Bocas del Toro

There may be no more "undiscovered, " off-the-beaten-path places left in the Caribbean, but Panama's Bocas del Toro archipelago comes close. This collection of 10 or so islands near the border with Costa Rica is one of the favorite stops for Panamanian tourists, but has been mostly ignored by the rest of the travel world.

Yet it has a lot going for it: warm, aqua-turquoise water (this is the Caribbean after all), some nice beaches (Bluff Beach on Colon is a favorite with both sunbathers and surfers) and reefs (in Admiral Bay) for snorkeling, and even some tropical rainforest with rewarding hikes and more than 300 bird species. (One islet, Swan Key, is a bird sanctuary, and a nesting ground for boobies and tropical birds.) There are only about 10,000 residents in the chain. And curiously, in this Spanish-speaking nation, older islanders speak English, thanks to longtime immigration from Jamaica.

Columbus was here in 1502 (he had some boat repair to do) and the main town of Bocas del Toro, on Colon island, was a banana boomtown a century ago. That heyday ended in the 1920s, but some of the stately colonial buildings and parks from that time still remain, part of a landscape that, for the Caribbean, seems stuck in time.