FASCINATING BEACH DUNES NOW

While we take a little break, enjoy the Best of BeautifulNow Vacations with FASCINATING BEACH DUNES NOW.

Beautiful beach dunes are our focus today. They are both powerful and fragile. They are constantly morphing in shape, size, and location. Their landscapes are peaceful visions, sometimes forming dreamlike or even alien scenes. Here are some cool dunes to consider.

Seems odd somehow to come across a camel roaming in the sands of Japan. But they are roaming the Totorri Dunes along the country’s eastern coast. The dunes run about 16 km long and spread about 2 km wide and rise to as high as a whopping 90 meters.

Ocean winds, blowing in from the Sea of Japan, formed the Totorri dunes over 100,000 years ago, out of volcanic ash from Mt. Daisen as it settled on the sand of the Sendai-gawa River.

Check out the 40-meter-deep basins and 50-meter-tall hills forming picturesque patterns, called wind ripples.

The magnificent beauty is constantly changing and never stops. When you reach the top by lift, you can enjoy a boundless view of sea and sand, a truly spectacular sight.

When the land is sand, it moves like water. The Great Pyla Dune, for example, moves an average of 4.9 meters per year --- sometimes as much as 10 meters in a given year -- moved and shaped by maritime winds. That’s slow for water, but really fast for land.

In fact this dune moves so much, it covers a fresh 8,000 square meters of adjacent land each year. It has buried roads, invaded forests, and gobbled villas.

Located in the Arcachon Bay Area of France, Pyla is over 100 meters tall -- the tallest in Europe, and 500 meters wide. And, at 2.7 km long, it holds over 60 million cubic meters of sand. It is surrounded on three sides by pine forest. 

If you climb to the top of Pyla, you can see the Pyrenees Mountains on a clear day.

One of the most fascinating coastal dune systems in the world is that of the Lencois Maranhenses Dunes. They are massive, covering over 1,000 square kilometers, stretching along 27 miles of coastline and spreading 31 miles inland in the state of  Maranhao in northeastern Brazil.

These dunes form a huge field of sand mountains, valleys, and basins, which, in rainy season, fill to form lakes. These aren’t just puddles, mind you. They are proper lakes, with fish and wildlife darting about. They disappear every dry season, reappear every rainy season (fullest between July and September), yet somehow, the fish thrive! Their eggs are brought from the sea by birds.

Patches of mangroves, deserted beaches, and buritis palms create texture, while the Preguiças River winds through.

Sand, carried by the rivers to their mouths, then whipped back into shape by sea winds and currents, forms a wide span of rippled sculpture. Their name, Lencois Maranhenses, means the bedsheets of Maranhao because its formations resemble rumpled sheets.

The Cronulla Sand Dunes, in Australia’s Kurnell Peninsula, is the ancestral home of the Gweagal Aborigines. Here, you can find carvings, ceremonial sites, flaked sharpening stones, and ancient middens.

Formed over 15,000 years ago, when sea levels reached their present state, they rise 20-60 meters high, with steep 45 degree slopes.

Sand mining has significantly diminished the Cronulla Dunes and only a few remain in areas such as Connell Hill (near Charlotte Breen Reserve), the Australand site, Botany Cone (in National Park), Calsil Dune and near Boat Harbour. Botany Cove is one of the largest coastal dunes remaining in Sydney.

She-oak, red bloodwood, scribbly gum and smooth-barked apple grow out of Cronulla’s sands in the Kurnell Dune Forest, which is listed as an Endangered Ecological Community under the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act.

Read more about Beautiful Vacations, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact. Including Beautiful Retreat Treats.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Vacations in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 08.17.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!

Photo Credits:

1. Photo: Courtesy of The Journey of My Feet. Tottori Sand Dunes.
2. Photo: by Geofrog. Tottori Sand Dunes.
3. Photo: by cotaro70s. Tottori Sand Dunes.
4. Photo: by Philippe Labeguerie. The Great Dune of Pyla.
5. Photo: Courtesy of Travigators. The Great Dune of Pyla.
6. Photo: by Patriiick. Lencois Maranhenses Dunes.
7. Photo: Courtesy of Zona Curio. Lencois Maranhenses Dunes.
8. Photo: by Adam.J.W.C. Cronulla Sand Dunes.
9. Photo: by Ian Teda. Cronulla Dunes.
10. Photo: Courtesy of Oatley Flora and Fauna Conservation Society. Kurnell Dune Forest.
11. Photo: by Adam.J.W.C. Cronulla Sand Dunes.