Maui, Hawaii

Maui is not one place. The island runs from the North Shore — where the trade winds and the Pacific swell meet at Ho'okipa, one of the most photographed surf breaks in the world — to the Upcountry plateau, where old plantation towns sit in the cool air above the coast and the oldest wooden structure on Maui still stands on Baldwin Avenue in Makawao. The West Maui coast runs from Lahaina north to Kapalua, where Honolua Bay — a right-hand point over a coral reef, protected marine conservation area, one of the best big-wave breaks in the Pacific from October through March — sits above a crescent of white sand that has twice been named America's Best Beach. Wailea, on the south coast, is where the five-star resorts are, and where Hotel Wailea sits on a bluff above all of them, three hundred feet above the sea, independently owned, adults-only, Hawaii's only Relais & Châteaux, the reason some guests never look anywhere else.

The surf follows the swell. North swells from October through March go to Honolua Bay and Ho'okipa — reef breaks that separate the serious surfers from the visitors in a single set. South swells from April through October turn up at the south shore breaks around Kihei and Wailea. Year-round, the trade winds arrive from the northeast in the afternoon and the North Shore catches them cleanest — the reason Ho'okipa is also the windsurfing capital of the world, with the conditions that produce world championships year after year. The yoga infrastructure grew alongside the surf culture and now runs deeper on Maui than almost anywhere else in the Pacific: retreat centres, teacher training programmes, studios in every town, and at Lumeria — the 1910 plantation building between Paia and Makawao — a programme that requires enrollment as a condition of staying.