Sugar Beach, A Viceroy Resort

No Caribbean resort occupies a stage like Sugar Beach. The property fills the Val des Pitons, the rainforested bowl of a former sugar plantation that runs down to a pale crescent of sand precisely between Petit Piton and Gros Piton, the volcanic spires of St Lucia's UNESCO World Heritage site. Whichever way you look—from the water, the beach, the villas climbing the hillside—one or both Pitons fills the frame, and the effect never becomes ordinary.

Accommodation is colonial-crisp: white-on-white villas and cottages with four-posters, shuttered windows and private plunge pools on most categories, scattered up the valley with buggy service shuttling guests between hillside and beach. The beach itself, brightened with imported white sand over the volcanic base, offers some of the island's best swimming and snorkelling—the reef at its southern end drops along Petit Piton's underwater flank.

The Rainforest Spa treats guests in open-sided gazebos among the trees, and dining ranges from refined plantation-house menus at the Great Room to toes-in-sand grills and the atmospheric Cane Bar's rum and sushi. Families are well handled with a kids' club, though honeymooners dominate the plunge-pool categories. Soufrière's drive-in volcano and mud baths are minutes away. For pure setting, Sugar Beach competes with anywhere in the Caribbean.