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Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland

Wondrous Crossings: 7 Strangely Beautiful Beaches

Enchant

Of all of the corners of our planet, beaches are especially symbolic for representing the thresholds between two worlds.

Everything in the universe has its counterpart, and the ocean is that of the earth. Both parts (which in reality are one and the same) meet at a place that is spectacularly special and full of symbolism: the beach.

From the frozen landscapes of the Antarctic to exotic Caribbean beaches, or the melancholic blue sea of the Mediterranean, beaches serve as the symbolic margins between two worlds: one conquered by humanity and the other that remains obscure and overflowing with mystery. The latter is the reason why beaches have been character and scene, god and enemy, in an infinite number of myths and human epics.

But, why does being at a beach, any at all, produce such an epiphany for the majority of us? Perhaps it is the immeasurable pristine nature of them and the scent of salt that the breeze brings, or the sand that speaks of infinity and time, or the patient work of the incessant movement of the objects that inhabit it and, why not, which also moves us. Perhaps it is the dampness that the breeze brings and that touches our most essential part, or perhaps it is also its mythical and hypnotizing song.

For those who are passionate about those wonderful places, we present seven of the most beautiful and strangest beaches on the planet:

 

Algar de Benagil, in the Algarve, Portugal. A beach between caves that begin on land and end in the sea.

 

Algar de Benagil





The pink beaches of Komodo Island in Indonesia, scenes of a mauve colored dream or that of a distant planet.

 

Pink beaches of Komodo

Koekohe in New Zealand, filled with eroded rocks and known as “the beach of dragon’s eggs.”

Koekohe in New Zealand

Jökulsárlónin Iceland, a black-sand beach adorned with shining fragments of ice.

 

Jökulsárlónin Iceland

Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, whose beach is an array of 40,000 basalt columns.

Giant's Causeway on cloudy day





Hidden behind a wall of rock, Playa Escondida, on Mexico’s Marietas Islands, which is only accessible by swimming through an underwater tunnel.



 

 Cathedral beach, in the Cantabrian Sea of Galicia, whose imposing cliffs look like constructions from a lost civilization.

Cathedral beach, in the Cantabrian Sea of Galicia, whose imposing cliffs look like constructions from a lost civilization.

 

Cathedral Beach

 

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