Cure Your Beach Fatigue: Discover 7 of the World’s Most Unique Beaches

There are some of us in sun-soaked and coastally located Southern California who have come down with a severe case of “beach fatigue.” Seen one; seen ‘em all – it’s just sand and water, even if you’re gazing at it from a plush room at a luxury oceanfront resort in Laguna Beach like Surf & Sand. And our region does have its share of diverse coastal landscape, from rugged cliffs to endless tabletop shores that can blunt the mythos and majesty from other beachy locations.

A healthy reframe is in order. Beach trips to amazing and stunning locales draw in visitors of all kinds, and are certainly not a “one-size fits all” vacation. Explore some of these most unique beaches on the planet and fall in love with the surf all over again.

And once you start looking, unusual beaches get stranger than most people realize. Some glow at night. Some come in colors sand has no business being. A few aren’t even beaches in the way you’d expect, no coastline anywhere close, and plenty of them sit near under-the-radar towns that make great summer bases, like the lesser-known getaways highlighted in this look at crowd-free North American summer destinations such as Whitefish, Tofino and Burlington.

Paradise on Coral: Addu City, Maldives

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The nation of The Maldives in the Indian Ocean is already one of the most beautiful and picturesque places on Earth, so it should go without spilling additional ink that the beaches are pretty nice, too. In fact, the coral atoll that makes up Addu City is mostly beaches, given the sea-level height of the island (and most of the country). The Maldives also features shifting sand bars that create temporary, ethereal beaches, adding to its unique and ever-changing coastal charm.

What this means for the visitor is beach time, and a lot of it. It also means that one’s accommodations are likely to be coastal, if not actually IN the water. Find yourself in a cozy pier cottage in the tide and get rocked to sleep by the sound of the surf under tropical stars. For beach day, all one has to do is swim out to find white sands and endless, impossibly blue skies. In addition, western-facing locales like Usgandu Beach offer once-in-a-lifetime sunset vistas.

The island’s coral reef makeup also provides for snorkeling and diving experiences that are second-to-none, so whether you’re looking for serenity in nature or wanting to spy sea life close-up, you’ll have options in Addu.

Scuba diving trips out of Addu run past coral walls thick with reef fish, and if you time a visit right, one of the strangest sights in the entire Maldives is close by. Out at Vaadhoo Island, the waves themselves glow blue after dark. It’s bioluminescent phytoplankton lighting up whenever the water gets disturbed, so a footstep in the wet sand or a wave breaking sets off a little blue flash, one more reminder that even a tropical paradise can still surprise you. Photos of it online look edited. They’re not.

A Beach Surrounded by Towering Sentinels: Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe

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Who said a beach has to be at the ocean? Tahoe, the alpine lake famed for its deep blue waters and stratospheric mountain surroundings, also features gorgeous beaches to enjoy. Principal among them are the “secret” beaches of Emerald Bay – the shores of the inlet are only accessible by trail or boat – for a serene and unique view.

From the shores, gently lapped by the water, visitors are surrounded on all sides by still-snowy mountain peaks, and afforded a straight-on look at Fannette Island, the only such outcropping in the vast lake. Eagle-eyed beachgoers can spy the remains of the Fannette Island Tea House nestled among the evergreens from the shore.

What’s the Deal With New Zealand’s Hot Water Beach?

The name isn’t a metaphor. On New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula, geothermal vents sit right under a stretch of ordinary-looking sand, and for about two hours on either side of low tide, visitors dig their own personal hot spring pools right where the waves just receded. Bring a shovel, or rent one from a stall in the parking lot, because plenty of people forget theirs.

The water coming up through the sand can run scalding hot in spots, hot enough that people mix in cooler seawater just to make their little pool bearable. Get the timing wrong and the tide’s back in before you’ve settled into your soak, so locals check tide tables obsessively before driving out. Go during the warmer months and you’ll be sharing your hand-dug hot tub with a lot of other people who had the exact same idea. It’s one of the more genuinely unusual beaches on this whole list, mostly because half the experience happens below the surface.

