Morocco
Legzira Beach
The arch everyone photographed fell in 2016. The bigger one behind it is still standing.
Eight kilometres of red sandstone drops straight into the Atlantic here, between Mirleft and Sidi Ifni, and the sea has cut its way through the base of it in more than one place. At low tide the sand runs the whole length of the bay and you can walk under the rock. At high tide you cannot, and the cliffs put you back on the road.
On the evening of Friday 23 September 2016 the more famous of the two arches came down, after six months of cracks working through the sandstone. What is left is bigger, plainer and still standing, and the coast around it has caves, coves and the same low sun that made the first one famous. Surfers and bodyboarders work the breaks along the bay, paragliders launch off the cliff tops, and a handful of guesthouses sit above the sand.
Solo
Walk beyond the surviving arch and let the bay lengthen around you. The coast is long enough that the cliffs, caves and Atlantic noise become the whole day rather than one photograph.
Couple
Stay on the beach rather than in Sidi Ifni ten kilometres up the road. Low sun on wet red sandstone is the reason to be here, and it arrives after most day visitors have left.
- The bay runs about eight kilometres between Mirleft and Sidi Ifni, under red sandstone cliffs that fall straight into the ocean.
- One of the two monumental sea arches collapsed under erosion in September 2016; the larger one still stands.
- Caves and coves continue along the red-sandstone coast beyond the surviving monumental arch.
- The cliffs above are an established paragliding site and the breaks below are worked by surfers and bodyboarders.
Grilled fish on the sand, which is half of why Moroccans make the drive out from Sidi Ifni at all.
Cactus fruit off the hills immediately inland, where forty thousand hectares of prickly pear make this province's biggest crop.
Uoleva Island
Tonga
No village, no roads, no shops, and humpbacks calving in the warm shallows offshore.
Maruata
Mexico
Nahua-run cabins face a wild Pacific cove of cliffs, sand and turtle habitat.
Ono-i-Lau
Fiji
Fiji ends here: islands inside a single reef, the next land ninety kilometres of ocean away.
Okarito Lagoon
New Zealand
A tea-dark lagoon that mirrors the Southern Alps beside a village of thirty.
Aït Bouguemez Valley
Morocco
Dinosaur tracks survive on the valley floor among irrigated fields and earthen villages.
M'Hamid El Ghizlane
Morocco
Fine sand crosses the last strip of tarmac, where camel tack hangs beside flour sacks.
Sefrou
Morocco
Silk-buttoned festival dress meets river-cooled lanes in Morocco's century-old cherry capital.
Imouzzer Ida Outanane
Morocco
Winter rain wakes a cliff cascade above white villages, honey stalls and terraced argan.