The 14 Best Hidden Gems in North America

A sub-Arctic town on the Hudson Bay coast known as the polar bear capital of the world, where bears gather each autumn waiting for the sea ice to freeze.

Specially built tundra vehicles bring visitors safely within metres of wild bears, and the same stretch of coast offers beluga whale watching in summer and reliable northern lights viewing in winter.

No road connects Churchill to the rest of Manitoba.

Hierve el Agua is a set of mineral-rich springs in the hills outside Oaxaca that have calcified over thousands of years into cliffside formations resembling frozen waterfalls.

Two natural infinity pools sit right at the cliff edge, letting swimmers look out over the valley below.

The site is far quieter than Mexico's beach and pyramid destinations, reachable only by a bumpy mountain road.

The Vinales Valley is a UNESCO World Heritage landscape in western Cuba, where massive limestone mogotes rise dramatically from the flat valley floor like green-covered fortresses.

The traditional tobacco farms, red earth roads, royal palm trees, and brilliant blue skies make it one of the Caribbean's most distinctive landscapes.

Mexico's Copper Canyon is actually a network of canyons in the Sierra Madre Occidental, several deeper than the Grand Canyon, cut by rivers through pine forest and red rock.

The main way to see it is the Chepe train, which crosses 37 bridges and passes through 86 tunnels on its way between the desert lowlands and the pine-covered rim.

Small Rarámuri (Tarahumara) communities still live within the canyon system.

Isla Holbox is a car-free sandbar island off Mexico's Yucatán coast, reached only by boat, with sandy streets, pastel-painted guesthouses, and a slower pace than the resorts of Cancún.

Whale sharks gather in the surrounding waters from roughly June to September, drawing snorkel trips out to swim alongside them, and the island's shallow lagoon glows with bioluminescent plankton on dark nights.

A long, wide stretch of soft white sand on Oahu's windward coast, with the Ko'olau mountain range rising green and jagged directly behind it.

It's popular with locals rather than tour buses, so it stays uncrowded even close to Honolulu, and the water is generally calmer than the island's surf-famous North Shore.

Bellows Beach next door adds a second, quieter option within the same bay.

A series of turquoise limestone pools cascades down a natural stone bridge above the rushing Cahabón River, which vanishes underground beneath the pools before reemerging downstream.

Swimming from one pool to the next, framed by dense jungle on all sides, feels remote in a way that matches the effort of reaching it — the last stretch of road is famously rough.

A steep viewpoint hike above gives the classic aerial view of the stacked terraces.

Twice a week, the highland town of Chichicastenango fills with Maya K'iche' vendors from surrounding villages selling hand-woven textiles, wooden masks and pottery in one of Central America's most vividly colourful markets.

The steps of Santo Tomas church, where Maya rituals still take place alongside Catholic worship, form the market's unofficial centrepiece.

A cinder cone volcano that famously erupted from a level cornfield in 1943, growing to over 400 metres within a decade and burying two villages under lava - one of the few volcanoes in the world whose entire life cycle has been documented from birth.

The half-buried bell tower of San Juan Parangaricutiro's church still protrudes from the hardened lava field, an eerie, singular sight.

Horseback rides across the black lava field to the church ruins, followed by a hike up the cinder cone itself, make for a genuinely unusual full day out.

Tucked into the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts, Jacob's Pillow has hosted a summer dance festival on the same rural farmstead since 1933, making it the longest-running dance festival in the United States.

Companies spanning ballet, contemporary, and world dance perform across an intimate wooden theatre and outdoor stages, with free daily talks and showings that make top-tier dance accessible without a ticket.

One of Cuba's oldest towns, founded in the 1500s, Remedios is a pocket-sized colonial gem that sees a fraction of the visitors that flock to Trinidad.

Pastel-painted arcaded buildings ring a central plaza dominated by two churches, including one with an extraordinary gilded baroque altar.

Its quiet daily calm gives no hint that it hosts Las Parrandas, one of Cuba's wildest festivals, every Christmas Eve.

A small colorful island town connected to the mainland by a short causeway, Flores serves as the main gateway to Tikal but has enough charm — cobbled streets, lakeside cafés, pastel buildings — to justify a night or two beyond being a transit stop.

Built on the site of the last independent Maya kingdom to fall to conquest, in 1697, it sits on Lake Petén Itzá, where sunset boat rides round out a low-key stay before or after the ruins.

A mountain nature reserve in the Escambray range above Trinidad, Topes de Collantes offers a cooler, greener contrast to Cuba's coastal scenery, with hiking trails leading to waterfalls, natural swimming pools and coffee plantations tucked into the hills.

Caburní Falls is the reserve's best-known hike, a steep trail down to a swimmable waterfall pool, while the area's coffee-growing history adds a working-landscape element beyond pure scenery.

Boats gliding along this river between Lake Izabal and the Caribbean pass through a dramatic limestone gorge draped in jungle, hot sulfur springs bubbling right at the waterline, and Castillo de San Felipe, a Spanish colonial fort built to guard against pirates raiding the river route inland.

The mix of jungle scenery, warm-water swimming and colonial history along one boat journey gives it a quieter character than Guatemala's more famous ruins.