The source of all of that soft white beach sand

Take a walk on the beaches of Nice and compare them to the beaches of Bali and the first thing that you’ll notice is a difference in sand. In Bali, the small Indonesian island in the South Pacific, the sand is soft like confectionary sugar and feels like smooth, whipped cream between your fingers. The beaches in Nice, France, by contrast, could best be characterized as a large piles of rocks.

Tourists obviously love the soft sort of sand that one can wallow around in all day, but not all beaches have that sort of fortune. So if they’re crafty enough, they ship it in. Our resident pilot, Kent Wien happened to fly over the place where some of that sand comes from, a lost little island in the nothingness of the Carribbean near the Bahamas. If you look closely at his photo you can see where the workers foraged deep into the sea and carved out slices of soft happiness.

Who knows where the sand finally ended up — you could be sitting on it right now.