If your plans for a beach vacation include stress-free tanning, catching up on a good book, and sipping a colorful beverage don’t go to any of these beaches.
From Hawaii to Australia, India to Namibia, today we countdown the 15 most dangerous beaches in the world.
These beaches are downright terrifying and sometimes even deadly, home to rampant shark attacks, eel-infested waters, deadly currents, and toxic waste. You’ve been warned.
Venture to Namibia’s Skeleton Coast and you get the sense that nature is warding you off right from the start. A slim no-mans-land between life and death, it is known to the Khoisan Bushmen of the interior as the land God created in anger.
Everywhere there are huge bleached whalebones, the crumbling hulks of shipwrecks, dead plants, and the footprints of infrequent desert creatures, all on a desperate search for sustenance.
It’s a place where a few drops of water have at times been far more precious than the diamonds that famously litter its coastal sands.
In an environment far too dry to sustain much life, the flora and fauna have adapted, enabling them to glean just enough moisture from the ocean fog that spills inland at dawn. Tearing up from Antarctica, the trade winds of the Benguela system batter the shoreline night and day.
No-one knows quite how many ships they’ve swept onto the barren rocks, but the wreckage is visible every few miles. There are the remnants of ocean liners and trawlers, galleons, clippers, and gunboats testament to the perfidious current and unrelenting winds.
This is one place that earns its name. NORTH SENTINEL ISLAND The beach on this secluded island in the Indian Ocean looks amazing, but there’s a tribe of indigenous people that attacks anybody who attempts to visit.
The island has been named both the hardest to visit and the most dangerous on the planet. India has banned its citizens from visiting North Sentinel Island or attempting to contact the people who live there.
Going within three miles of the island is illegal. We know the Sentinelese people for their violence and unwillingness to communicate with any outsiders.
We know little about the square island where they live, largely because it is covered in forest. The tribe quickly attacked and murdered two fishermen who washed up on shore in 2006.
When helicopters from the Indian Coast Guard fly overhead whether on reconnaissance missions or dropping off parcels of food for the people they are met with arrows and stones.
Nobody is sure how many Sentinelese people live on the island it’s estimated to be anywhere between 50 and 400 people. They have lived in seclusion on the island for over 60,000 years, according to anthropologists.
But, according to one tribal rights group, the Sentinelese are in danger of dying out. Survival International has named the tribe the most vulnerable group of people in the world, as they have not built up immunity to common diseases like the flu.
