Islands and beaches. Both promise pleasure, escape, beauty. Combined, they create that most elusive destination—paradise. After twenty years of global reporting, we present the thirty best island beaches in the world today. Sheltered by reefs or pounded by surf, edged by lagoons or on the brink of the deep, they range from remote alabaster arcs to hip-and-handy sandbox playpens. And they deliver on every desire. Pick your paradise

The whole idea of a beach changes when it's on an island. Whatever the lures of a mainland beach (and they are many), something is missing. The very act of crossing water seems to decisively remove us from the anchorage of the everyday. Even if only 120 feet separate the Greek island of Lefkas from the mainland, by crossing that narrow channel you know you've left the mundane for the magic of the Ionian chain, where the beaches amplify the sense of apartness—of having been shaped like the islands themselves, by some primal force. Sand is, after all, debris—the fine dissolution of rock or coral, and the agent of our passage back to where we ourselves began, as fish.

The delirium of finding such a beach, stripping down, and plunging in is truly elemental. This experience is just as keenly felt if the island is—like Hawaii—a five-hour flight away from our continent, where the islands are actually the tops of volcanic mountains. The reductio ad absurdum of this island delirium is the desert island of cartoons—what Stephen King, in the July 1990 issue of this magazine, described as "no more than a hummock, somewhere in the Pacific, with one sickly palm tree growing on it." That island is all beach. And yet the literary conceit remains that a castaway rescued from such a place is not altogether happy to be back in civilization, any more than Tarzan was when reacquainted with his noble pedigree. A curious, primitive rapture has been left behind. Certainly, you won't leave any of these great beaches without regret. The writers who went forth and diligently gumshoed the diverse qualities of beaches—from the Caribbean to the Baltic, the Mediterranean to the deep Pacific—have delivered. They leave no doubt that island beaches are a breed apart.

GREECE
Shipwreck Beach, Zakynthos
Safe swimming, No crowds

An Ionian Sea beach that would be worth the trip even without the centerpiece rusting hulk of a smuggling vessel embedded in the sand—the result of a pirate raid that went wrong.

Wow Factor: Scooped out of a vertical wall of white rock, this is an idyllic and isolated beach.

Best Bed: The stone-walled Hotel Nobelos is five miles from the beach, in a lovely rural setting (30-26950-27632; nobelos.gr; doubles, $380–$570).

Fair Warning: The only way to reach the beach is in one of the small excursion boats leaving frequently from several ports on Zakynthos and piloted, one hopes, by better captains than the smuggler (whose illicit cargo was cigarettes).

UNITED STATES
Cumberland Island, Georgia
Safe swimming, No crowds

For nearly a century, members of the Carnegie family owned most of Georgia's largest sea island. The National Park System has since become an equally protective steward.