They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but surely not when it comes to islands. Here are some of the best.
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but surely not when it comes to islands. After all, travellers from all over the world agree on the allure of islands from Bali to Santorini, Koh Phi Phi to St Lucia.
Parched Mediterranean islands have their own particular drama, and islands in densely populated places such as Japan and Java have a beauty honed from centuries of human landscaping.Islands are places of refuge, escapism and relaxation, but the seduction isn’t merely on the surface. Yet in the interior, olive groves and vineyards add a flush of silvery colour while, up north, the twin-headed Lopar Peninsula erupts in greenery and pine trees. And the adjacent Kalifront Peninsula has some of the Mediterranean’s last stands of holm oak trees.
Rab has cultural beauty too. There are far more important Mediterranean towns than Rab, but the shy simplicity of this small red-roofed town, and its lack of tourist crush, is hard to beat. Peer through the iron grilles of churches into dim interiors for a glimpse of gilt statues, melancholy frescoes and marvels such as a saint’s skull and weeping Christ. Old ladies in black shawls genuflect beneath baroque cherubs.
And that’s the soul-deep beauty of this pageant queen – a mindful approach to tourism, restrictions on numbers and sustainable environmental practices have allowed Bora Bora’s dazzle to flourish, preventing her from the fate of so many other natural beauties – stripped of their assets and victims of the fame game. SeeI suppose if you really like white-sand beaches lapped by crystal clear water in the shade of languidly draped palm trees, you can have all that.
You can have all of that, if that’s what you like, but to me, the true beauty of Zanzibar, this semi-autonomous set of islands off the coast of Tanzania, lies not in the features that it may share with various other tropical outcrops around the world, but in the places and the culture that make it unique, in a history that has seen so many of the world’s great empires arrive and disappear.
So yes, the standard hallmarks of island beauty are here, as stunning as they are anywhere in the world – which you can have if you want. But this is a tropical island with more. SeeBy just about any measure, Lord Howe Island is an astonishing place. The shallow lagoon on the western side of this World Heritage-listed island cradles the world’s most southerly coral gardens.
Its bird life is incredible. One of the tiny islands that form a chain between the Solomons and New Zealand, Lord Howe Island is a perch for seabirds in their migratory journeys. One of the loveliest of the island’s hiking trails rises from Settlement Beach to the summit of Mount Eliza, from where the view takes in the opal blue of the lagoon and the hulking peaks of Lidgbird and Gower.Along the way the track passes through a swooning forest of native kentia palms, once the mainstay of the island’s economy, and the wreck of a Royal Australian Air Force Catalina flying boat which crashed here in 1948 when it overshot its landing in the lagoon.
Built a thousand years ago by Sicily’s Norman rulers, the Islamic-inspired La Zisa once sat in the middle of an Arabic pleasure garden, a place of brightly-blooming flowers and reflective pools, shady trees and ever-flowing water. Like many islands, Sicily delivers plenty of poster-perfect vistas, from its coastline scalloped with bays and beaches to the snowy heights of Mount Etna.
My personal favourite remains that distinctive Arab-Norman architecture, famously found in the glittering mosaics at the cathedral of Monreale and in Palermo’s jaw-dropping Palatine chapel, the full embodiment of the traces glimpsed fleetingly at La Zisa. SeeIt was the stuff of which honeymoon dreams are made. My husband and I, married just two weeks prior, eased down onto Ibo Island in northern Mozambique’s Quirimbas Archipelago, in a six-seater plane.
Ibo Island Lodge, the only hotel on the island, was made up of three of these restored, 150-year-old Portuguese mansions set right on the seafront. Walking along the battlements of the 18th century Fort of Sao Joao one afternoon, our only soundtrack was the crash of the ocean, and the gentle hammering of the silversmiths the island is known for.
Only when the crystal-clear water was lapping at our ankles could we accept that it was time to pack up and leave. See“Beautiful walk with Marco,” I write in a logbook left for walkers in a post-box at the end of a trail on one of the world’s most remote islands. “Not a soul out except for the sheep and a grumpy donkey.”
“Growing up, you can’t wait to leave,” Yon says. “And only when you become an adult, really, do you realise what a gem we have.”
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