This year, festival organizers renamed it the Black Pearl Cultural Heritage and Bike Festival in an attempt to rebrand the festival as a celebration of Atlantic Beach itself. During segregation, Atlantic Beach, in Horry County, was one of the only black beaches in the South.
Black Beach White Beach: A Tale Of Two Beaches
While people put on more layers (of clothes) on throughout the winter, beaches have their layers (of sand) taken off! The size of the sand particles carried offshore in any time period will largely depend on wave energy because larger particles require more energy to be moved. As a result, the sand composition of a beach in winter will be much coarser than in summer when finer and medium-grain sands predominate.
Costa Rica is a land of jungles, volcanoes, oceans, and of course, beautiful beaches. Beaches in Costa Rica are diverse and offer different experiences for travelers. People come here to surf, swim, soak up the sun, or simply enjoy the laid-back beach towns sprinkled along the coasts.
As you travel to different parts of the country, the nature of the beaches changes. One thing they all have in common is warm water. In the north, on the Nicoya Peninsula, is where you'll find many of the best beaches. In the dry season, it's less green than areas to the south, but the sun almost always shines.
Several lovely beaches are located in Manuel Antonio National Park and the neighboring town of Manuel Antonio. This is one of the best places to visit in Costa Rica, not just for beaches, but also for the wildlife and fun town.
Within the Manuel Antonio National Park, you'll find two additional postcard-perfect beaches. These are located on opposite sides of Cathedral Point, just a short walk from each other.
The beaches within the park are reached after a 30-minute walk through the jungle where you'll often encounter wildlife ranging from colorful butterflies right through to monkeys and sloths hanging in the trees. Note that a park entrance fee must be paid and that the number of visitors is limited.
The two beaches extend out about two-miles to the "tail" portion. Small waves make it an ideal location to go swimming and perfect for families with smaller children. Time your visit so you are here at low tide and you'll be able to walk right to the end.
Playa Flamingo is just north of Playa Conchal. Unlike many beaches in Costa Rica that have dark brown or almost black sand, Flamingo beach is an almost white sand beach. The name comes from the fact that the white sand, seen in the right light, has a pinkish hue.
Playa Jaco is a wide, flat, crescent of greyish black sand that stretches along the bay for about 2.5 miles. It's ideal for walking and a nice place to watch the sunset. Behind the beach is the town of Jaco, a lively place with a good selection of hotels, restaurants, shops, and other amenities. You can find just about anything you need here.
Although the beach right in front of the town is small by Costa Rica standards, if you walk south down the beach you'll come upon additional beaches, less people, and more wildlife. If you time your visit right, you might be able to see the baby sea turtles being released into the ocean.
A small road runs behind the beach and you can park your car right at the seashore and walk to the sand. This is a good place for photos. Fishing boats on the black sand, the wide beach with crashing waves, and the palm trees lining the beach all make for interesting images.
Honolua Bay is located about a 20-minute drive North of the Historic Town of Lahaina. Not only is Honolua Bay a famous Maui surfing and snorkeling beach, but it is also one of the most beautiful, colorful and vibrant beaches within all the Hawaiian Islands.
During the winter, the black pebbles and snow congregate together to form stunning contrasts beneath your feet, and there is no describing that breathtaking sensation of seeing the mountains above the beach cloaked in white.
With its reputation continually growing, as well as local development, a new concrete bridge was built in the 1960s to replace the old wooden original bridge, and the visitors continued to pour in at higher and higher numbers. Despite a brief downturn in the 70s and early 80s, the town stayed strong as a vacation destination, and really blossomed in the 1990s with the arrival of a tidal wave of new businesses, attractions, and the revitalization of the boardwalk. Today, the area parks, attractions, and resorts remain as enticing as ever, and Carolina Beach continues its longstanding reputation as the place to go for great beaches, great fishing, and ample opportunities to dance the night away.
Once the home of only one of two beaches that were open to African Americans in the Cape Fear area during the Jim Crow era, today Freeman Park is a popular, undeveloped park that welcomes rustic campers and 4WD vehicles. The undeveloped shoreline was converted into a public park in 2004 and continues to be one of the most popular beaches for modern visitors.
