One of the world's largest raised coral atolls and among the least disturbed places on Earth — home to some 100,000 giant tortoises, far more than the Galápagos.
The country's northernmost islands — rolling emerald hills that meet the sea in dramatic cliffs, stone villages built to withstand typhoons, and a windswept beauty utterly unlike the tropical lowlands.
The archetypal South Pacific paradise — a jagged volcanic peak ringed by a luminous turquoise lagoon and a protective coral reef, encircled by palm-fringed islets of white sand.
A small volcanic island 'born of fire and water' — home to more volcanoes per square kilometre than anywhere in the country, ringed by hot and cold springs, waterfalls, and the bare white sandbar of White Island offshore.
A remote Bicol peninsula where jagged limestone islets, hidden lagoons, and pocket white-sand beaches crowd a warm, reef-fringed sea — an El Nido–like seascape on the Pacific side of Luzon.
Gulf of Chiriquí, Veraguas Province, Pacific Panama
The largest island in Central America, cut off from the mainland when sea levels rose — and left almost untouched for eighty-five years because it was a penal colony nobody would go near.
A cluster of green, wind-scoured islands rising in sheer sea cliffs from the wild North Atlantic — grass-roofed villages, cascading waterfalls, and a lake that seems to hang above the ocean.
A small 'rainbow island' in the Strait of Hormuz where salt-dome geology paints the hills and beaches in red, ochre, and a spectrum of mineral colours — including sand you can taste.
A scatter of 124 small, mushroom-shaped limestone islands in the Lingayen Gulf — ancient coral reef, uplifted and undercut by the sea into rounded green-capped islets you can hop between by boat.
A wild Hebridean island of jagged black peaks, mist-wrapped pinnacles, and sea cliffs — the most dramatic scenery in Scotland, stitched with waterfalls, lochs, and ancient rock.
A slender, uninhabited coral island in the Camotes Sea famous for its long, curving white sandbar that trails off both ends into clear turquoise shallows — a near-perfect desert island.
A jungle-cloaked island off Cambodia's coast ringed by long white-sand beaches and clear turquoise water — and famous for seas that glow blue with bioluminescent plankton at night.
Šibenik-Knin / Zadar County, Adriatic Sea, Croatia
A stark, sun-bleached archipelago of some 89 islands, islets, and reefs — the densest island cluster in the Adriatic — whose seaward cliffs, the dramatic 'crowns', drop straight into deep blue water.
A chain of dramatic Arctic islands where jagged granite peaks rise straight from the sea above white beaches and red fishing villages — improbably mild for its latitude, and lit by the midnight sun and the northern lights.
A wild, protected island off the northeastern tip of Luzon — rolling green headlands, empty beaches, and a Spanish-era lighthouse on the dramatic Cape Engaño cliffs above the meeting of two seas.
A tear-drop island of surf, palm forest, and mangrove — home to the famous Cloud 9 reef break, the glassy Sugba Lagoon, tidal rock pools, and one of the largest mangrove reserves in the country.
A small island of clear-water coves, waterfalls spilling into turquoise pools, and coral sanctuaries just off the sand — all fed by rain that sinks straight through its raised-coral bedrock and resurfaces inland as cold blue springs.
An isolated Indian Ocean island of such strange, ancient life that it's been called the 'Galápagos of the Indian Ocean' — home to umbrella-shaped dragon's blood trees and hundreds of plants found nowhere else on Earth.
A remote archipelago of green volcanic islands rising from the mid-Atlantic — crater lakes, hot springs, hydrangea-lined roads, and some of the best whale watching on Earth.
A low, coral-fringed archipelago in the southern Red Sea — turquoise shallows, mangroves, and reefs that shelter dugongs, nesting seabirds, and a gazelle found nowhere else.
A remote volcanic archipelago where evolution is on open display — giant tortoises, marine iguanas, and fearless wildlife found nowhere else, the living laboratory that shaped Darwin's theory of natural selection.
A double chain of coral atolls scattered across the Indian Ocean — nearly 1,200 low-lying islands ringed by turquoise lagoons and vibrant reefs, and the lowest-lying nation on Earth.
Tanintharyi Region, far southern Myanmar, Andaman Sea
Around eight hundred islands scattered down Myanmar's southern coast — limestone and granite under unbroken rainforest, barely inhabited, and closed to outsiders until 1997.
Tanzania's Indian Ocean islands — coral-fringed shores of blinding white sand and turquoise shallows, spice plantations and mangroves, wrapped around the old trading port of Stone Town.
