Mibaru Beach

Mibaru is an honest little beach, and a naturalist's kind of place rather than a postcard one. It sits on the quiet southern coast at Nanjo, away from the resort strips, a modest run of natural sand and coral rubble that most guidebooks pass over because it does not photograph like the great white bars of the islands. What it has instead is life. At low tide the sea pulls back off a wide reef flat and the whole shore becomes a tide pool world, warm shallow basins holding small fish, hermit and swimming crabs, sea cucumbers, starfish and the slow business of a living reef, the sort of place a child can lose a whole afternoon and an adult quietly does too.

The honest thing to say is that the beach alone is not the reason to come, and the swimming off the sand is shallow and ordinary. The real prize is just offshore. Small boats run from Mibaru out to Komaka Island, a tiny uninhabited dome of sand ringed by clear reef, ten minutes or so across the water, and that is where the clear blue, the coral and the fish live, with operators offering the crossing and marine activities through the season. Treat Mibaru as the gateway and the rock pooling beach, and Komaka as the swim and snorkel, and the day makes sense. Go for the beach expecting island perfection and you will be underwhelmed.

For treading lightly this is a beach that asks for care, because a reef flat is fragile in a way a sand beach is not. Wear reef shoes both to protect your feet and to avoid standing on living coral, put back any creature you lift to look at and put back the rock you turned, take only photographs from the pools, and watch the tide closely, as it floods back across the flat quickly once it turns. Pair the day with the southern sights nearby, the Sefa Utaki sacred grove and the Nanjo coast, and you have a slow, wild corner of Okinawa that the crowds mostly miss. For a long sandy swim head to the resort coasts, but for nature, tide pools and the little reef island, Mibaru is the honest pick.