The Osa Peninsula is a wildlife treasure trove, a black sand and blue skies paradise with an abundance of exotic animals, insects and plant life.

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The buried city of Dubai, adrift in an endless sandstorm, is in turns alive with brilliant blue skies and yellow sand, and awash in the lurid crimson of the dead.

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Soon they walked, drunk, surrounded by a pack of hungry strays, toward a glaring white strip of beach and the black sea and blue froth crashing on the sand.

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Sure, there are the white sand beaches and deep blue waters.

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It was not the miles of palm-fringed, white sand or the ludicrously blue sea that stunned me the Caribbean is littered with beaches fit for postcards it was the fact that there was virtually no development in any direction and hardly a soul in sight.

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Next time you are outside, cowering under a parka, your toes going numb, imagine strutting in a bathing suit with those toes in the sand, along warm, bright blue waters beckoning you to take a relaxing float.

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The sand is white and the water is blue.

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These islands appear in Homer's Odyssey, and their epic landscape seems fitted to mythology, with fine-sand beaches, towering volcanoes, and a fierce-blue skirt of sea.

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After digging into the sand between the crossties, it jammed between two of the spokes, went blue from the heat and tension at the point of flexion, and brought the car to a stop.

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