Koekohe Beach, New Zealand: Giant Stone Spheres Scattered Across the Sand

Those are the Moeraki Boulders, dozens of large, unnervingly round stones half-sunk into the soft sand at Koekohe Beach on the South Island’s east coast. Some are big enough to lean against. Others are big enough to duck inside, where erosion has cracked one open like an egg. Nothing about the scene looks like a typical beach.

Geologists say the boulders formed on the seafloor millions of years ago, hardening in layers around a core the way a pearl does, and the mudstone cliffs behind the beach have just been slowly giving them up ever since. You don’t need to know any of that to feel like you’ve wandered onto a different planet. Go at low tide, when more of the boulders are exposed and you can walk right up to the biggest ones.

Discovering A “Hidden” Gem: The Philippines

The Philippines offers tropical style sand strips that are exemplary of what a beach should be. This, of course, means these serene locales can be anything but relaxing during peak season. For those looking for solace, Hidden Beach on the island of Palawan is just that, and nearby Entalula’s secluded Hidden Beach in El Nido offers a similarly tranquil escape framed by dramatic limestone cliffs. Surrounded on all sides by towering limestone cliffs, the beach is found through a natural cut in the outcropping; it’s accessible through a literal hole in the wall, creating an otherworldly sense of serenity and privacy (the white sand and crystal clear waters pull their weight as well.)

Another benefit of escaping the crowds is the chance to commune more closely with nature. Hidden beach is a prime place to see tropical fish darting in the shallow waters and hear seabirds singing in the distance, much like the quieter corners you’ll find when you explore Oahu like a local and avoid the island’s busiest beaches.

Palawan isn’t the only place with a beach hiding in plain sight. Mexico has one too, and the way in is even stranger. Off the coast near Puerto Vallarta, the Marieta Islands hold Playa del Amor, a secluded beach ringed by rock walls with no trail down at all. You get there by swimming, or paddling a kayak, through a short natural tunnel that opens up into a circular pocket of sand and sky, almost like someone carved a skylight into the ocean. Arrive early. Tour boats fill the little cove fast once the morning trips start rolling in.

Tiny Creatures; Big Impact: Pink Sands Beach, Bahamas

The myriad of photos online aren’t doctored; Pink Sands Beach is really that color, contrasting heavily with the aquamarine tint of the Atlantic Ocean. On Harbour Island, one of the Bahamas Out Islands, Pink Sands Beach is famed for its unique tint. The “why” as to its unique color is because of tiny single-celled organisms that build protective shells around themselves using available minerals: in this case, those minerals have a pinkish hue. They wash up on shore, and us lucky humans get an amazing and unique beach to enjoy. Photographs can’t really do it justice, so you’d better start planning a trip.

Those tiny organisms even have a name, foraminifera, and their reddish shells, ground down by decades of wave action, are the entire reason the sand reads pink instead of the usual tan or gold. Head to another Bahamas Out Island and the local wildlife gets even stranger. Off Exuma, a handful of uninhabited cays are home to feral pigs that swim right out to greet arriving boats, paddling past the coconut palms lining the shore for a handout. Nobody’s fully sure how the pigs got there in the first place. Theories range from stranded sailors to a failed tourism stunt, and everyone on the boat tour seems to have a different one.

Harbour Island has several gorgeous resorts along the beach as well, so you can take in a pink beach from your room window for maximum enjoyment, or seek out peaceful, low-key luxury at a Baja California beach resort like Four Seasons Los Cabos at Costa Palmas if you prefer Mexico’s desert-meets-sea coastline.

One of the World’s Only Four Green Sand Beaches Is Hiding on Hawaii’s Big Island

Papakōlea Beach, near South Point on the Big Island, is one of just four green sand beaches anywhere in the world, and it doesn’t give up its color easily. The green comes from olivine crystals, a mineral that erupted out of an old cinder cone called Puʻu Mahana and got left behind as the softer surrounding rock washed away around it.

