A Beach That Will Literally Blow You Away

For most people, thinking about an ideal vacation would lead them to visualize a stunning long, sandy beach. But loafing and lying on hot sand just a few feet from the sea may become monotonous and boring, so some people might try to find an adrenaline kick in such an idyllic place.

However, Maho Beach on the Caribbean Islands offers tourists who are looking for more than a chaise longue and a cocktail, an adrenaline-packed challenge which goes beyond the usual extreme sports. The attraction on offer is a rather unusual and coincidental one. The six-hundred-feet beach on the Island of Sint Maarten in the eponymous state is located next to a very short landing strip of the international Princes Juliana Airport. The airplanes landing on the island come incredibly close to the swimmers so they can touch down at the beginning of the strip and thus have enough time to brake and stop. Close encounters of this kind are amazing scenes that have been captured on camera by Thomas Prior, a photographer from Brooklyn. Knowing what was going on, the artist went to Maho Beach determined to document these somewhat dangerous but visually attractive close encounters between swimmers and jumbo jets. These encounters come with loud background noise, to say the least, and then there are the flying pebbles and sand, along with gusts of wind from planes landing and taking off which doesn’t make it any easier on the photographer.

The beach has a daily schedule of arrivals and departures, the photographer says, displayed so most swimmers plan their stay at the beach according to the flight plan and the place gets crowded as planes come and go. However, Prior says, there were those who didn’t know why the beach of their choice was special – they didn’t know it came with a bonus adrenaline pack. Imagine what it feels like to be lying on the sand and enjoying the Caribbean sun and a second later an enormous 200-ton airplane appears, ready to land at what seems just a few feet away from you. Priceless? Most probably.