Samoa
Piula Cave Pool
Under the chapel, a lava tube pours cold spring water into a pool full of fish.
The spring rises cold and clear at the mouth of an old lava tube, a dozen metres from the warm sea it never quite joins. Above the cave mouth stands the chapel of Piula Theological College; below, fish drift over pale rock in water clear enough to count them. The first step in feels sharper than the tropics are supposed to allow.
Piula Fatumea is a spring-fed pool about twenty-five metres long, held in college grounds the Methodist Mission bought in 1868, and its cave runs back further than the daylight does. Confident swimmers duck through a submerged passage at the rear into a second cave, torch in hand; everyone else floats where the light is. Day fales line the grass and local families treat the pool as their own, which it is. The campus asks the modesty of a religious site: swimwear stays by the water, and the pool rests on Sundays.
Couple
Swim to the back of the cave together and watch the entrance shrink to a lit arch, then dry off under a day fale with the sea a stone's throw away. Weekday mornings are the quiet ones.
Family
The pool edge is an easy entry for supervised children, with fish visible from the first step and day fales for the towels and the lunch. There is no lifeguard, so the deeper cave is for the strongest swimmers only.
Friends
The submerged passage to the second cave is a dare with a reward: a hidden chamber and the story to go with it. Bring one waterproof torch between you and take turns.
- A freshwater spring fills the mouth of an old lava tube in the grounds of Piula Theological College, with the chapel directly above the cave.
- A submerged passage at the back of the pool leads through to a second cave.
- The pool lies about a dozen metres from the sea yet stays cold, clear and fresh, busy with small fish.
- The Methodist Mission bought this land in 1868, and the college still keeps the pool, its day fales and its Sunday rest.
The pool has day fales and no kitchen, so bring a picnic from Apia, forty-five minutes along the coast road.
Pack a drinking coconut for afterwards: niu opened cold when you are dripping with spring water tastes like the reward it is.
Porto Moniz
Portugal
Volcanic rock pools refilled by each Atlantic wave, black basalt warm against cold salt.
Koufonisia
Greece
Flat-bottomed islands barely above the waterline with sand so white it glows at dusk.
Chrysi Island
Greece
An uninhabited island of shell-pink sand and ancient junipers, now visited only on its own terms.
Scala dei Turchi
Italy
White marl cliffs sculpted into natural staircase steps, glowing orange at sunset above the Mediterranean.