Raccoon butterflyfish are so named for their black, raccoon-like masks. Mostly orange-yellow, they have a white headband, dark stripes that run diagonally along their sides, and a wide black stripe outlined in yellow that looks a little like a scarf thrown up over their shoulders. These fish usually cruise the reef coupled up or in large schools, but they can be seen alone. These guys eat spineless marine organisms like worms, sea anemones, and other things that humans think are gross and slimy but are actually really interesting when you take a closer look.
The beach consists of several miles of beautiful, fluffy white-sand beaches split into 7 sections and bordered by tall palm palms and a bright blue sea. Many parts of the beach are roped off for swimming and protected by outer reefs, so the waves are gentle and surfing conditions often perfect for beginning longboarders.
During the summer the water is calm making sunset beach ideal for swimming and snorkeling. It has magnificently clean water and a white sand beaches that stretches 200-300 feet between the ocean and the road!
Sandy Beach is a 1,200-foot long beach made of golden sand and great for surfing or boogie boarding because of the large waves that crash right near the shoreline. While not as quiet as the previous two beaches no our list, this is also not a very busy beach when compared to other OÊahu beaches.
Continuing on beautiful beaches on the Caribbean coast are the beaches inside Cahuita National Park, Playa Blanca and Playa Vargas. These beaches have one of the biggest coral reefs in the country and have beautiful white sand and clear waters.
Conchal is a spectacular beach in Guanacaste with one unique characteristic that makes it so attractive: it has shells instead of sand! The shore is made up of millions of little pieces of sparkling white shells, gently kissed by baby blue waters.
Samara is another one of the best beaches in Costa Rica for families. This laid back beach has plenty of land and water activities to enjoy. There is even a nearby island with great snorkeling you can kayak to!
In the Nicoya Peninsula lies a stretch of surfing beaches: Carmen, Hermosa and Santa Teresa beach. Since this area is in a fairly undeveloped part of Costa Rica, the beaches are wild, rugged and untamed, making for a more pristine beach experience.
Playa San Juanilo is one of the most beautiful beaches in Costa Rica in our opinion. Two white sand beaches come together and you can walk up to the point where they meet for absolutely jaw dropping views.
Some of my favorite beaches were in Puerto Viejo a short bus ride from Cahuita. My all-time favorite Beach was Playa Negra in Puerto Viejo. It had such unique fine black sand, calm waters for swimming, stunning sunsets, and a super cool shipwreck that you can jump off of. I definitely recommend renting a bike in Puerto Viejo. I rented a bike for under $5 a day and went Beach hopping. The furthest beach biked to was over an hour away but there were still lots in a shorter distance.
Love a good beach post round-up! The only beach I visited on this list was in Cahuita. I Really liked beach is in the national park and the jungle. I went from walking along the jungle paths spotting monkeys and snakes to laying on the beach. It was quiet and empty, exactly what I like. It was also the perfect beach for someone like me who cannot sit still because there was good opportunities for snorkeling, walking and exploring! Lots more Costa Rica beaches to check out whenever I return!
There are just some beaches that deserve to be seen and not every beach is a Caribbean paradise. Sometimes, the perfect beach isn't a sparkling, white sand beach at all but rather, a gothic-style, striking contrast to what many think of in their heads as the perfect vacation.
Iceland is home to many stunning beaches but Reynisfjara is by far one of the most visually captivating, with shores lined with black sand and a moody ocean spray that comes up from the ocean at its coastline. Surrounded by cliffs that appear to have been carved out by an artist and geological features that echo the beach's natural erosion and creation, it's truly a sight to behold. While many know of the black sand beaches in this gorgeous country, not many know why Reynisfjara looks the way it does or how it came to be that way.
While a beach with black sand sounds dramatic and moody compared to most, Reynisfjara is actually quite beautiful. The sand was actually formed from lava as it erupted from the nearby volcano and as the lava cooled and met the Atlantic ocean, it hardened and got its finer texture the way that sand normally does - from the ocean's constant motion. It's thanks to this that the beach glimmers when the light is just right, especially at sunset. The larger, more coarse pieces of sand shimmer in daylight and reflect light back, making for a gorgeous display if visitors can time their visit just right.
Iceland is actually known for many black sand beaches, not just Reynisfjara. Thanks to its volcanic history, these can be seen throughout various parts of the island, with rocks decorating the shorelines as larger pieces of cooled lava broke off and got left behind. Those visiting these beaches will find that these cooled pieces of lava rocks have holes throughout them which is due to the process of cooling, making for interesting shapes. These also give the beach an overall unique appearance and one that's unlike any other in the world.
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