Canada
Whales work island channels below forest that has never been cut.
The floatplane lifts over water threaded with islands to the horizon. Below, whales work the channels between forest that has never been cut.
Clayoquot's sound-and-island maze holds some of the coast's greatest surviving old growth, reached by boat and floatplane from Tofino. Hot springs, bear coasts and wilderness lodges, one cooking from spruce broth to sablefish off its own foraged backyard, set the range of ambition. The biosphere designation reflects battles fought and won here.
Solo
Guided water days open the biosphere to a traveller without a boat.
Couple
A lodge night deep in the sound is the coast's quietest luxury.
Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge cooks from foraged Pacific Northwest ingredients, spruce broth to sablefish.
Day trips run on Tofino provisioning; the sound has no shops.

Oirase Gorge
Japan
A dozen waterfalls threading through autumn beech in a gorge carpeted with moss and ferns.

Daintree Rainforest
Australia
Warm rain drums on fan palms where ancient plant lineages still crowd the canopy.

Massa
Morocco
Mist, reeds and birdcalls follow one estuary path until Atlantic surf drowns them out.

Uljin Geumgang Pine Forest
South Korea
Five hundred years as royal timber left a pine forest nothing else touched.

Îles de la Madeleine
Canada
Red cliffs crumble into turquoise shallows around an Acadian archipelago of dunes and fishing ports.

Atlin
Canada
A gold-rush lake town drowses beside jade water beneath far-northern peaks.

Tadoussac
Canada
Whales feed where the cold Saguenay meets the St Lawrence beneath a village of red roofs.

Waterton Lakes
Canada
Prairie runs straight into mountain walls beside a deep, wind-bright lake.