Tierra Patagonia Hotel & Spa

"5* | $3,500pn (three nights minimum) Baillie Lodges (Southern Ocean Lodge) A room with a view is enduringly special, but one that frames such retina-searing scenery is something else. All 40 rooms in this horseshoe-shaped hotel gaze up at the Paine Massif, rising beyond the Sarmiento Lake, where waves roar when the wind picks up. Whether you’re snuggled in a sheepskin rug on a windowsill or swimming in the infinity pool, those towers are transfixing and ever-changing with the weather. I’ve been to Chile’s premier national park before, but no mirador or mountain trail can match this view. A passion project for the ski-obsessed Purcell family, and now majority-owned by Australian remote-luxe pioneers Baillie Lodges, this environmentally sensitive property is almost impossible to see from afar. By storing and replanting all vegetation on site, landscape artists Catalina Phillips and Gerardo Ariztia have created a wildlife haven where guanacos and rhea graze in the bush. Respect for culture and nature is everywhere, from dioramas depicting Chile’s history of exploration to Calafate sours made with locally produced berry liqueur at the bar. Excursions appreciate people and place: visits to ancient burial sites and the chance to shadow researchers studying pumas in their natural habitat. Set in prime gaucho land on the fringes of the national park, Tierra offers a chance to see and do Patagonia differently, starting and always ending with that unbeatable view."