Hotel Salto Chico

Room 19, Hotel Salto Chico, Torres del Paine National Park, Chile; 702-693-7111. There are 50 rooms, ranging from $2,660 to $6,224 per person for a four-night stay (including meals, hotel transfers, and guided tours). Room 19, a suite, is $6,224 (866-750-6699).

Rising above the vast Patagonian plain, the horned 9,840-foot Los Cuernos del Paine resemble something otherworldly. No surprise. After all, you're in the province of Última Esperanza—Last Hope—in the shadows of the Macizo del Paine massif. Your home in this UNESCO biosphere reserve is the snow-white, seven-acre Hotel Salto Chico (named after a nearby waterfall, which, incidentally, is not all that chico). A motorboat (or one of Salto Chico's two dozen horses) carries guests to Refugio Pehoé, a campsite on Lake Pehoé's northern coast. But the 50-mile Torres del Paine hiking circuit awaits really rugged adventurers—including you. Expect to be stared at by brown-eyed guanacos, camel cousins whose undercoat is like cashmere. After a week or so of trekking past calving glaciers and through forests and bogs—and of sleeping under the stars—Salto Chico will beckon again. In the hotel's quincho, or barbecue area, gauchos will reinvigorate you with spit-roasted lamb and maté tea. Later, a soak in the outdoor sauna at the Casa de Baños del Ona complex will soothe aching muscles, and you'll be dreaming long before you make it back to your cypress and lenga wood suite. Massif dreams.