North Eleuthera: Harbour Island's pink beach

Fragments of pink coral mixed with white sand give Harbour Island, just off North Eleuthera, one of the Caribbean's most photographed beaches.

A ferry connects North Eleuthera's airport to Harbour Island in minutes.

A short ferry crossing separates North Eleuthera from Harbour Island, whose Pink Sands Beach stretches for over five kilometers of rosy-colored sand.

In the village of Dunmore Town, colonial-style houses in New England fashion painted in pastel colors overlook streets more often traveled by golf carts than by cars.

Returning to the main island, the Glass Window Bridge separates at a single glance the dark waters of the Atlantic from the turquoise Caribbean Sea.

Toward evening, the caves of Preacher's Cave, where according to tradition the first Puritan colonists celebrated their religious services in the seventeenth century, close the day between history and nature.

The pink color of Harbour Island's beach comes from microscopic sea organisms called foraminifera, whose pinkish shells mix with white sand only on certain coasts particularly exposed to the coral reef.

At Glass Window Bridge, the two waters remain visibly different in color even when the sea is calm: an optical effect caused by differences in depth and composition between the Atlantic and Caribbean.