Beautiful tiny islands around the world
Just the word ‘island’ is dreamy, conjuring images of clear water, palm trees, soft breezes and even softer sands. In many cases the reality is equal to the dream. In some, it even surpasses it. There are volcanic islands with black beaches, lesser-known Caribbean gems with pink sand and storybook animals, and landmasses dedicated to wildlife, where humans rarely tread. From islets scattered just off the coast to far-flung gems in remote locations around the globe, these are some of the world’s most beautiful small islands.
Isle Royale is the largest island of the car-free archipelago and national park of the same name, sitting amid 450 islands scattered across Lake Superior. But, at just 46 miles (74km) long, it’s still pretty tiny. It packs in its own lakes, a lighthouse and dense patches of forest roamed by wolves and moose.
World Heritage-listed Lord Howe Island is just 6.8 miles (11km) long and 1.7 miles (2.8km) wide, and every inch is pristinely pretty. Part of New South Wales, the island lies off Australia’s east coast and is a remote idyll of sugary beaches and impossibly clear, turquoise-tinted waters teeming with around 500 species of fish.
Part of Washington state’s Puget Sound region and not far from Seattle, Whidbey Island is a salt-sprayed dream of a remote island. Its coastline is an appealing jumble of oyster beds clinging to rocks, rustic beaches strewn with driftwood and forests of alder and fir trees. Its crowning glory is Deception Pass State Park, with a broad, burnished gold beach and fir trees as tall as 20-story buildings framing near-perfect sunsets across the bay.
Often described as an unspoilt Ibiza, Formentera is the smallest of Spain’s Balearic Islands. It’s also, many would argue, the most idyllic and prettiest of the archipelago, with a coastline edged with pine forest, alabaster beaches, sand dunes and dramatic rocky outcrops, all surrounded by the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean Sea. It’s also known for its salt flats, which contain microorganisms that sometimes turn the pools pink and violet.
The Cabot Trail, which skims the edges of this island off Nova Scotia, is often name-checked as one of the world’s most beautiful coastal drives. It potters by pretty fishing villages, slices through verdant valleys and soars past cliffs that overlook coves and caramel beaches, and every inch of it is breathtaking. See more amazing drives on the world's most dramatic roads.
The Navarino Teeth or Dientes de Navarino mountain range lend a jagged, dramatic beauty to Navarino Island in Chile’s remote Patagonia region. Their dips, slopes and valleys are blanketed with forests and mud flats and dotted with lagoons. The island is also home to South America’s most southerly settlement, Puerto Williams, and archaeological sites inhabited by Yaghan or Yamaná people more than 10,000 years ago.
Belonging to a state that isn’t exactly lacking in beauty, Molokai nevertheless stands out due to the vast swathes of it that are given over to nature. Nicknamed ‘The Friendly Isle’, it’s so quiet and has so few cars that there isn’t a single traffic light. In addition to the palm-fringed beaches and turquoise-teal waters that characterize the Aloha State, Molokai is particularly famed for its reefs and lushly green sea cliffs – the tallest in the world.
Belonging to a state that isn’t exactly lacking in beauty, Molokai nevertheless stands out due to the vast swathes of it that are given over to nature. Nicknamed ‘The Friendly Isle’, it’s so quiet and has so few cars that there isn’t a single traffic light. In addition to the palm-fringed beaches and turquoise-teal waters that characterize the Aloha State, Molokai is particularly famed for its reefs and lushly green sea cliffs – the tallest in the world.
Puerto Rico’s main island is surrounded by around 100 smaller beauties, from inhabited islands to sandy cays or islets. Mona Island has been described as the Galapagos of the Caribbean due to its unspoilt beauty and biodiversity. The tiny nature reserve was once inhabited by indigenous Taíno people, whose cave drawings remain. This terrain of limestone cliffs and sandy beaches now has no human residents but is important territory for rare birdlife and reptiles, and has the largest hawksbill sea turtle nesting site in the Caribbean.
Off the northeast coast of Newfoundland, Fogo Island takes remoteness to new extremes. It feels like the very edge of the world – and, in fact, Canada’s Flat Earth Society claims Brimstone Head is one of the planet’s four corners. Certain points of the lushly forested island gaze at the seemingly endless Atlantic, while the rocky coastline is home to fishing communities with colorful clapboard houses jutting over the water.
Khao Phing Kan means ‘Leaning on Itself Island’, referring to the vertiginous limestone karst towers that dominate it – and the fact that it looks like it should topple over at any minute. The island is part of Ao Phang-Nga Marine National Park, northeast of Phuket, and surrounded by milky emerald-green waters dotted with other, equally bizarrely shaped islands. It’s also known as James Bond Island thanks to a scene-stealing role in 1974 Roger Moore movie The Man With the Golden Gun.
French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to and died on this tiny volcanic island and his now-empty tomb remains here. It’s a pretty far-flung spot to be exiled, lying 1,200 miles (1,931km) from the west coast of Africa and 2,500 miles (4,023km) from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In fact St Helena, a craggy land of mountain peaks, verdant valleys and mist-shrouded cloud forests, is one of the world’s most remote islands with a small population and few tourists. Read more about St Helena here.
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