There’s no road in. Getting there means a roughly 2.5-mile trek across exposed, windy coastline, part of it over loose volcanic gravel that isn’t exactly gentle on sandals. Locals sometimes run informal truck rides for a few bucks if you’d rather skip the hike. Once you’re standing at the shoreline, the color is subtler than most photos make it look, more of an olive tint than a neon green, but it’s still one of the rarest green beaches on the planet.

Kaihalulu’s Red Sand and Punaluʻu’s Black Sand: Hawaii’s Volcanic Beaches Beyond Waikiki

Red at Kaihalulu. Black at Punaluʻu. Hawaii’s volcanic bones show up in the sand in ways no golden-sand resort beach ever could.

Kaihalulu Red Sand Beach, tucked below a cinder cone on Maui near Hana, gets its rust-red color straight from crumbling lava rock, and the cove itself is small, steep, and a little exposed, better for a look and a photo than a long lounge session. Over on the Big Island, Punaluʻu Beach is one of Hawaii’s best-known black sand beaches. Fine grains made from basalt, cooled fast where lava once met the sea and shattered into pieces. Green sea turtles haul out on the black sand there routinely enough that it’s become one of the more reliable places in the islands to see one up close, though rangers will, rightly, ask you to keep your distance.

None of these beaches feel like a typical beach vacation stop, and that’s kind of the point.

Beauty Born of Blunder: Glass Beach, Ft. Bragg, CA

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This Northern California beach, if you could believe it, used to be a landfill. The loggers, townsfolk and others who lived in the region did not have the regard for coastal ecosystems that we now do (this coastline, along with all others in California, are protected from such malfeasance by the California Coastal Act.) However, from this deep misstep came something unexpected. The wave action and rocky shoreline smashed, shaped and smoothed the copious glass trash waste left in the tidal zone, creating a multicolor mosaic of sea glass. Glass Beach, located in Fort Bragg, is covered with colorful sea glass, making it a unique and visually stunning destination.

What visitors are left with, is a rainbow in the sand, with brown, blue, green and clear orbs of long-discarded bottles, jars and other early 20th century trash renewed into beauty among three former dump sites near the town, a very different kind of Pacific shoreline than the rugged headlands and broad sands of Oregon’s wild, scenic coast and its classic beach towns. While these beaches may not be as “glassy as they once were, since visitors removed handfuls of the unique glass to take home (this is now forbidden), it remains one of the most unique – if not infamous – of California beach areas.

California’s Big Sur coast has its own strange sand a couple hours south. Pfeiffer Beach turns a shade of purple after a good rain, when manganese garnet washes down from the hillsides above and streaks the tan sand in lavender and violet, one more oddity along Monterey County’s iconic seaside stretch of Big Sur, Carmel and Pebble Beach. The effect is strongest right after storms and fades as the sand dries out, so timing matters more here than at most beaches on this list. Walk the tide pools at the north end early in the morning and there’s a decent shot at spotting harbor seals hauled out on the rocks nearby, before the beach fills up.

A Surfer’s Paradise and a Cultural Center: Hanalei Beach, Kauai

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It’d be hard-pressed to not include a Hawaiian Beach on a must-visit list, but which one? Hanalei, considered one of the world’s best beaches, represents an easy choice. A two-mile crescent of sand on Kauai’s North Shore, the beach is a favorite for swimmers, surfers, beachcombers, locals and visitors alike. For good reason, too: The waters are warm, the waves set perfect, and the surroundings are as lush and beautiful as one would expect from the Garden Isle.

Hanalei is an important part of the state’s culture, as well. Ancient Hawaiians grew taro near the shoreline, and Hanalei town remains a hotbed of native Hawaiian culture, food and festivities that will bring visitors insight into the traditions and importance of Indigenous cultural preservation.

