Everybody loves the beach. It’s a fun place to relax and play. And some people like going to really extravagant beaches on expensive trips. However, there are quite a few beaches on the more expensive side that aren’t exactly worth the risk. Here’s a few of them.
Seven Waves Beach
Location: Parque Tayrona, Colombia
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Strong waves
Est. Cost of Visit: $36/day
This beach is aptly named after the lines of waves that come in sequence to its shore. It’s always seven. However, it’s completely forbidden to even attempt swimming here. The waves are simply too strong. Fortunately, the beach is a part of the Tayrona National Park, so you can have fun going on a hiking trail instead. Just head to another beach if you want to try swimming.
Playa Hermosa
Location: Guanacaste, Costa Rica
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Waves and strong currents
Est. Cost of Visit: $77/day
Playa Hermosa has been described as “pretty but dangerous”. It seems like a great vacation location, but its low tourist traffic should be a dead giveaway to not take a trip here. Costa Rican authorities actually consider it one of the most dangerous places in the country. Playa Hermosa has many dangerous waves and underwater currents. That makes it especially dangerous for people that want to dive. A real shame, because Costa Rica is home to a great deal of interesting marine wildlife.
Praia Do Norte
Location: Nazaré, Portugal
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Deadly waves
Est. Cost of Visit: $128/day
This beach is located in a high-traffic area with various religious festivals and statues. Nazaré, Portugal is also the home of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima. That’s what makes it popular, but if you go, you should probably skip the beach. It has some of the deadliest waves in the world. It’s located near an underwater canyon, which causes the waves to be particularly large. The waves have proven lethal to surfers and other tourists.
North Sentinel Island
Location: North Sentinel Island, India
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Hostile tribes
Est. Cost of Visit: N/A
Normally, when it comes to taking a beach vacation, you’re going to do your best to avoid crowds. That might not always be possible, but there is one beach where tourists rarely visit. That would be at North Sentinel Island in India. It’s nice and isolated, and incredibly beautiful, but isolation doesn’t mean deserted. As it turns out, it’s home to the Sentinel Tribe. They’re one of the last native tribes that greater civilization simply hasn’t come into contact with. It’s actually prohibited to go there, and for good reason. A few tourists attempted a visit and never went home.
Second Beach
Location: Port St. John’s, South Africa
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Sharks
Est. Cost of Visit: $92/day
Second Beach in Port St. John’s is one of the most admired beaches, drawing many tourists every year. It also tends to be a big draw for bull sharks. In the last few years, nine people have actually died from bull shark attacks. While people may fear the great white or tiger sharks, the bull shark is truly the most aggressive shark in the ocean, and responsible for the most shark attacks.
Camber Sands
Location: Camber, England
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Unpredictable tides
Est. Cost of Visit: $204/day
Camber Sands is aptly named, as its the only place with sand dunes in East Sussex, England. It’s an ideal location for practicing kitesurfing. Although, the seas at this place are rather unpredictable. The suddenly shifting tides have actually killed many unsuspecting tourists. They can also prove to be dangerous to even experienced divers.
Qawra Beach
Location: Qawra, Malta
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Pollution
Est. Cost of Visit: $117/day
Qwara is a popular tourist center, and offers a wide variety of water-based activities. However, you may be more hesitant to try these after you find out the beach is also called the Malta sewer. Its water has simply become contaminated around the coasts. It’s actually not advised to even take a dip in the beach water with how dirty it is.
Kedungu
Location: Bali, Indonesia
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Treacherous currents
Est. Cost of Visit: $64/day
Bali seems like a dream vacation spot. Travel isn’t even that expensive, which is just a bonus for the gorgeous landscapes and beaches. Kedungu is one of those beautiful beaches, but, like Camber Sands, has rather dangerous and strong tides. It’s probably a better idea to just check out a different beach instead.
Isla de Ré
Location: Isla de Ré, France
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Dangerous swells
Est. Cost of Visit: $145/day
Isla de Ré is a rather small, coastal island. It’s only connection to the mainland is a bridge that was made in 1988. It’s a famous tourist destination and its population swells in the summer. But, as with the previous entry, this one has some dangerously unique waves. Sinusoidal waves make the ocean look like a chessboard. They’re choppy swells that come out of nowhere. Caused by bottom currents, they can prove deadly to even the most experienced of swimmers.
Cape Tribulation
Location: Queensland, Australia
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Venomous animals
Est. Cost of Visit: $87/day
Cape Tribulation is incredibly beautiful. Lovely, turquoise waters, lush vegetation, and a perfect climate. It seems like the perfect beach to vacation at. Oh right, it’s also in Australia. The place has less than 200 human inhabitants. The rest are dangerous animals. With one of the highest concentrations of dangerous fauna on Earth, crocodiles, sharks, and venomous snakes make up only a part of the danger. One of the most famous creatures it’s home to is the box jellyfish, which is known to be one of the most venomous creatures alive.
Amazon River Beaches
Location: Various Countries in South America
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Candirú fish
Est. Cost of Visit: $80/day
The Amazon River is one of the largest rivers in the world, passing through eight countries. Maybe people want to visit it as a part of their bucket list, but you should be especially cautious if you want to check it out yourself. While the river changes as you travel down it, the part notable for this entry is in Brazil. Piranhas and electric eels can be bad enough, but the candirú is probably the most dangerous. Also known as the toothpick fish, it is a parasitic and transparent fish that can lodge itself into the urethra of its host. To make matters worse, it keeps itself there with a series of barbs.
