Bahamas

The Bahamas is not one island - it is 700 of them, scattered across 260,000 square kilometers of the clearest ocean water on the planet. Only about 30 are inhabited, which means there are hundreds of empty cays, sandbars, and coral islands out there with nothing but seabirds and sea turtles. The water is so transparent that from a plane, you can see the sandy bottom in shades of turquoise, aquamarine, and electric blue that don't look real until you're floating in them.

Nassau and Paradise Island draw the cruise ships and casino crowds, but the real Bahamas lies in the Out Islands - Eleuthera with its pink sand beaches, the Exumas with their swimming pigs, Andros with the third-largest barrier reef on Earth, and Long Island with Dean's Blue Hole, the deepest underwater sinkhole known to exist. The Bahamas sits just 80 kilometers off Florida, yet its Junkanoo festival, rake-and-scrape music, and conch-obsessed cuisine are distinctly Caribbean. This is an archipelago that has been luring people since Columbus first made landfall in the New World on San Salvador in 1492.