If Hanalei’s a little too mellow for you, Oahu’s North Shore is the other end of the spectrum. Come November through February, swells there turn into some of the most serious waves surfed anywhere on Earth, and the beach crowd thins out to the die-hard bird watchers and photographers willing to stand around in the wind for a shot of Pipeline at its biggest.

What’s It Like Standing Under a Jet on Final Approach at Maho Beach?

Loud. Genuinely, unreasonably loud. Maho Beach sits at the western tip of Sint Maarten, and the runway at Princess Juliana International Airport starts just a few hundred feet from the sand, close enough that arriving jets pass low overhead on final approach, gear down, engines roaring. People stand right at the fence along the beach and watch, and on days when the big jets come in, some of them get knocked flat by the jet blast when planes power up for departure. There are warning signs. Not everyone reads them.

The island itself is tiny, split between Dutch Sint Maarten, where Maho sits, and French Saint Martin on the other half, and the whole thing is small enough that the airport takes up a real chunk of the entire island. Arrive early if you want a spot near the fence, because the crowd builds fast once the flight schedule board goes up at the bar next door. It’s an unusual kind of beach destination, one built as much around a spectacle as the water, though the water’s plenty nice too, if you can hear anything over the engines.

Portugal’s Benagil Cave Is a Beach You Only Reach by Boat or a Swim

There’s no trail down, no staircase, nothing. The sand inside Benagil Cave sits boxed in by cliffs on every side except one narrow opening at sea level, so the only ways in are paddling a kayak, riding a small boat tour, or swimming straight through the mouth of the cave from open water.

Most of the Algarve coastline nearby is the postcard version of Portugal: golden sand backed by towering cliffs and sea stacks, all fronting clear blue waters that draw boat tours up and down the coast. Benagil itself started out as a small fishing village, easygoing and mostly ignored by tourists, until photos of that circular skylight inside the cave started making the rounds online and turned it into one of the region’s busiest stops. Go early in the morning if you want the cave without a dozen other boats crowded in there with you. The surrounding landscape alone, cliffs riddled with caves and hidden coves, is worth the trip even without the famous one.

Walk on the Path of the Ancients: The Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland

Giants Causeway, an area of hexagonal basalt stones, created by ancient volcanic fissure eruption, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Famous tourist attraction, UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Okay, it’s not a “beach,” per se. There are no umbrellas, no tropical drinks or white sands – heck, there’s rarely any sun. But the Giant’s Causeway, a truly eye-popping set of geometric basalt columns jutting from the Northern Atlantic, looking like they were placed by titans of yore, is a truly unique coastal location that is worth the extra layers to explore. The Giant’s Causeway features 40,000 interlocking basalt columns along the coastline, a natural wonder that continues to captivate visitors.

Of course, stories abound concerning the formation, for one, that a giant was responsible for creating the larger-than-life steps, but the features were actually created by geologic processes 60 million years in the making. The result is a truly unique part of the globe that offers that sense of “smallness” in an individual that is principal to awe – the region has been attracting the agog for centuries. It’s also proof that you don’t need a bathing suit to enjoy the planet’s amazing beaches, simply a sense of adventure and curiosity is all you should pack.

Cross the Irish Sea and Wales makes its own case for one of the most beautiful beaches in Britain. Rhossili Bay, on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, regularly turns up on world’s-best-beach rankings: three miles of open sand backed by grassy cliffs and, at low tide, the rusted skeleton of a 19th-century shipwreck still poking up out of the sand. Nobody’s claiming it competes with basalt columns for sheer strangeness. It doesn’t need to.

Some of the Most Beautiful Beaches Around the World Didn’t Make the Cut Yet

Picking a single best beach on the planet is a fool’s errand, and narrowing this whole list down to just seven was hard enough already. Not all the beaches worth knowing about made the final cut, and there are many beaches out there just as strange as the seven above.

