French Polynesia

12 records and a geography no other country offers: a motu, a strip of coral sand on the rim of a lagoon, with a mountain across the water and a wall of reef behind. The lagoon is the product, and it is enclosed, warm and calm in a way open-ocean islands are not.

The extremes of the register sit here. Nukutepipi is a private atoll in the Tuamotus reached by a four-hour charter, with a lagoon larger than several European lakes and one house on it. The Brando holds Tetiaroa under an arrangement Marlon Brando spent forty years arranging, with a research station that opened before the hotel and still sets the rules.

Distance is the recurring cost and the register states it in hours rather than adjectives. Tahiti is eight hours from Los Angeles, and most of these islands are a domestic flight and a boat beyond that. Nothing here is a short trip, and the properties are priced for people who were never going to come for four nights.

The lagoon has a limit worth knowing. Water inside a motu's reef is shallow, warm and often still — beautiful, and thin on large marine life compared with Fiji or the Coral Sea.