TL;DR
Also known as Pantai Merah or the Pink Beach, this beach gets all those names from the red coral that breaks off and floats ashore giving a pink hue to the sand, perfectly complimenting the turquoise colored seas and landscapes in the background.
For the longest time, I’ve blindly assumed that to see the best parts of coral reefs and their marine life, you must scuba dive. That was until I made my way to this nice little spot in Eastern Indonesia called Red Beach. Changed everything!
Making our way to the shore, just couldn’t help but notice how crystal clear the water was and what seemed to be a whole lot of coral under the surface. I assumed that it would be half as decent since the really good kind of coral would either be far away from shore or too deep beneath the surface and this was visible right at the surface. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
About the Red Beach
Also known as Pantai Merah or the Pink Beach, this beach gets all those names from the red coral that breaks off and floats ashore giving a pink hue to the sand, perfectly complimenting the turquoise-colored seas and landscapes in the background.
IMO, one of the most pristine beaches you’ll find anywhere in the world in terms of pure, unadulterated nature. This is evident when you head to the beach from the seas and can easily see the bottom but it still doesn’t quite tell you how amazing it is down there. But even that view from plain sight tells you it’s such a clean, beautiful and unique place.
Location
Red Beach is found near the remote island of Rinca in Komodo National Park. There’s no public transportation and the only way to reach it is by taking a tour on a dive boat or a boat tour that will also include surrounding islands, mainly one housing the Komodo Dragons.
Seclusion is great in this case as it keeps this gem from commercialization and overcrowding. Usually, you’ll be the only boat there and during our visit, there were a total of 12 people there including the boat crew. We had the entire beach and the reef to ourselves the entire time there.
The downside, however, is that a visit to Red Beach doesn’t come cheap and having nothing but day tours and dive boats as your only options, it will cost you quite a bit of money to schedule the visit. That being said, those tours and dive packages are a bang for the buck in this part of the world.
Best Snorkeling in the World
Having been lucky enough to literally “test” the waters in many places around the world, we have quite an exhaustive list of places to compare experiences with. And this is easily the best place we’ve gone snorkeling in. The water here is so shallow that you couldn’t dive into it even if you wanted to, making it THE snorkelers’ paradise.
These amazingly vibrant photos were taken while snorkeling just off the Red Beach. Visit the place once and you’ll talk about it for years and years to come!
