The sand is fine, soft and white.
The water is clear and turquise blue.
And it's only about 15 minutes by boat from the mainland.
Seriously, where is everybody?
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| Absolute bliss |
All the accommodation is along the western beaches, a series of bays connected by concrete walkways. You could walk from one end to the other in perhaps 20 minutes.
First beach, from the north, has a campsite, but no formal accommodation. Next comes a small beach with one guesthouse, Qimi's. The very rustic chalets are kept clean, and I've heard good things about the food here, but there are no locks on the doors, and that may be off-putting for some.
Next is the most popular beach, with 4 bungalow operators sharing a fairly small stretch of sand: Coral Beach (wouldn't let me see a room until 2pm, check-in time. It was 11 when I arrived on the island. Hmm.), Ombak, KBC original, and KBC 2 (the restaurant with attached rooms). Both Ombak and Coral Beach seem to get a lot of groups and package tourists. KBC1 was crowded with loads of kids and too-kewl-for-you traveller types (I figured it would probably be noisy in the evenings - you just know some wanker is going to pull out a guitar). I wasn't impressed with how crowded the small beach was, nor the cleanliness of the rooms I saw at Ombak and KBC1, so I moved further south.
Across the next headland, and just north of the pier, is Pak Ya. The chalets are all seaview facing, but looked very basic. Immediately south of the pier is the large Kapas Island Resort, who told me that they were closed when I wandered through.
But now you're on the long beach, and it's glorious. Soft sand, very quiet. Bliss.
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| Beach life |
Along this beach you have Cocos (restaurant with what appeared to be some rooms or camping as well - it was hard to tell what belonged to which site), Longsha campsite, the new D'Seri, and Captain's Longhouse. Finally, you can climb a track over the last headland to reach the exclusive Turtle Valley.
I don't camp so I didn't check out the campsite, but I liked the look of D'Seri. It's a more expensive than a lot of the others I looked at, but everything was clean and new, and the staff were super nice. Plus, it was on the perfect, quiet beach. So I decided to stay there.
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| This will do nicely, thank you |
They also do pretty nice food, it turns out. I especially enjoyed their cheese sandwiches, served on toasted bread rolls and stuffed with tonnes of salad and grilled onions.
There's some okay coral and fish for snokling from this beach - the best bits I saw where in front of Cocos, starting about 7-8 feet deep at low tide. I heard there was some good snorkling around the headland leading to Turtle Valley, but on the afternoon that I tried to snorkle that way, I encountered some larger jellyfish, and headed quickly back to a more sheltered area of the beach. I also went up to the northern camping beach, as I'd read there was some good snorkling offshore at that end of the island, but a stiff onshore wind was blowing in the small jellies that day (mostly the egg-sized ones without long tentacles, that sting for three seconds and then itch for 2 days) and after a welt or two, I gave up on the idea.
Still, I liked Kapas enormously, and would have happily extended my stay if I didn't have reservations waiting for me elsewhere.
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