Beaches for
Waves for every level — from mellow beach breaks to powerful reef breaks.
About surfing
Waves for every level — from mellow beach breaks to powerful reef breaks.
13 beaches found
The Kauai east-shore family beach on Hawaiian Home Lands, where locals walk from the homestead community to a half-mile bay protected by an offshore reef. Calm at the east end, dangerous at the river mouth, and quiet on most weekday mornings.
Sydney's most famous stretch of golden sand, where world-class surf meets cliff-top walking trails, ocean pools, and a cafe culture that runs on flat whites and salt air.
Monterey's quiet bay-side beach, named after an 1880 Gilded Age hotel that is now the Naval Postgraduate School. The cold-water walking beach that almost every travel guide wrongly sells as a swimming beach.
Hayle Beach is the town-end of a three-mile sand-and-dune sweep along St Ives Bay, where the right move depends on which Towans you pick, where you park (Harveys from about £1.20/hr, Gwithian £3/hr), the dog rules by season, and the estuary current you keep clear of.
The Kauai North Shore bay where the Kalihiwai River meets the ocean. A crescent of gold sand backed by ironwood trees, a calm summer swim, an expert winter surf break, a kayakable river running inland, and almost no facilities. The North Shore's quietest accessible beach.
A mile of soft North Shore sand with a shorebreak that has killed people who never intended to swim, and a calm summer version that looks like a different beach entirely.
The Big Island county park most surfers call Pine Trees, with multiple peaks along a lava-and-sand coastline north of Kona. Surf, tide pools, and camping in one gated park with restrooms, BBQ pavilions, and a 5:30am-9pm gate. Kona's most accessible local surf beach.
Bali's most famous beach strip is loud, crowded, and unapologetically touristy, but the sunsets are world-class, the beginner surf breaks are forgiving, and the food and nightlife scene runs deep.
The Methodist camp meeting town on the Jersey Shore, still owned by the OGCMA, and the first summer in the beach's modern history that the sand opens on Sunday mornings. Victorian cottages, tent city, rock groins, a dry-town ordinance, and the 2025 order that changed everything.
The Kauai south-shore beach with the 40-foot cliff Harrison Ford jumped off in Six Days Seven Nights. The cliff is the photo, not the activity. The real reason to come is the Maha'ulepu Heritage Trail that starts behind the sand.
The Kauai snorkel beach where most visitors arrive with a map that is wrong, a reservation they did not need, and a parking plan that stopped working in 2022. Get those three things right and it is still one of the most unusual reef systems in Hawaii.
Hawaii's most famous beach is a narrow strip of partly imported sand backed by a wall of high-rise hotels and fronted by warm, gentle Pacific waves perfect for beginner surfers. Iconic, crowded, expensive, and still somehow worth seeing at least once.
Wharton Beach near Esperance jumped to the world's 3rd-best beach for 2026, a free, facility-light 4.5km arc of white sand an hour east of town with sealed-road parking, optional 4WD beach driving, no kangaroos and no park fee to reach the turquoise water.
