Pacific Ocean

34 records across seven countries, and no shared idea of what an island resort is. Fiji sells a beach and a family; French Polynesia sells a motu and a lagoon; Panama's Pacific side sells cold, rich water and whales, which is not what most people mean by the Pacific at all.

The water divides the ocean more than the map does. Polynesian lagoons are warm, shallow and enclosed, and a motu resort lives inside one: the reef is the wall and the view is the mountain across it. Fijian islands sit in open sea with fringing reef, which is why the diving is better and the swimming rougher. Islas Secas and Isla Palenque face the open eastern Pacific, where the water is cooler and greener and carries far more life than the postcard version.

Distance is the other constant. Nothing here is reached quickly: the Lau group is an hour past Nadi by air, the Tuamotus need a domestic flight, and the remotest entries in the whole register — Nukutepipi, Haggerstone, Kaibu — are in this ocean. That is the appeal and it is also the reason several of them have closed, changed hands and reopened under new names.