1 Playa del Carmen, Mexico

Fifty miles south of the high-rise horrors of Cancun is Playa del Carmen, a rambling, palm-roofed party town where hippie kids tote bongos, mariachi men strum guitars and everyone else parades among the boutiques and bars of Fifth Avenue.

It’s an exotic brew, bubbling away behind a 10-mile white-sand beach that never stops jumping — busy with fishing, snorkelling and scuba boats by day, barbecues and dancing by night, as sounds spill out from the Mambo Cafe and the Blue Parrot.

If it gets too lively, grab a bus to Akumal, hire a snorkel at the dive centre and commune with the sea turtles.

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The poshest address is the Mandarin Oriental, 10 minutes from Playa del Carmen by cab, where Exsus (020 7337 9000, exsus.com ) has a terrific saving of £1,056pp on last year: a week this winter starts at £1,549pp, B&B. If you want to be in the heart of things, consider Mosquito Blue (00 52 984 873 1245, mosquitoblue.com), which has slashed 40% off rack rates until December 19; doubles start at £70.

2 Pinney’s Beach, Nevis

A three-mile streak of hot gold sand, pricked with palms and tickled by soft surf. So far, so Caribbean. What makes Pinney’s special is what’s behind it: cookie-shaped Nevis island, just five miles across, with crisp-crumb beaches, a jungly volcano and a population so friendly, it feels like a floating village. Head to Sunshine’s, a ramshackle beach bar serving world-beating lobster lunches, or wade on north to Pinney’s wilder reaches, where pelicans plummet for their breakfast and hand-painted fishing boats ornament the sand.

Pinney’s only hotel is a (fairly unobtrusive) Four Seasons, but we prefer Nisbet Beach Club, with its own hammock-hung strand and an authentic plantation house. Golden Caribbean (0845 085 8080, goldencaribbean.co.uk) has a week in October or November from £1,099pp, a saving of 25%.

Banyan Tree (00 1 869 469 3449, banyantreebandb.com) is the island’s best B&B, with doubles from £85.

3 La Sagesse, Grenada

Here’s a beach so pretty that it prompted a putsch. When Lord Brownlow, a cousin of the Queen, blocked access to La Sagesse in 1974, furious locals stormed the gates — and Grenada’s revolutionary government later seized its sands for the people.

You can’t blame them. This is the back-country Caribbean beach extraordinaire, hidden at the end of a rocky track in the southeast corner of the island.

There’s a mangrove pond where monkeys dangle, a blissed-out beachfront diner serving zingy creole conch... and almost nobody else.

Lord Brownlow’s pink manor house is now a guesthouse, the only place on the beach, with prices held at last winter’s rates: doubles start at £80 until December 14, then £115 thereafter (lasagesse.com). Or try Just Grenada (01373 814214, justgrenada.co.uk), which has a week, room-only, from £735pp (reduced from £930) until December 14, rising to £980pp in January.

4 Turtle Bay, Kenya

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