Australia & South Pacific

The South Pacific is the farthest destination category for most American travelers. That distance is part of the point. The Great Barrier Reef — 1,400 miles of living coral off the Queensland coast — cannot be replicated closer to home. The fiordland of New Zealand's South Island, where glaciers carved 14-million-year-old mountains down to the sea, is in a category by itself. The overwater bungalows of Bora Bora are as specific to French Polynesia as they are to anything in a photograph.

These destinations require commitment: 10 to 18 hours in the air from the continental United States. They repay that commitment in kind. The South Pacific is where the world still surprises travelers who thought they had seen most of it.