Verified guides to beaches, seafront hotels, activities and monuments, organised by country and region.
Limestone arches over emerald water, at the foot of 165 steps.
Polished granite boulders and a reef that keeps the water knee-deep for hundreds of metres.
Basalt columns and waves nobody swims. You go to look.
Limestone cliffs, sea caves and 300 days of sun a year.
Clear-water coves in the east, dunes in the west.
Granite, reef and no building taller than the palms.
Arctic white-sand beaches, 9 °C in August.
Continuous reef, sailing dhows and tides that uncover sandbars.
Natural pools, shifting dunes and 2,000 km of warm coast.
Pure silica sand, reef just metres out, islands reachable only by boat.
Indigenous forest meets ocean, whales in view from July to November.
The Perfume Island: turquoise water, coral reefs and a west-facing sunset.
A volcanic peninsula of wild bays, thermal water in the sand and a sea-carved stone arch.
Viti Levu’s south coast, between coral reefs, legendary surf breaks and traditional Fijian villages.
Black volcanic sand, basalt columns and North Atlantic swell.
White sand beside hot springs and centuries-old fishing villages.
Turquoise water known as "Kerama Blue", pristine coral reefs and volcanic islets an hour’s ferry from Naha.
Turquoise reef water, nearby cenotes and Maya ruins by the sea.
Only two European coasts are genuinely warmer in October than June — the rest come close, with the crowds gone and rooms at a fraction of summer prices.
Lagoons and reefs where children can walk hundreds of metres without losing the bottom.
Trails from 20 minutes to three hours, with path conditions and what to carry.
Not all sand is equal. In Crete, pigmented microorganisms tint the coast pink; in Iceland, volcanic basalt turns the shore black; in Australia, near-pure silica keeps the ground cool underfoot. Three real beaches, three genuinely distinct geological stories.
In November 2025, nineteen Garden Route beaches were awarded Blue Flag status — more than any other region in South Africa. Among them is Nature's Valley, the finish line of the Otter Trail and gateway to Robberg, where a cave holds 125,000 years of human history.
Not every beach labelled 'family-friendly' works the same way. We checked four beaches on four continents — from Crete's pink-sand lagoon to a geothermal sandpit in New Zealand — against real sources, to see what actually makes each one safe, or not, for kids.
In August, Praia da Marinha fills with umbrellas and tour boats under the Algarve's strongest sun. About 8,500 km away, in that same calendar week, Robberg Beach sits cold and quiet — because that's exactly when southern right whales arrive there to give birth.
Praia da Marinha, Cala Goloritzé and Reynisfjara photograph beautifully — and each one hides a different logistical catch: roughly 150 steps down a cliff, a mandatory online booking, or a sea that has killed people who turned their back on it. Here is what to know before you go.
Diani's seventeen kilometres of reef-sheltered sand and Watamu's coral gardens, protected since 1968 inside one of Kenya's first marine parks, sit 170 kilometres apart on the same coastline, patrolled by the very same sea-turtle charity, in two entirely different ways.
Mauritius is almost completely ringed by a coral reef, which is why its lagoons stay calm no matter which coast you choose. On the island's north shore, Trou aux Biches has drawn swimmers for decades; on the west, Flic en Flac now watches that same sea creep closer each year.
Not every beach labelled 'reef' puts coral within arm's reach of your towel. From Moorea's walk-in lagoon to the Seychelles' tide-timed granite pools and Fernando de Noronha's cliff-locked cove: what actually happens when you try to reach the water at three real reef beaches, and what to pack.
On Fiji's Coral Coast, five reef breaks share roughly 80 km of coastline — one gentle enough for a first lesson, another rated Advanced and compared to Cloudbreak itself. Here's which wave suits which surfer, and when each one actually turns on.
On Argentina's Atlantic Coast, two of the country's best-known beach towns started from opposite premises. One grew around a 19th-century railway and a hotel that gave its beach a name; the other began as 16 square kilometres of shifting dune that had to be planted into stillness.
On Zanzibar's east coast, low tide can pull the sea back more than a kilometre. At the island's northern tip, though, Nungwi and Kendwa rarely run dry — and the reason has less to do with the tide itself than with the shape of the seabed.
Off Nosy Be, in northern Madagascar, swim whales from a species science only documented alive for the first time in 2015. Before that, Omura's whale was known only from stranded specimens and research-vessel catches — never filmed in the open ocean.
Ask who invented the overwater bungalow and you will hear two hotel names, two islands and at least one contested year. What nobody disputes is that the design born on a Society Islands beach went on to define lagoon tourism, from the Maldives to Fiji.
Andilana and Ambatoloaka look like ordinary tropical beaches — until you notice the plantations just inland. Nosy Be earned its old name, 'the scented island,' from the ylang-ylang grown here, which ends up, after plenty of distillation, in some of the world's most famous perfumes.
Brazil's northeast coast has two world-famous beaches the law protects for almost opposite reasons. One sits inside a marine park founded in 1988 and funded by a daily conservation fee. The other is a sanctuary of shifting dunes whose name, in the Tupi language, means turtle burrow.
In 2016, nearly 40,000 New Zealanders crowdfunded a beach so it could never be sold privately. Ten years later, a $20-million conservation project has finished restoring the birds that vanished from the forest behind it, and handed the work back to the country that bought the sand.
We pick one coast, explain how to get there off-season and where to sleep for less.
