Niue: Snorkelling Hio Beach

Niue is a unique island in the Pacific – unlike other picture-perfect paradise beach islands, Niue has no beaches. It’s basically a rock of limestone that got uplifted from the ocean floor – the entire island is just a jumble of sharp-edged spiky rocks and the coastline is a shelf of coral that gets exposed at low tides. But this makes for some of the clearest waters in the world and some of the most spectacular and diverse coral reef imaginable. It’s shallow swimming and getting scratched by coral is possible at every turn but it’s really spectacular!