The best calm water beaches in Reunion

Reunion holds two seas and the eye needs to learn the line between them. Out past the reef the Indian Ocean is dark, muscular and dangerous, signed as closed to swimming for the island's well known shark risk. In tight against the sand, behind a low band of breaking white where the swell trips on the coral, the water turns a pale, lit turquoise and lies almost still. That sheltered ribbon is the calm water of this page, and the whole art of a good swimming day on Reunion is knowing how to read it and stay inside it.

We have ranked the beaches below purely for how calm and clear the water actually is, not for how the wider coast photographs. What matters here is the reef barrier, how shallow and sheltered the lagoon stays, how clean the water reads in the morning light and how easy the entry is over sand rather than rock. The west coast lagoons of L'Hermitage, La Saline and Saint Gilles win this category outright, because that living coral line is what holds the calm, and it is the most beautiful pale water on the island once the sun is on it.

If you take one line from this page, take this. Build your swimming around the protected lagoons, come at first light when the surface is glass and the colour is at its best, swim well inside the reef and treat the open sea as off limits at all times. Do that and Reunion gives you some of the calmest, most luminous water in the Indian Ocean. Ignore it and you are looking at a coast that is stunning to photograph and unsafe to enter.

The calmest looking coast is not always the safest, and Reunion makes that lesson plain. The wild southern bays and the open west coast beaches photograph beautifully, all dark water and dramatic basalt, but the sea there is genuinely dangerous and closed to swimming under the island's water safety rules. The truly calm water hides in the reef lagoons, which look modest from the road and turn extraordinary up close, pale and still and lit from below. Match the swim to the lagoon and you get calm and safety together.

Calm here is a matter of the reef, the wind and the tide rather than luck. The west coast lagoons stay sheltered behind the coral on most mornings, which is exactly what makes them so easy to swim, while the netted zones at Boucan Canot and Roches Noires give a secured swim on the open coast during cover hours only. Watch the passes where the lagoon drains back to sea on a falling tide, because the current there can be strong. Conditions are typical and never guaranteed, there is no promise of a safe swim, so read the flags and stay inside the reef or the net.

For the photographer and the swimmer alike the reward is the same and it comes early. Come at first light, before the trade wind textures the surface and before the sand is stirred, and the lagoon is a sheet of glass over coral with the filao pines reflected at the edge. That is the Reunion picture worth getting up for, and it is also the calmest, clearest, safest hour to swim. Stock up in the resort shops, take the morning, and let the open sea stay where it belongs, on the far side of the white line.

Reunion is not a daybed island, and for a calm water day that suits the place. At L'Hermitage you will find beach restaurants and rondavelles under the pines, and at the quieter lagoons the snack spots and cafes of La Saline and Saint Pierre are close at hand, which is all most swimmers need for a long morning by the water. We never invent a venue, a minimum spend or an opening status, so anything we cannot confirm is marked to be confirmed. Browse the directory, send one enquiry to check your date and party size, and keep the picnic option open.