U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS

It doesn’t always take a passport to get to paradise. American territories in name, the watersports, beaches, Carnival, and festivals prove the USVI as Caribbean in spirit. Start with 84-mile St. Croix, one of the only places in the region that divers can explore a wall, reef, wreck, and pier in the same day, then dry off to wet their whistles at the Cruzan Rum Distillery and Captain Morgan Visitor Center.

Or set off for St. Thomas, whose elegant gourmet dining complements its duty-free shopping, a tradition established by the original traders to Jamestown, Virginia. Charlotte Amalie, USVI’s capital and one of the most visited cruise ports in the Caribbean, has all the yachting and sport fishing you could want, but the best views of the boats are from on high: Paradise Peak, Flag Hill, Drake’s Seat, and George and Tom Fazio’s cliffside golf course.

The smallest of them all, St. John, is a foil to that bustle. So unspoiled that 800 plant species grow in its hills and so protected, it’s the home of the Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument. Its underwater snorkeling trail at Trunk Bay is a must by sea; the Taino relic-strewn Reef Bay Trail to the Annaberg sugar plantation ruins is a can’t-miss by land.