Playa Flamenco

Beaches & CovesCulebra, Puerto Rico

August·Edge of season

Jul–Aug

High summer: tens of thousands of sooty-tern pairs churn over the headland, the year's loudest wildlife. It's hottest and most humid now, around 31°C, the rains build and hurricane season is live — but the bay stays warm and quiet.

Year-round The mile of white sand, the shallow turquoise bay and the two rusting tanks stand in every month; the wildlife, the water's warmth, the rains and the crowds are what turn with the calendar.

Playa Flamenco spent more than thirty years as a live-fire target range, and two rusted Sherman tanks still sit on its sand. The beach is a mile-long crescent wrapped around a reef-sheltered bay on Culebra, a small island off Puerto Rico's east coast, and the water inside the horseshoe stacks up in bands — clear at your feet, milky turquoise over the sand flats, hard blue where the reef drops away. The US Navy took Culebra's public land in 1901 and shelled this coast from the 1940s until 1975, when the islanders finally forced it off Culebra for good. What the Navy left behind is strange company for a beach that TripAdvisor's travellers voted the third best in the world in 2014: the tanks, carrying a fresh coat of spray paint every few months, and a headland still closed for the ordnance buried in it. Wade in and the ranking explains itself. The bay shelves so gently that you can walk a long way out and still be standing, over sand pale enough to throw the light back up at you, while snorkellers work the rocky points at either end where parrotfish graze the shallow reef. The green headland closing the beach is Culebra National Wildlife Refuge, created by Theodore Roosevelt in 1909 — eight years after the same president handed the island to the Navy — and every summer between 30,000 and 40,000 pairs of sooty terns nest on it, out of reach behind the closure. Nothing much stands behind the sand either: scrub hills, a lagoon, six kiosks, a campground. Most people come for the day, on the ferry from Ceiba or a ten-seat propeller plane, and go home the same afternoon.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The headland closing the beach is off-limits — it stays shut for the unexploded ordnance buried in it and the sooty terns that nest there by the tens of thousands each summer.
The beach empties when the day boats leave — most visitors are back at the dock by late afternoon, which makes the last two hours of light the quietest time on the sand.
The bay is shallow and calm for most of the year, but winter north swells reach it — on those days the water turns choppy, snorkelling visibility drops and red flags go up.
Give the staked-off turtle nests a wide berth after dark — they are marked through the nesting season, and white torchlight disorients nesting females and hatchlings alike.

Things to do

1
Walk the whole crescent before the day boats land
The sand runs a full mile from the tanks at the western end to the scrub headland at the other, with nothing but low green hills standing behind it. Come early, while the beach still holds nothing but the tide line, and the entire arc is yours.
2
Find the Sherman tanks at the western end
Two rusted-out hulks sit half-sunk in the sand where the beach runs out, close enough to the water that the surf washes around their tracks. They get repainted constantly — slogans, cartoons, initials — so the tank you photograph will not be the one in anybody else's picture from last year.
3
Fly in on a ten-seat propeller plane
Culebra's runway is too short for anything bigger than a light prop plane, so the hop from San Juan flies low over the water for about half an hour. Through the window the whole reef system lays itself out — turquoise shallows, dark coral heads, then the deep blue where the shelf ends.
4
Snorkel the rocky points where the sand runs out
At either end of the crescent the sand gives way to volcanic rock, and the shallow reef there gathers parrotfish, sergeant majors and the occasional ray. The water stays protected and rarely gets deep, so you can reach the fish from the beach without a boat or a guide.
5
Wade out over the white-sand shallows
The bay shelves so gradually that you can walk a long way from shore and still be standing, with nothing underfoot but fine, pale sand. This is what the rankings are actually about: water clear enough to watch your own feet, warm enough to stay in until your fingers wrinkle.