Lake Lalolalo

LakesWallis Island (Uvea),Wallis and Futuna

A circle of black water inside sheer fifty-metre walls on Wallis Island, fresh at the surface and nearly seawater at its 88-metre floor.

September·Peaking now

May–Oct

The south-east trades settle in — drier air, clearer skies over the black water and a firm red track to the rim. The cyclone season has passed, and tropicbirds still ride the updraught inside the crater below you.

Year-round The circle, the red walls and the dead-still water hold every month; tropicbirds and flying foxes work the crater year-round.

Lake Lalolalo is a circle of black water inside sheer walls fifty metres high on Wallis Island, Uvea, in the French territory of Wallis and Futuna in the South Pacific, a crater lake 400 metres across and 88 deep, fresh at the surface and nearly seawater at its floor, and it is walked to through forest that traditional law keeps standing and looked down into from the rim at midday, when the sun clears the wall and lights the whole basin. The lake fills a maar blown open in a single blast in the late Holocene, geologically newborn, one of several on the island with Lanutavake and Lano, and its walls drop vertically into water so dark that the bottom was sounded only recently; the track leaves the road and closes over with trees that Wallisian custom, the vao tapu, has protected as a sacred forest, and comes out on the lip with no fence, the circle of water below reflecting the sky in the middle and the walls in black at the edges, with white-tailed tropicbirds working the air inside the crater, so that they ride the updraught under the feet rather than over the head. The deep water is sulphurous and without oxygen, and Wallisian stories put blind eels in it. Uvea is a low island of villages, churches and coconut palms inside a lagoon, with a king and a customary law alongside the French, and the lake is its one dramatic sight, reached by car in twenty minutes from the town of Mata-Utu with no facilities at the rim. The island takes about three metres of rain a year, most in the wet season from November to April when cyclones also run, and from May to October the trade winds bring drier air, clearer skies and a firm track to the rim. The American forces of the war left a few relics in the forest around it. Lalolalo is a hole in an island filled with black water, and the forest around it is kept by custom.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The perfect circle belongs to the air — from the rim you see open water and the red wall opposite; only from the plane does the shape close into a ring.
The walk in is short and ends at the lip — a few minutes through forest off Route 1 between Mala'etoli and Ahoa, and then the ground simply stops; no path leads down to the water.
Keep well back from the edge — the wall drops sheer for about fifty metres, little stands between you and it, and the red earth underfoot turns slick after rain.

Things to do

1
Time your walk to the rim for midday
Come out to the lip around noon, when the sun has climbed high enough to clear the fifty-metre wall and light the whole basin instead of shadowing half of it. A plain concrete slab and a low fence are the only built things here. Step onto it and the wall drops straight into water nobody swims in.
2
Watch tropicbirds ride the updraught below you
White-tailed tropicbirds work the air inside the crater, which puts them under your feet rather than over your head. From the rim you look down on white backs and trailing tail streamers as they turn against the black water.
3
Walk in through the forest that traditional law protects
The track leaves the road and closes over with trees that Wallisian traditional law, vao tapu, has kept standing here. It is a short, humid walk on red earth, loud with insects, and it gives no hint of what is coming until the forest floor abruptly ends.