Pulo Dua Beach (Two Islands)

Pulo Dua sits off the village of Kampangar in Balantak Utara, right at the far eastern tip of the Banggai peninsula, and it is two islands only some of the time. When the tide drops a sandbar surfaces and joins them, so you can walk from one to the other on wet sand with clear water either side. When the tide comes back the bar disappears under a shallow blue channel a few metres deep, which is arguably the better version, because that channel is where the reef fish sit and where you are most likely to have a green turtle cruise past underneath you.

The reef here is the reason to come, not the sand. It starts a few metres out from the beach and drops away in steps, so you can snorkel it comfortably in one to five metres without ever swimming far. Local operators describe live coral cover of around 80 per cent and visibility in the twenties of metres on a good dry-season day, which is optimistic on the worst days but not far off on the best. Expect anemones with clownfish, parrotfish grinding away at the coral, giant clams, and a lot of small reef fish. The area sits inside a locally recognised marine protected area, and it shows in the state of the coral compared with reefs closer to town.

What Pulo Dua does not have is infrastructure. There are no beach bars, no gear hire you can rely on, no shade beyond what the trees give you, and no reliable phone signal. Everything you want for the day, you carry in, and everything you brought, you carry out again. That is a fair trade for having a reef this healthy largely to yourself, but it does mean a poorly planned visit turns into a long, hot, hungry day.