Candidasa was once the main tourist resort in the area and the last large resort before Amed. Now it serves mainly for scuba diving and snorkeling. The town itself is laid out along the seashore, although the golden sand beach that people once flocked to has been destroyed. The local unscrupulous developers blew up the reef to provide building materials for hotels for the tourists who came to visit the golden sand beaches. That's a fairly clear definition of irony. The beach is now a combination of sand, pebbles, or concrete buttresses (groynes), which have been installed in an attempt to reclaim some of the golden sand. The beach is impassible at high tide.
The main road passes through the town and accommodation and restaurants are laid out along either side, although the best of both are not necessarily on the seaward side. You can tell that Candidasa was very popular at one point and while the area is trying to reclaim some of its former glory, it will take many years for the beach to recover -- if indeed it does. When all's said and done, Candidasa does make a good base to explore this scenic and interesting region, given its central location.
