Coloured-Sand Beaches

Beaches whose sand is a genuinely unusual colour — pink, red, green or orange — from shell fragments, olivine crystals, iron-rich rock or crushed coral. The colour is the reason anyone travels there. Colour in this world always has a specific cause — foraminifera shell for pink, olivine for green, iron oxide for red, organ-pipe coral for the Komodo beach — and the register names it rather than leaving it as a curiosity. Saturated photographs overstate every one of them, and the colour is generally clearest at the waterline and in low sun. Several of these beaches are small and non-renewing on any human timescale, and taking sand from them is prohibited for that reason. Low light and a wet waterline show the colour better than any photograph taken at noon.