Mauritius

Mark Twain supposedly said that God created Mauritius first, and then made a copy as heaven. Whether he actually said it is debatable, but the sentiment is not. This volcanic island in the Indian Ocean, about 2,000 kilometers off the southeast coast of Africa, is almost unreasonably beautiful. Turquoise lagoons ringed by coral reefs, black volcanic peaks draped in green, and the famous underwater waterfall illusion off the southwestern coast where sand and silt create the appearance of a cascade plunging into the ocean depths.

But Mauritius is far more interesting than a postcard. It had no indigenous human population - the Dutch, French, and British arrived in succession, bringing enslaved people from Africa and Madagascar, and later indentured laborers from India and China. The result is one of the most genuinely multicultural societies on Earth, where Hindu temples sit next to mosques and Catholic churches, Creole and Bhojpuri are spoken alongside French and English, and the food is a glorious collision of all of the above. The dodo, of course, lived here and only here before being driven to extinction in the late 17th century, making Mauritius the global symbol of what happens when humans meet isolated island species.