Find Your Perfect Island

Escape to your own version of Paradise at some of our favorite Islands worldwide, from the coast of New England to the Baltic Sea.

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for culture / CHILOE, CHILE

Chiloé, it’s often said, is an island whose character was inherited from surrounding seas rather than from the Chilean mainland be it through the fishermen who set out on foggy mornings to bring home a catch to make curanto (seafood and meat steam-cooked over hot rocks) or the Magellanic and Humboldt penguins that squint out to sea from the western coast. The architecture in this blustery, green land looks like nothing else in South America. In Chiloé you’ll see palafitos (stilt houses) in Castro (pictured) and other villages, as well as World Heritage-listed churches built entirely from timber, which creaks sonorously in the Pacific wind. Among the latter are the church of San Francisco de Castro, painted mustard yellow and purple, and the more sober 18th-century Santa Maria de Loreto, held together by wooden pegs.

TIP

The 106,000-acre Chiloé National Park teems with wildlife, from 110 different types of birds, to foxes and the reclusive pudú (the world’s smallest deer), which inhabits the shadowy forests of the contorted tepú tree.

for doing absolutely nothing / CAYE CAULKER, BELIZE