Poles of Inaccessibility: The Most Remote Places in the World

The world is full of places we could consider remote, but there is a small list that stands above the rest. These poles of inaccessibility are usually associated with specific points in the ocean, although their classification works for continents, islands, peninsulas, and individual countries. As a matter of fact, if you find yourself near Toledo, you can visit the point of inaccessibility of the entire Iberian Peninsula with a 40-minute drive.

Beyond the difficulties that might come up when identifying poles of inaccessibility, the common definition refers to the point furthest from the coast, whether within a territory or in the ocean. In other words, it is the center of the largest circle we can draw without touching a coast. Now, I suspect our readers have already encountered a point of inaccessibility before, and the reason is an old primordial god.

That’s right: the corpse-city of R’lyeh, current residence of Cthulhu himself, lies very close to the Pacific pole of inaccessibility, also known as “Point Nemo” … or at least, that’s what the novel says. It also serves as a graveyard for all sorts of spacecraft, since the idea is to minimize the risk of impact in populated areas during reentry.

The Poles of Inaccessibility

Another interesting fact is that the southern pole of inaccessibility is not in the same place as the geographic South Pole. In fact, experts have had difficulty marking it precisely. The former Soviet Union set up a temporary station on the pole of inaccessibility measured in 1958. They stayed there for twelve days, but concluded it was too far from other stations to operate effectively.

Although it has received some isolated visits over the past 60 years, the only notable thing left there is a bust of Lenin facing Moscow. The southern pole of inaccessibility was updated based on calculations by the British Antarctic Survey (establishing a difference of 100 kilometers), and the first team to reach it was made up of Spanish explorers Ramón Larramendi, Juan Manuel Viu, and Ignacio Oficialdegui, from the Transantarctic Expedition 2005.

If Antarctica feels a bit far for you, don’t worry. According to calculations made by Google Maps, the pole of inaccessibility of the Iberian Peninsula is located in Otero, a municipality in Toledo, a little over an hour from Madrid by car.

When studying the pole of inaccessibility of South America and discovering it is in Mato Grosso, anyone would assume it is truly inaccessible, but images reveal that brutal deforestation has already reached it.

Would you like to know how far you are from the poles? Don’t hesitate to consult the coordinates we shared above.