North America

Maui is the Hawaii that most people picture — golden beaches, whale breaches, road-to-Hana waterfalls, a volcanic crater that looks like the surface of Mars. But the real Maui, the one beyond the resort lobbies and luau buffets, is a working island with a complicated relationship to tourism, a food scene shaped by plantation-era immigration, and landscapes that range from tropical rainforest to alpine desert within a single drive.

Guatemala has everything that draws travellers to Central America — volcanoes, jungle ruins, colonial architecture, indigenous culture — but without the crowds of Costa Rica or the resort infrastructure of Mexico. It’s rawer, cheaper, and more challenging, and that’s exactly why the people who go tend to come back.

Vancouver is a city where you can ski in the morning and kayak in the afternoon, eat the best sushi outside Japan for lunch, and be standing in an old-growth rainforest by dinner. That sounds like tourism-board hyperbole. It’s not — it’s just what happens when you put a modern Pacific Rim city between the Coast Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948 and spent the next seven decades investing in national parks instead. The result: a country the size of West Virginia with 5% of the world’s biodiversity, two coastlines, active volcanoes, cloud forests, and a population that genuinely believes in pura vida — the good life, unhurried and outdoors.

Oaxaca has the best food in Mexico — a statement that starts arguments everywhere except among people who’ve actually been. The mole alone has seven canonical varieties. The mezcal is made in villages an hour from the city by families who’ve been distilling for generations. And the indigenous cultural movements reshaping southern Mexico are centred here.