If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD1,223.60), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
You may be in the secluded steppe of Chile’s Chacabuco Valley, but Explora Patagonia National Park has more than mastered adventure-fuelled forays. Bespoke itineraries, made by the park's expert guides, sort your days for you, which you’ll find filled with hikes around the southern slopes, kayaks along the crystalline Cochrane Lake and bike rides by the lagoons. Back at the lodge, award-winning chefs prepare local Chilean cuisine for evenings under the stars, masseurs await for restorative rub-downs and rooms are primed with floor-to-ceiling windows and cushy king-size beds for scenic slumbers. Rest up, we’re doing it all again tomorrow…
10am; check-in, 1pm. Both are flexible, subject to availability and an additional charge.
Prices
Double rooms from £979.82 ($1,224).
More details
Rates include all meals and drinks (excluding certain wines), a range of activities and explorations, entry fees for the national park, and airport transfers.
Also
Staff can arrange for explorations to be in vans fitted with ramps, so everyone can explore with ease. All of the lodge’s communal spaces are wheelchair-friendly and one of the rooms is accessible – just let staff know if you’d like handrails added by the bed and in the bathroom.
Hotel closed
The hotel closes annually between 1 May and 30 September.
At the hotel
Tailored-to-you exploration itineraries; free-to-use trekking poles, and cycling and kayaking gear. In rooms: free bottled water, tea- and coffee-making kit, hairdryer, and bespoke bath products.
Our favourite rooms
You may not be spoilt with choice here, but you’ll certainly bag vast views of Mount Tamanguito wherever you choose to lay your head. For extra space, we’d suggest going for one of the five suites, which all have their own living areas fitted with hand-carved furnishings and rustic-red hues that lean into the steppe’s serene surroundings.
Spa
Set a short walk from the lodge, the small outdoor spa has a treatment room for post-hike massages, and a number of outdoor hot tubs.
Packing tips
Your sturdiest hiking boots and an eagle eye for wildlife spotting.
Also
Patagonia National Park’s land belongs to the North Face- and Patagonia-alumni Doug and Kristine Tompkins, who donated it to the Chilean government in 2018 to help fund and protect conservation efforts in the region.
Children
Little Smiths are welcome, but there’s no kids’ club and explorations are better suited for the adults.
Sustainability efforts
As a B Corp, Explora is committed to protecting Patagonia’s national park. The lodge’s walls were built with stones from local quarries and roofs with up-cycled wood and copper; since opening, it has achieved carbon neutrality and the owners have helped fund reforestation programmes throughout Chile; food is sourced from nearby suppliers; the team are all hired locally to help the region’s employment levels, and local community programmes (including projects with Chile’s schools, cultural centres and farmers) are at the forefront of Explora’s social efforts.
Ask for a table by the window for vast views of the Tamango and Tamanguito mountains.
Dress Code
Taupe tones and your best wide-brimmed cowboy hat.
Hotel restaurant
Helmed by chef Pablo Jesús Rivero – owner of accoladed Buenos Aires restaurant Don Julio – Rincón Gaucho serves seasonal fare, made with locally sourced ingredients, under the lodge’s vaulted ceilings and against sweeping mountain silhouettes. Menus are an ode to Chilean cuisine, so expect plenty of roasted lamb, cooked in a traditional gaucho style that enhances the natural flavours.
Hotel bar
Head to the restaurant for calafate sours (a Patagonian take on pisco sours) and a long list of local wines to sample at a mountain-facing table.
Last orders
Breakfast is served between 7am to 9am; lunch is from 1pm till 3pm, and dinner is 7pm to 9pm.
Room service
In-room dishes are available during restaurant opening hours.
Explora Patagonia National Park is set in the heart of the park’s Chacabuco Valley, within Chilean Patagonia’s Aysén region.
Planes
The remote location will make things a little trickier, but not impossible. If you’re flying from Europe or the US, it’s likely you’ll have at least one layover in Santiago in order to reach Balmaceda, which is the hotel’s closest commercial airport and a six-hour drive away. If you’d rather limit time on the road, there’s a small domestic airfield in Cochrane (a 25-minute drive away), that you can take a charter flight to from Balmaceda. Transfers from both airports are included in the rates – just let staff know where you’ll be arriving and they’ll be waiting.
Automobiles
For those planning a road trip through Chilean Patagonia before reaching the lodge, there are rental booths at Balmaceda Airport and a public car park in the National Park. From Balmaceda, the route to Explora is straight down Route 7 (Carretera Austral).
Worth getting out of bed for
Explora Patagonia National Park has you covered when it comes to filling your days… Explore the steppe on foot with guided hikes around its mountains, or grab a pair of wheels from the hotel and set off for a bike ride through the Chacabuco Valley. Aquaphiles can spend a day kayaking down the Cochrane River and through its crystal-clear lagoons. Or, if that’s all sounding a little too arduous, explore the park with a 4x4 tour or head to the Patagonia National Park Museum to learn more about the region’s landscape and cultural history. And after all that, it would only be right to stop by the spa for some truly transformative treatments.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this adventurous hotel in Patagonia and unpacked their hiking boots and binoculars, a full account of their outdoorsy break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Explora Patagonia National Park in Chile…
It may take one rather lengthy, but undeniably scenic, stint down Chile’s famed Route 7 – better known as the Carretera Austral – to reach Explora Patagonia National Park, but once you arrive at its mountain-graced backdrops, any reservations you once had about its secluded spot feel far, far away. Personalised itineraries are adventure-packed here, so start by donning your best hiking boots (or wetsuits, if you’d rather take to the water) and head into Patagonia’s 690-square-mile steppe with your guide for days spent spotting galloping guanacos and cruising through teal-toned lagoons. After all that, plus a restorative session at the spa, your room at the lodge awaits, dressed in earthy hues, hand-carved furnishings and a king-size bed plump enough to fix any hikers’ fatigue. Once you’ve dined among the mountains at the lodge’s Rincón Gaucho restaurant and hunkered down for the night, rest should come pretty easy…
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