Cas Abao Beach

Cas Abao sits about forty-five minutes west of Willemstad, down a narrow road that tour buses genuinely struggle with. Most people drive themselves and pay the entrance at the gate, per car, which makes it the cheapest beach on the island if you fill the seats.

It rarely goes solo. It sits on the same west-coast run as Porto Mari, Grote Knip and the Westpunt snorkel beaches, so a guided beach day or a rental car covers three or four of them and takes the narrow roads off your hands.

The sand at Cas Abao is soft and deep and there is a lot of it, which is why the beach absorbs a crowd better than anywhere else on this coast. Palapas run in a line above the waterline and they are the currency here. Get one and your day is made, because shade is otherwise a matter of standing in the shadow of a palm and waiting. They go early. Nine in the morning is not an exaggeration, it is the actual advice everyone who has been here gives.

The water does the rest. It comes in flat and clear, warm enough that nobody hesitates on the way in, shallow long enough that children stay in it for hours. Underfoot near the shore it turns rocky in places, so most people wear something on their feet for the first few metres and take it off once they are swimming.

The massage cabana is the thing you tell people about afterwards. It sits at the top of the sand with the sea in earshot, and an hour on the table while the surf works away behind you is the sort of thing that sounds excessive until you have done it. The bar behind the beach handles food and drinks all day, cards accepted, and it is famously, gloriously slow, so order well before you are hungry. Try the peanut sauce on the fries, which is a local habit that people either adopt permanently or never mention again.

The honest bits: showers cost extra, which irritates people who thought the entrance covered it. Some of the loungers have seen better decades. And when a cruise ship is in port the beach fills, the bar queue doubles, and the narrow road out fills with buses. None of it ruins the place. All of it is avoidable by turning up early.

The open middle of the bay is for swimming. The snorkelling is at the ends, where the sand runs out and the rock begins, and that is where everyone who knows the beach heads. Swim to either headland and the reef starts almost immediately: parrotfish, sergeant majors, the occasional spotted eagle ray gliding through, and moray eels tucked into the rock if you look properly. Green turtles turn up often enough that people come out of the water grinning about it, though nobody can promise you one.

Bring your own mask if you have one, or hire from the dive shop on the beach. The water is calm enough that this is a good place to snorkel for the first time, and clear enough that even from the surface you see everything you need to.

Cas Abao runs on early arrival and cash at the gate, and everything else about the day looks after itself.