This sprawling national park extends all the way to the beach, enabling elephants, buffalos, wild pigs, gorillas and hippos to take a dip in the ocean. The nearby Loango Lodge is the best place to stay.
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Cow Beach, Goa, India
Bovine and beach: two words that don’t usually appear in the same
sentence. But at Cow Beach in Goa, heifers hurdle towels and bulls blunder
past parasols. Despite the sanitary issues this scenario would seem to
incur, the beach remains hugely popular with travellers.
Punaluu Beach, Hawaii
Take the perfect white sand beach of clichéd brochure covers, imagine the
complete opposite and you’ll have some idea of what Punaluu looks like.
It’s rocky, cold-watered and entirely black, its basalt sand being
the product of ancient volcanic lava cooled by the sea. All of which seems
to appeal to endangered Hawksbill turtles, who are regular frequenters of
this curious cove.
Take the perfect white sand beach of clichéd brochure covers, imagine the
complete opposite and you’ll have some idea of what Punaluu looks like.
It’s rocky, cold-watered and entirely black, its basalt sand being
the product of ancient volcanic lava cooled by the sea. All of which seems
to appeal to endangered Hawksbill turtles, who are regular frequenters of
this curious cove.
Pink Sands Beach, Bahamas
Three miles long, gentle and wonderfully wide, the sand at this otherwise
textbook Bahamanian cove is pink due to microscopic coral insects called
Foraminifera. When they die, they leave their pink shells behind to be crushed
into the sand by waves.
Papakolea Beach, Hawaii
Sand also comes green, too. Two global beaches are green; one is on the
remote Western Pacific island of Guam, and the other is this Hawaiian
oddity, situated on Big Island. The reason for the strange shade is, in
this case, olivine crystals; the result is a shore that looks like a grass
verge.
Glass Beach, California
For much of the 1900s, locals in the coastal California town of Fort Bragg
threw garbage onto their local shoreline, a place known subtly as ‘The
Dumps’. In 1967, the area was closed for a long, gradual clean-up;
one aided, in part, by the ocean’s waves wearing down all the leftover
glass into smooth, multi-coloured trinkets. Glass Beach reopened in 2002 as
part of the MacKerricher State Park, and is now a confirmed tourist
attraction.
For much of the 1900s, locals in the coastal California town of Fort Bragg
threw garbage onto their local shoreline, a place known subtly as ‘The
Dumps’. In 1967, the area was closed for a long, gradual clean-up;
one aided, in part, by the ocean’s waves wearing down all the leftover
glass into smooth, multi-coloured trinkets. Glass Beach reopened in 2002 as
part of the MacKerricher State Park, and is now a confirmed tourist
attraction.
Hot Water Beach, New Zealand
Set on the Coromandel Peninsula, this strip is the seaside equivalent of underfloor heating. Subterranean hot springs filter up through the sand and, either side of low tide, visitors can burrow down and create their own hot-water pool in which to soak
Maho Beach, St Maarten
Set just a fence away from Princess Juliana International Airport, Maho is
perfect for watching huge Boeings swooping in to land. As you’d expect, the
cove has become a planespotter’s pilgrimage; its Sunset Beach Bar even reportedly
has a speaker that broadcasts transmissions between pilots and the airport's
control tower.
Traigh Mhor Beach, Scotland
At Barra, in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, the beach is the runway. Twin Otters from Glasgow and Benbecula land directly on the wide sand of Traigh Mhor when the tide is out – it’s a pop-up airport. On a cloudy day additional light is provided by vehicles in the car park.
Set just a fence away from Princess Juliana International Airport, Maho is
perfect for watching huge Boeings swooping in to land. As you’d expect, the
cove has become a planespotter’s pilgrimage; its Sunset Beach Bar even reportedly
has a speaker that broadcasts transmissions between pilots and the airport's
control tower.
Traigh Mhor Beach, Scotland
At Barra, in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, the beach is the runway. Twin Otters from Glasgow and Benbecula land directly on the wide sand of Traigh Mhor when the tide is out – it’s a pop-up airport. On a cloudy day additional light is provided by vehicles in the car park.
Barking Sands Beach, Hawaii
How about a beach that sounds like a dog? Yes, you did read that right – the
squeaky golden grains on Hawaii’s Barking Sands Beach emit, when
rubbed, a canine-like sound. This is a phenomenon caused by a particular
kind of quartz, and is actually present on beaches in the British Isles; but
Barking Sands ramps the weirdness factor up numerous notches by also housing
a rocket-launch site. Oh, and a missile-defence testing centre. There’s
barking, and there’s barking mad.
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