Casa Molle

We’re sitting alone on the cacti-filled terrace of our room at Casa Molle when I turn to Dr Smith with an audacious suggestion. What I have in mind is certainly not the sort of thing we’d normally get up to on holiday. But we’re on our honeymoon, so perhaps it’s time to loosen the rules. 'Sweetie, I’ve been thinking, what if we… cancel all the excursions?'  

You see, we’re doers, Dr Smith and I. The type who approach holidays with Scout-like vim and quietly judge those who opt for fly-and-flops. On the one-hour flight from Santiago up to the Elqui Valley, we’d assiduously read up on the region’s world-class stargazing, Pisco-making prowess and mysticism (it’s been declared the planetary centre of kundalini energy, if you go in for that kind of thing). We pondered why a region with so much going for it wasn’t on the radar of most foreign tourists, who tend to hop between the Atacama Desert and Patagonia, missing out these emerald valleys and quartz mountains entirely. The short drive from the airport with Casa Molle’s font-of-knowledge guide Mauro, passing vineyards and fruit plantations, only added further inspiration. Condors! Petroglyphs! Mind-altering plants! Cave portals to alternate dimensions! 

As soon as we’d stepped within the estate’s adobe walls — the resident flock of green parrots squawking their welcome — we were bombarding the reception team with a list of activities we simply had to fit into on our two-night stay. They valiantly promised to plot a schedule that ticked off distilleries, horse-riding, hiking and beekeeping, warning it’d call for early starts and on-the-hoof packed lunches. 

But then we’d been led through the hotel grounds. Clocked the sunken fire pit, over-water cabanas and hummingbirds flitting among the cacti. Caught the whiff of garlic and grilled meat drifting from the weekly communal barbecue lunch. Registered the all-pervasive sense of cosseted calm between the low-slung, reed-thatched buildings. Surely we’d be fools to spend our waking hours away from this veritable Eden, to treat it as a mere crash pad? I mean, Casa Molle is literally the cover shot of a coffee-table book entitled Chile’s Best Hotels (a copy is casually placed in our room). Strawberry, a stray tabby cat turned hotel resident, has the right idea: once you find yourself in paradise, stay put.  

Dr Smith was in agreement: we would save the Boy/Girl Scout energy for Patagonia and get our fill of vineyards in Colchagua on the next leg of our trip. Here, it was time to embrace the Joy Of Missing Out.  

And so begins our rotation through various alfresco loafing areas: a day-bed topped with rattan parasols, a huge, circular nest of a sofa (our personal favourite), squishy armchairs around tables dressed with succulents and pumpkins, and sunbeds on the sand in an adults-only ‘secret’ garden. A generous seat-to-guest ratio is, after all, a key marker of any self-respecting luxury resort.  

'Tuna, señorina?' A waiter appears beside my lounger, proffering a pre-prandial flute of pale green liquid. Not fish flavoured, thank goodness; tuna, it turns out, is the Chilean name for prickly pear and makes a darn tasty addition to the house Pisco Sours.  

This leaning into all things local also makes for some memorable hotel decor. No corporate-selected canvases here. Instead, shelves heave with pre-Columbian ceramics; dried-out ears of corn are suspended from the restaurant wall in an inspired sort of tapestry; and bedroom doors bear carvings of local flora and fauna. Even the loo art is culturally on-point: a couple of intricately patterned, alpaca-wool, Andean chullo hats displayed in frames. (More aesthetic flair, it must be said, has been lavished on communal areas than bedrooms — the latter are tasteful but a tad plain by comparison and modestly sized for the price point.) 

Next morning, breakfast arrives as a series of platters — freshly baked cakes, exotic fruit from the hotel’s orchard, fresh sheep’s cheeses — and tiny dishes containing everything from avocado to dulce de leche. All we need to deliberate over is which way to have our eggs and whether we can squeeze in another mouthful of pumpkin pie. It’s a similar story at lunch and dinner, where the generous set menus leave us free from food envy.  

True to form as the token Brits on-site, we’re the only guests who make a beeline for the poolside straight after breakfast and strip off. The Chileans, on the other hand, seem to think it’s far too, well, chilly. They stroll about in a look we dub ‘cosy ranch chic’: chunky knitwear, boots and ponchos, all perfectly co-ordinated with the earthy textures and neutrals of the interiors. Fair enough, we’ve arrived in the austral autumn, but temperatures are still in the high teens and the sky is like a slab of lapis lazuli, which more than qualifies as sunbathing weather for those of us who live in Scotland.  

That said, a toe-dip in the outdoor pool reveals it's even colder than the cocktails, so instead we seek out the hot tubs, set within a slightly scruffy-looking walnut grove. 'Glad we skipped the hike?' I ask Dr Smith as we ease into the bubbling water. A blissful sigh drifts through the steam: 'JOMO-OOO.'

Maybe it’s Elqui’s energetic fields messing with the space-time continuum, but our days still feel curiously busy considering we’re not going anywhere. 'Right, we’ve got the meditation class at midday, followed by the kitchen-garden tour and seed workshop, then straight over to the lagoon for the sound-bathing experience,' I reel off after scanning the daily activities blackboard. Looking for the cookery class, I accidentally gatecrash a temazcal ceremony, mistaking the domed sweat lodge and waft of aromatic smoke for an outdoor pizza oven, until I see that a shaman rather than a chef is brandishing the herbs. Yes, there’s a whole lot happening within the hotel’s 42 acres. Since the majority of these pursuits involve being supine or at least stationary, though, it doesn’t really count as cheating on the JOMO cause, does it?  

As for the main action around here, it happens after dark. I’m talking about astronomy, obviously. Elqui Valley is the world’s oldest International Dark Sky Sanctuary and Casa Molle takes full advantage of its 300 annual cloud-free days and lack of light pollution by setting up a telescope in the grounds each week.  

Wrapped up in hotel-issue fleecy ponchos to keep out the night-time chill, we spend our final evening peering into the lens with the visiting astronomer. Cloud bands across Jupiter, the ‘stellar nursery’ of Tarantula Nebula, our ‘neighbouring’ spiral galaxy Andromeda, which lies 2.5 million light-years away — all this suddenly looks close enough to touch. Turns out we didn’t need to venture into the Elqui Valley’s foothills to find that Tibetan-cave portal or sample shamanic psychoactives; what we can see right there, steps from our bedroom, is just as mind-bending.