If the Gold Coast is basically a warm-weather Blackpool, then the Ningaloo Coast is Australia’s Outer Hebrides: fringed by golden sands, washed by turquoise shallows, it is so far off the beaten track you could camp all week on the beach and never see a soul.

Midway along the Coral Coast, which arches 1,300 miles north from Perth to Broome, the Ningaloo Coast is effectively 300-odd miles of abandoned white sand. A swimming-with- dolphins scene at Monkey Mia admittedly draws crowds, while Coral Bay and Exmouth both have a few caravan parks, but anywhere else on the coast you’ll see more kangaroos than combis.

Just inland, Cape Range National Park is an ancient, gnarly backdrop for dramatic camping and hiking, but with 2,000 square miles of reef just a short swim from the beach, and whale sharks, dugongs, manta rays and more than 500 types of fish to keep your tick- list busy, snorkelling, diving and sea-kayaking are the main draw.

Crusoe rating: 9 — a Novotel is opening in Exmouth in January, but the coastline here is too vast and too far from travel hubs to draw crowds.

How to do it: Bridge & Wickers (020 7483 6555, www.bridgeandwickers.co.uk) has seven nights at Ningaloo Reef Retreat — a Crusoe-esque tented camp on dunes above the beach, an hour south of Exmouth — from £1,742. The price includes all meals, transfers, guided snorkelling, kayaking and bush-walking, plus flights with Cathay Pacific and Skywest to Exmouth, via Hong Kong and Perth.

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PARIA PENINSULA, Venezuela

Christopher Columbus landed here in 1498 and, give or take the odd corrugated-iron rooftop, not a lot has changed. Extending east for 80 lushly forested miles off Venezuela’s northeast coast, and narrowing to a point less than 10 miles west of Trinidad, the Paria peninsula is as desperately difficult to “do” as it is to forget. Roadless for almost 100 miles around its tip, the coast here is littered with jaw-dropping, utterly deserted beaches, but they can only be visited by boat — and even then there is no public transport to help you out. Fishermen in southern Macura occasionally double up as taxis, but you’ll need good Spanish and sturdy sea legs.

Crusoe rating: 10 — travel at its most intrepid.

How to do it: a man known simply as “Botuto” and his boat (00 58 414 779 8398) can be hired in San Juan de las Galdonas for £120 per day; alternatively, Explore (0870 333 4001, www.explore.co.uk) has a 16-day trip exploring the Paria peninsula by traditional fishing boat, camping on beaches, trekking into the cloudforest, snorkelling along the coast. The trip costs £1,599, including most meals, transfers and flights with TAP Air Portugal to Caracas, via Lisbon.

NICOYA PENINSULA, Costa Rica

Costa Rica’s Pacific coast is big news for international hotel developers, but the Nicoya peninsula — stuck out in the far north of the country, at least four hours by car and ferry from San José — is simply too far from the capital to tempt Señor Sheraton and his conquistadors. This is a place of broad, deserted beaches, backed by forests thick with anteaters and armadillos, coyotes and coatis — and not a serenity spa in sight.

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