Australia keeps showing up on lists like this for a reason. Whitehaven Beach, on Whitsunday Island, gets called one of the purest beaches in the world for good reason: sand that’s close to 90% silica, cool underfoot even in the middle of a Queensland summer, backed by dense rainforest and sand dunes that shift slightly with every big storm. Further south, in New South Wales, Byron Bay’s famous surf break known as The Pass rolls in gentle and forgiving enough that surfers of pretty much any skill level can catch something worth remembering, longboarders and total beginners included.

A few beaches on this list barely look like beaches at all. Gulpiyuri Beach, tucked into the Asturias coast of northern Spain, is about as far off the beaten path as an ocean beach gets, mostly because it isn’t technically on the ocean. It’s a genuine beach with real sand and real tides, except it sits inland, cut off from any direct connection to the sea and fed instead through underground channels carved through limestone. And in Iceland, the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon calves icebergs that drift out and wash up on the black volcanic sand of nearby Diamond Beach, where chunks of centuries-old glacier ice sit scattered across the shoreline like something spilled out of a freezer.

Color keeps turning up as a theme, too. Santorini’s Red Beach, in Greece’s Aegean Sea, gets its rust tint from crumbling red volcanic cliffs looming over the shoreline, a smaller, more dramatic cousin to Hawaii’s red sand. Off the coast of Seychelles, Anse Lazio is a fairly remote beach that skips the colorful-sand angle entirely. What it’s got instead is water so clear and blue-green it barely looks real, framed by granite boulders and leaning palms, a kind of untouched beauty that doesn’t need a gimmick.

Wildlife closes out the list. At Boulders Beach in South Africa, a colony of African penguins has claimed a stretch of granite-boulder-studded sand, and swimming right alongside them is basically the main draw of the whole visit. Out past La Paz, Mexico, Playa Balandra is close to a real paradise for kayaking and paddleboarding, calm water wrapped around a mushroom-shaped rock formation that’s become the beach’s unofficial mascot. Rabida Island, a remote location even by Galápagos standards, throws in one more oddity: its beach glows a deep red from iron-rich volcanic ash, a completely different process than the lava-rock red of Kaihalulu, half a world away. And in Costa Rica, Manuel Antonio National Park packs a handful of beaches of fairly pristine beauty right up against dense rainforest, inside a national park where resident sloths and monkeys turn up often enough that birdwatchers show up almost as often as swimmers do. It’s proof that a great beach doesn’t always need to be the main attraction.

Wrapping Up: Embrace the World’s Most Unique Beaches

From the shifting sand bars of the Maldives to the geometric basalt columns of Northern Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway, the world’s most unique beaches offer something truly special for every traveler. Whether it’s the rare green sand of Papakōlea Beach, the pink hues of Harbour Island’s Pink Sands Beach, or the colorful sea glass mosaics of Glass Beach in California, these destinations redefine what a beach experience can be. Beyond just sand and sea, these beaches feature unusual landscapes like towering limestone cliffs, volcanic black sand, and hidden coves that promise unforgettable adventures.

Each beach invites visitors to connect with nature in distinctive ways—whether swimming alongside African penguins, exploring coral reefs teeming with sea turtles, or relaxing in natural hot springs. These magical beaches around the world showcase the incredible diversity of coastal environments, from remote islands to alpine lakeshores, and from tropical palm trees to rugged sea cliffs.

Planning your next trip to any of these amazing beaches guarantees not just a getaway but an unforgettable experience filled with beauty, wonder, and unique natural phenomena. So pack your bags, embrace the adventure, and discover the enchanting charm of the planet’s most unique beaches.

One thing worth knowing before booking any of this: check tide tables first. Hot Water Beach only works within a couple hours of low tide, Benagil Cave is easiest by boat or kayak when the water’s calm, and quite a few of these “hidden” spots are only fully reachable depending on whether the water’s up or down that day. It’s a small thing to plan around. It’s also the difference between a trip that goes exactly as pictured and one spent squinting at a tide chart on your phone, annoyed.