Tropical Beaches

Bora Bora is the archetype — the dormant volcanic peak rising 2,385 feet above a lagoon so protected and so improbably colored that it looks artificially constructed, and the motu (islets) that ring the outer reef create the world's most naturally sheltered swimming environment. The overwater bungalow was invented here, and the concept has been widely imitated and nowhere surpassed.

The Seychelles archipelago stands apart from any other island group on earth by virtue of its granite — billion-year-old boulders sculpted by the Indian Ocean into formations that make beaches like Anse Source d'Argent look like the work of an architect rather than erosion. The ecosystem is genuinely rare: giant Aldabra tortoises, coco de mer palms found nowhere else, and coral reefs recovering faster than almost any in the world.

Anguilla is the Caribbean's best-kept not-very-secret — a flat coral island with 33 beaches across 16 miles, where Shoal Bay East delivers arguably the finest beach swimming in the entire Eastern Caribbean and the restaurant scene (Veya, Straw Hat, Blanchards) is serious enough to justify the trip without ever looking at the ocean. The island's deliberate avoidance of large-scale development keeps the pace at something approaching perfection.

St. Barts operates at a pitch of studied elegance that is entirely its own — the French Caribbean at its most self-assured, where Shell Beach has volcanic black sand and the yachts in Gustavia harbor cost more per night than most resorts, and nobody makes anything of either. Beaches like Gouverneur and Saline require a hiking descent that earns their seclusion, and the restaurants are genuinely, consistently excellent by any standard.

Fiji's 333 islands spread across a Pacific expanse larger than Western Europe, and within that space exists almost every variety of tropical beach experience — the soft-coral capital of the world in Bligh Waters for divers, private island resorts in the Mamanuca Group where the sand is visible between the palm trees from the plane, and the Yasawa Islands' remote outer beaches where the word 'unspoiled' remains honestly applicable.

Palawan is the Philippines at its most concentrated — an archipelago within an archipelago, where El Nido's limestone karst cliffs rise vertically from turquoise lagoons and Coron's wreck-diving sites sit below beaches of talcum white sand. The Puerto Princesa Subterranean River is a UNESCO World Heritage Site; the Bacuit Archipelago's lagoon system is among the most dramatic coastal landscapes in Southeast Asia.

The Amalfi Coast is not the place for beach volume — the beaches are small, the sea floor drops sharply, and in August you will share your sunbed with the entirety of northern Europe. It is, however, without question the most dramatically beautiful coastal road in the Mediterranean, where villages cling to cliffsides that plunge directly into a sea of deep lapis, and the combination of architecture, lemon groves, and water color produces an experience that is categorically Mediterranean and nowhere else.

Tulum has been 'discovered' many times over and yet the Mayan ruins above the Caribbean, the cenotes in the jungle behind the beach road, and the particular quality of the Riviera Maya's powdered-sugar sand remain genuinely compelling — particularly if you stay north of the main hotel zone, where the beach is broader and the crowds thinner. The cenote swimming — underground limestone sinkholes connected to the sea — is unlike anything available on any other Caribbean coast.

The Riviera Maya stretches 130km along the Caribbean coast between Cancún and Tulum, encompassing the world's largest concentration of all-inclusive resort beach hotels alongside some of the most biologically significant coastal reef and cenote systems in the Western Hemisphere. For families, this is the Caribbean's most practical destination — abundant flight connections, easy transfers, and a resort selection that runs from modest to genuinely exceptional.

Phuket's west coast beaches — Kata, Karon, Bang Tao, Surin, and the northern peninsula's relatively underdeveloped Nai Thon — face the Andaman Sea across a continental shelf shallow enough to produce the turquoise coloring that defines Southeast Asian beach travel at its finest. The island's infrastructure is genuinely excellent; the cuisine is among Thailand's most regional and most rewarding; and the ferry connections to Phi Phi, Phang Nga Bay's karst formations, and the Similan Islands make it the best base in the region.

Zanzibar is a study in contrasts so pronounced they feel deliberate — the medieval Arab trading port of Stone Town (a UNESCO World Heritage Site of mosques, carved wooden doors, and spice bazaars) a forty-minute drive from beaches of absolute Caribbean-caliber white sand and shallow Indian Ocean water. The northern coast's Nungwi and the east's Paje are structurally superior beach destinations; Stone Town is in a category of its own as a companion cultural experience.

Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island is made of 98% pure silica sand — a geological rarity that produces a shore so white it reads as luminescent in photographs and feels unlike any other sand on earth underfoot, closer to cool silk than granular mineral. The Whitsundays' 74 islands sit within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which means the snorkeling access from boats anchored offshore is among the finest in the Pacific.

Koh Samui is the Gulf of Thailand at its most developed and, on its northern and eastern shores, still genuinely beautiful — Chaweng Noi north of the main beach strip is where the quality accommodation clusters, and the sunset views from Fisherman's Village across to the evening-lit silhouettes of Koh Phangan are one of those experiences that photographs badly but stays in the memory correctly.

Sardinia confounds Mediterranean expectations — the Costa Smeralda's water genuinely is the emerald green the name promises, the granite coastline of the Gallura produces coves of Caribbean-caliber beauty, and the interior's Nuragic Bronze Age towers remind you that you are in a place whose human story is very long and very particular. La Maddalena Archipelago, accessible by ferry from Palau, is among the most beautiful coastal landscapes in Europe.

The Exumas chain — 365 islands stretching 130 miles — contains the Bahamas at its most otherworldly: sandbars that appear and disappear with the tide, the swimming pigs of Pig Beach (as genuinely surreal as they appear in photographs), and the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, where water visibility exceeds anything we've encountered in the Atlantic. This is private island territory, charter boat territory — the Bahamas for people who've seen Nassau.

Lombok is Bali's quieter, less-developed neighbor across the Lombok Strait — an island with a volcanic peak (Mount Rinjani, 3,726m) visible from beaches of the Gili Islands that are otherwise entirely devoted to snorkeling, hammock time, and the absolute absence of motorized vehicles. The Gilis represent Southeast Asian beach travel at a pitch of simplicity that has become progressively rarer, and Lombok's southern coast Pink Beach is among the most unusual natural phenomena in the region.

Santorini is geologically unlike any other Greek island — the remnant caldera of a Minoan-era volcanic eruption that may have ended a civilization, its interior faces are sheer white cliff dropping 300 meters to a Aegean that is genuinely deep cobalt rather than the turquoise of shallower waters. The beaches at Perissa and Kamari are black volcanic sand; Red Beach is rust-colored ferrous rock; and the sunsets from Oia's church domes remain one of those experiences that photographs have not actually diminished.

Mykonos polarizes opinion precisely because it has chosen to be exactly what it is — the Aegean's most unabashedly social island, where Paradise Beach's beach clubs and Psarou's see-and-be-seen scene are the explicit point, and the Cycladic whitewashed Chora behind the harbor is one of the most beautiful preserved island towns in Greece. For travelers who want the beach as backdrop to a fully-lived Mediterranean summer rather than a solitary experience, no island in Greece performs this better.