Pangandaran is a town and

district A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municip ...

of Pangandaran Regency within the province of

West Java West Java (, ) is an Indonesian Provinces of Indonesia, province on the western part of the island of Java, with its provincial capital in Bandung. West Java is bordered by the province of Banten and the country's capital region of Jakarta to t ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

. It is located on the southern coast of the island of

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

. A well-known surfing beach has made Pangandaran a popular tourist destination.

History

On 17 July 2006, an undersea earthquake measuring 7.7 on the

moment magnitude scale The moment magnitude scale (MMS; denoted explicitly with or Mwg, and generally implied with use of a single M for magnitude) is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude ("size" or strength) based on its seismic moment. was defined in a 1979 paper ...

triggered a

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from , ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and underwater explosions (including detonations, ...

that engulfed the resort area and caused destruction as far inland as half a kilometre. Over three hundred people from the town were killed.

Tourism

Pangandaran is a large fishing village situated on a narrow

isthmus An isthmus (; : isthmuses or isthmi) is a narrow piece of land connecting two larger areas across an expanse of water by which they are otherwise separated. A tombolo is an isthmus that consists of a spit or bar, and a strait is the sea count ...

with Pangandaran National Park occupying the entire headland. On either side to the east and to the west of Pangandaran village and the National Park isthmus are two beaches of volcanic

black sand Black sand is sand that is black in color. One type of black sand is a heavy, glossy, partly magnetic mixture of usually fine sands containing minerals such as magnetite, found as part of a placer deposit. Another type of black sand, found on ...

. The Penanjung Pangandaran nature reserve is nearby on a

peninsula A peninsula is a landform that extends from a mainland and is only connected to land on one side. Peninsulas exist on each continent. The largest peninsula in the world is the Arabian Peninsula. Etymology The word ''peninsula'' derives , . T ...

connected to the mainland by a narrow neck of land. The isthmus is around 200 m wide. About eighty percent of the nature reserve is secondary

rainforest Rainforests are forests characterized by a closed and continuous tree Canopy (biology), canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforests can be generally classified as tropi ...

. The flora of the nature reserve includes the

Rafflesia ''Rafflesia'' (), or stinking corpse lily, is a genus of Parasitic plants, parasitic flowering plants in the family Rafflesiaceae. The species have enormous flowers, the buds rising from the ground or directly from the lower stems of their host p ...

. The Pangandaran International Kite Festival has been held since 1985.Pangandaran International Kites Festival
(Indonesian)

Transportation

Cijulang Nusawiru Airport is located nearby and provides facilities for domestic service to Jakarta.

Climate

Pangandaran has a

tropical rainforest climate A tropical rainforest climate or equatorial climate is a tropical climate sub-type usually found within 10 to 15 degrees latitude of the equator. There are some other areas at higher latitudes, such as the coast of southeast Florida, United States ...

(Af) with heavy to very heavy rainfall year-round.

References

External links

*
Photographs of the effect of the tsunami of 17 July 2006 on Pangandaran
{{coord, 7.6969, S, 108.6568, E, region:ID_type:city, display=title Districts of West Java Beaches of Indonesia Populated places in West Java