Algarve
Location: Algarve, Portugal
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Turbulent waters
Est. Cost of Visit: $128/day
Algarve is for looking, not for swimming. The only thing more impressive in size than the cliffs here are the waves that pound against them. The beach still manages to attract the most tourists per year, but it’s incredibly dangerous to swim in. Not only that, but the turbulent waves can cause erosion on the cliffside. Five people died in 2009 after a part of the cliff collapsed into the sea.
Shenzhen
Location: Shenzhen, China
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Too many visitors
Est. Cost of Visit: $71/day
Shenzhen is a densely populated city in China, with more than 10 million inhabitants. It’s known for its dangerous beach, but it’s not any tides, waves, or even animals that make it so dangerous; it’s the people. It just has far too many daily visitors. This actually leads to unfortunate accidents such as the high number of children that have drowned there.
Red Triangle
Location: California, USA
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Great white sharks
Est. Cost of Visit: $168/day
The Red Triangle isn’t a single beach per se. It’s a triangle-shaped region of the coast of Northern California. While humans enjoy surfing, diving, and windsurfing at these beaches, the area also attracts a large number of seals, otters, and sea lions. And those animals are notable for being prey of great white sharks. It can be easy for a shark to mistake a human for a seal (their eyesight isn’t their greatest trait). 38% of the shark attacks in the US have happened in the triangle, as well as 11% of all shark attacks worldwide.
Daytona Beach
Location: Florida, USA
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Sharks
Est. Cost of Visit: $157/day
It may be more common knowledge that sharks inhabit the waters in Daytona Beach. There’s actually quite a few photos are tourists standing uncomfortably close to sharks in the water. Purple flags litter the coastline, acting as a warning to beach goers about the shark-infested waters.
Acapulco, Guerrero
Location: Guerrero, Mexico
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Crime
Est. Cost of Visit: $54/day
Acapulco has paradise-like beaches, perfect for both partying and relaxing. However, the location itself isn’t exactly a safe place to visit. And that’s not because of anything natural either. There’s just been an alarming spike in crime. The rates of homicide and petty crime have just gone up. You can even see police officers patrolling the beach on occassion.
Huntington Beach
Location: California, USA
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Sting rays
Est. Cost of Visit: $168/day
Huntington Beach is another California beach on this list. It’s nice, warm, and fun, but it has a problem from the relative of sharks, and those would be sting rays. Now, rays aren’t aggressive right out of the gate, but that doesn’t mean they won’t ever attack. In a single day, lifeguards once treated 73 wounds from sting rays. They’re not deadly, unless you have an allergy, but they’re still really painful.
Copacabana
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Crime
Est. Cost of Visit: $80/day
Copacabana is such a famous location that it has a song named after it. It was even nicknamed “Little Princess of the Sea”. But, over the years, the number of tourists have gone down. While tourism is still rather high, some people just can’t deal with the rampant crime in Rio de Janeiro. There are literally robberies every day. And overcrowding on the beach doesn’t help either.
Bolinas Beach
Location: Bolinas, California, USA
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Sharks
Est. Cost of Visit: $168/day
Bolinas Beach is another California beach. And yes, they also have trouble with sharks. It’s actually a part of the Red Triangle, so that shouldn’t be too surprising. If you still want to visit this beach, just make sure you swimming in an area where seals and sea lions don’t often visit.
Zihuatanejo Beach
Location: Zihuatanejo, Mexico
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Pollution
Est. Cost of Visit: $54/day
The beach mentioned in The Shawshank Redemption may have once been an incredibly gorgeous beach. Well, it isn’t anymore. This is another beach that has an issue with pollution. The issue stems from its port, making it incredibly trafficked through by industrial ships. It’s actually the only beach in all of Mexico to be unsuitable for recreational use. The amount of bacteria in the water is simply too dangerous for people to risk coming in contact with.
Juhu
Location: Juhu, India
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Pollution
Est. Cost of Visit: $35/day
It’s probably unnecessary to even get into why the pollution’s bad at the beach in Juhu. The amount of trash present in just this picture is enough to probably counteract all of the of the more wonderful parts of Juhu. You won’t be swimming there, that’s for certain.
West End
Location: West End, Grand Bahama, the Bahamas
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Sharks
Est. Cost of Visit: $200/day
When visiting the Bahamas, everyone thinks of the nice, warm air, the beautiful vegetation, and the clear blue seas. They never think about the sharks. Yes, the West End beach is home to a variety of shark species, to a degree that it’s almost impossible to swim there.
Cairns
Location: Queensland, Australia
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Jellyfish
Est. Cost of Visit: $87/day
The coral reef at the Cairns beach looks beautiful and idyllic. It looks like the perfect place to snorkel, swim, and see tons of beautiful creatures. At least, until you get stung by a jellyfish. Cairns is home to several deadly species of jellyfish, with a “sting season” that goes from November to June. This is when the infamous box jellyfish and the lesser-known Irukandji come out to play.
Lamu Archipelago
Location: Lamu, Kenya
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Crime
Est. Cost of Visit: $117/day
The Lamu Archipelago is a group of small islands, with the ancient city of Lamu acting as its central location and a World Heritage Site. While the beaches are stunning, it’s another beach that has rampant crime. Most of it’s petty theft, but there have also been reports of kidnappings.
Rio Negro Beach
Location: The Amazon, Brazil
Why You Shouldn’t Travel: Piranhas
Est. Cost of Visit: $80/day
Rio Negro is the largest tributary of the Amazon River, with a depth of 87 yards. And this area is home to red-bellied piranhas. Most piranha species are more so passive, but these ones can attack humans with little warning. It’ll get even worse if it’s breeding season. They’re especially triggered by blood or splashing.
