Rainbow Beaches Around The World

Beaches not only come in all shapes, sizes, and textures, they come in a virtual rainbow of colors. Most beach fans know that sand color can range from pale cream to golden to caramel, but few realize that in select places around the world, sands can be red, brown, pink, orange, gold, purple, green, and even black

 

 WHITE

Hyams Beach is a village located in New South Wales, Australia and surrounded by three brilliantly white sand beaches.

Hyams Beach is present in the Guinness Book of Records as having the beaches with the whitest sand in the world.

It is comprised of fine particles of quartz.

Quartz crystal

Hyams Beach, Jervis Bay, New South Wales, Australia.

Photo by http://www.flickr.co...otos/jonassmith

Siesta Key Beach, Florida.

Photo by http://www.flickr.co...s/59064186@N00/

Siesta Beach is composed of 99% pure quartz that started in the Appalachians, flowed down rivers, eventually to be deposited on the shores of the key. This dazzling white sand is so fine in texture that it runs though fingers like powdered sugar, and because it is nearly pure quartz it stays cool no matter how hot the temperature gets.

RED

Red Sand Beach (also known as Kaihalulu) is located in Maui, Hawaii and is a pocked beach, partially isolated from the ocean.

Because this area is rich in iron, the sand has a red-black color which makes a great contrast with the water.

Kaihalulu Beach, Ulupalakua, Maui, Hawaii. Photo by http://www.flickr.co...tos/frfrdufour/

 ORANGE

Ramla Bay is an orange sand beach located in the island of Gozo, Malta.

It is a very interesting area, with a soft reddish sand and many ancient Roman objects.

Their orange colored sands derive from volcanic deposits as well as unusual orange limestone found in the area.

A sand dune at the bautiful Ramla il-Hamra beach in Gozo, Maltese Islands.

Photo by http://www.flickr.co...melos-pictures/

 GREEN

An absolute gem of a beach is Pu’u Mahana Beach in Mahana Bay on the Big Island of Hawaii,

one of only a few known beaches in the world with olive-green sand (the others being in Guam and the Galapagos Islands).

The land surrounding Pu’u Mahana consists of lava that contains large quantities of olivine, the mineral that forms of the semi-precious gem peridot.

Strong waves constantly pound this coast, sweeping other particles out to sea while leaving the heavier olivine on the beach.

Beach-goers have been rumored to find peridots on the beach large enough to sell to jewelers.

Olvine sands from Mahana Beach

Pu'u Mahana Beach, Mahana Bay, Big Island, Hawaii.

Photo by http://www.flickr.co.../justinshearer/

 

PINK

Pink beaches are also quite rare. They occur only in areas near a very large coral reef formations that contain a tiny organism that has a red skeleton.

When they die, these skeletons fall to the ocean floor and are gradually eroded to small particles that are carried to shore by the current, where they mix in with the sand.

The finest example of a “Pretty In Pink” beach may be the one at Harbor Island, Eleuthera in the Bahamas,

although pink beaches are also found in Puerto Rico, Bermuda, Barbados, the Philipines, and in Scotland.

Pink beach at Harbor Island, Eleuthera, Bahamas.

Photo by http://www.flickr.co.../photos_mweber/

PURPLE

Garnet gem

When the manganese garnet in the hills surrounding Pfeiffer Beach in California’s Big Sur gets washed down to the ocean it turn the sand a vivid purple color.

The further north you go, the more purplish the sand becomes. Depending upon the day, the sands can sparkle in shades of violet, lavender, ruby red, pink, or royal purple.

Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur, California.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/sith120/

BROWN

Rockaway Beach in Pacifica, California, exhibits a most luscious shade of chocolate brown.

This unusual color occurs when eroded bluish-grey limestone mixes with volcanic greenstone from the hillsides that ring the beach.

Rockaway Beach, Pacifica, California.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/jag72/

RAINBOW 

Rainbow Beach on Fraser Island in Australia. Seemingly unable to make up its mind,

Rainbow Beach displays more than 70 different colors whenever waves and winds shift and blow its sands around.

Most of the colors can be clearly seen in the cliffs behind the beach, which formed during the last ice age and are so richly banded that they have been compared to layers of rainbow sherbet.

But for a real treat, dig down into the beach sand to see layer upon layer of colored, banded sands that create a new work of art with each sweep of the hand.

Rainbow Beach sand by http://www.flickr.co...otos/eye-fibre/
 

Rainbow Beach and Great Sandy National Park, Queensland, Australia.

Photo by http://www.flickr.co...otos/imaxandco/

Rainbow Beach cliffs. Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/brendio/

BLACK

Since this roundup of rainbow beaches began with white (technically, the blending of all colors), it seems appropriate to end with black, which is the absence of color.

While that may be true in scientific terms, there is no absence of color at the world’s black sand beaches – they are simply stunning!

The result of volcanic activity near a coastline, these beaches are created when particles weathered from cooled lava wash down to shore.

The black sands are also a source of gemstones such as garnets, rubies, sapphires, topaz, and, of course, diamonds, which form within volcanoes and are spewed out during eruptions.

Though black sand beaches can be found in Argentina, the South Pacific Islands, Tahiti, the Philipines, California, Greece, and in the Dominican Republic,

the best known and perhaps most stunning black beaches are found in the Hawaiian Islands.

Black Sand Beach, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Sausalito, California.

Photo by http://www.flickr.co...otos/thestroms/

 

Punalu’u Beach

Punalu’u Beach is a black sand beach is in Hawaii. Due to volcanic rock and glass, black sand is formed. 

by Barbara Weibel