more than fifty years, and died in 1924.
Our older guide describes kava as a traditional drink in Vanuatu with its own ritual. The kava place is called a nakamal. Our advice on how to behave around one is on the Visit page.
Cyclone Pam was a Category 5 storm. It struck Vanuatu from 12 to 14 March 2015. The Government of Vanuatu's post-disaster assessment, as summarised by the International Labour Organization, records eleven deaths, about 65,000 people displaced from their homes and about 15,000 buildings damaged or destroyed.
The story of Cyclone Pam and the #saveVanuatu relief, with photographs, is on savevanuatu.org, part of the #saveVanuatu initiative.
The facts on this page come from these pages, which we have put into our own words. The photographs are David's own, and the visiting advice comes from our earlier guide to the island.