The Ground Beneath You Is Wrong
You have been to beaches before. You know what they feel like underfoot, the give of wet sand, the gravel that shifts, the occasional flat stone. Nothing prepares you for St Mary Islands. The moment you step off the boat from Malpe and onto the main island, the ground stops making sense. It is not sand. It is not scattered rock. It is a floor of dark hexagonal columns, each one a perfect or near-perfect polygon, locked together so tightly that the whole surface looks like something a mathematician designed and the sea agreed to display. The columns rise in clusters, some waist-high, some taller, their edges worn smooth by the Arabian Sea but their geometry still precise enough to make you crouch down and trace the sides with your finger.
