Questions about the most beautiful Islands in the world.

[Roland_Deschain]

I had a chance to visit my cousin who has a house in Fiji about four years ago and it was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen (until that time I would have said that either the Grand Canyon or the Virgin Islands were at the top). What astounded me was that she said most experts consider French Polynesia (and specifically Bora Bora and some others I can’t begin to spell) to be far more beautiful than even Fiji’s islands. So where are the most beautiful islands (or place for that matter) as defined by experts?

[Shagnasty]

Here is a very old list of the most beautiful islands in the South Pacific.

Keep in mind, that there are thousands of islands in the Carribean and many of those meet or surpass those in the South Pacific. Many are pristine and uninhabited.

I don’t think you can have an “expert” rank these things for you. The experts are just people that travel to a lot of them and rank according to their own bias. That may not be your top pick if you had gone to the same places.

There are travel magazines at your local bookstore that do these rankings all the time. Of course, the rankings aren’t the same from magazine to magazine or even for the same one year to year. That is my point.

[Colophon]

Well, I was about to mention a couple of places, and they’re both on that list:

Muri Beach (Rarotonga, Cook Islands): Wrapping for 14km (8 1/2 miles) around Rarotonga’s southeastern corner, Muri Beach faces little islets out on the reef and the island’s best lagoon for boating. The sand rather than the road serves as the main avenue among the Muri Beach resorts and restaurants.

Beach on One Foot Island (Aitutaki, Cook Islands): The sands on most beaches covered in this book are a tannish coral color, but on the islets surrounding Aitutaki, they are pure white, like talcum. Tiny One Foot Island has the best beach here, with part of it along a channel whose coral bottom is scoured clean by strong tidal currents, another running out to a sandbar known as Nude Island–a reference not to clothes but to a lack of vegetation.

The Cooks are more beautiful than much of Fiji, in my opinion. I wouldn’t say that One Foot Island is the best part of Aitutaki necessarily, but the whole lagoon is gobsmacking.

Here is Muri Beach, on Rarotonga. I stayed at a small beach house about midway between the small islet on the left and the other three islets. All that pale-blue water is about waist deep at most. You can wade out to those little islands.

One Foot Island is really called Tapuaetei. I thought it was a little over-rated, compared with others nearby. They even have a little hut with a passport stamp. (I didn’t know this, so I didn’t take my passport to be stamped. Not that I’d do anything so tacky). Unfortunately, it gets visited quite a bit by boat trips and morons had left litter behind.

The picture on this page shows an aerial view of the Aitutaki lagoon.

Pretty much all of those little islets have stunning beaches. The sunsets ain’t bad, either
(those last three pics are mine)

[Smeghead]

@Roland Deschain

So where are the most beautiful islands (or place for that matter) as defined by experts?

“So, what do you do for a living, Bob?”

“Oh, I’m an expert at ranking Pacific islands by beauty.”

“Cool, so what does that pay?”

“I do all right.”

[samclem]

MOved from GQ to IMHO.

samclem GQ moderator

[Algul_Siento]

Wherever you go, make sure you have proper equipment for handling lobstrocities.

[Ignatz]

There a lot of seashells in the Seychelles.