Traveling to Patagonia National Park, a 650,000-acre expanse in southern Chile, requires a bumpy drive—of up to five hours—along a largely unpaved road from the nearest commercial airport, in Balmaceda. This remoteness makes an adventure here as off-putting as it is attractive.
But now it’s more appealing than ever. After two decades of re-wilding and conservation efforts to mitigate the damage caused by livestock grazing, the area is home to around 3,000 guanacos (a cousin of the llama), 25 adult pumas, 150 Darwin’s rheas (similar to an ostrich), and a small but growing population of endangered guemal deer. Some of them even approach the highway.
In 2021, Explora, a small group of hotels founded by Chilean entrepreneur Pedro Ibáñez, overhauled the park’s only lodge. Spread across a few buildings made of locally sourced stone and recycled wood on a grassy plain where guanacos roam, it has 13 rooms and modern conveniences including a small spa with hot tubs that overlook the mountain range.
Nothing structurally significant was changed, but Explora introduced a minimalist, Scandinavian-design aesthetic, trading the cottage-core drapery for earth-toned linens and rugs made of natural fibers.
In the evenings, guests gather in the lounge with guides and, over pisco sours or glasses of Chilean Pinot Noir, plot the following day’s activities: biking, hiking, or kayaking down the Cochrane River. Then, in the snug dining room, they feast on fire-cooked steak with chimichurri procured from a nearby organic farm, all the while training their eyes on the windows, just in case a puma stalks past.
The restoration of this valley was masterminded by the enterprising Americans Kristine and Douglas Tompkins. Kristine, the former C.E.O. of Patagonia, and Doug, founder of the North Face, discovered the region in 1994, camping under towering poplar trees on the edge of a lake. Moved by the haunting beauty of the place, they purchased the ranches and, in 2004, the re-wilding began.
It was an immense undertaking that involved regenerating the forests (complicated by the depleted soil, which had been covered by a glacier at one point), slowly selling off the sheep (so as not to flood the market), and removing 500 miles of fencing to create a corridor that would allow wild animals to move freely. In time, the guanacos came, and the pumas followed. (Wild Life, a 2023 film by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, makes a full accounting of the Tompkins’ story.)
In one area of the reserve, a fence draws a hard line between the park and a neighboring ranch, differentiating between what was and what is. On the ranch side, the land is flat, brown, and brittle, and in the national park it’s blanketed with clumps of honey-colored grass and thick, unruly bushes in vibrant shades of green.
Explora is a beautiful hotel, but its main attraction is its surroundings, which are best discovered on foot. A seven-mile hike to Lago Chico is non-negotiable. The trail skirts a small, clear lake surrounded by rocks, tufts of yellow grass, and guanaco bush—red shrubs that resemble pincushions from afar. It winds past towering boulders and sheer mountain faces dotted with green Lenga trees, whose crooked branches wave up to the sky. About four miles into the journey, near the edge of a cliff, an unforgettable vista unfolds: Lake Cochrane, a glacier-fed pool of water surrounded by the snow-capped Andes. Except for the guide and fellow guests of Explora, visitors likely won’t see another soul.
Over the course of a visit, Patagonia’s lonely landscape slowly reveals itself, and its stories trickle out, too. The Explora team knows of a former puma hunter who now uses his skills to track and protect them, and they share stories about a small boy who discovered dinosaur bones on a distant mountain. By the time visitors embark on that bumpy ride back to the airport, Patagonia’s remoteness is no longer unattractive. You’ll probably hope it stays that way forever.
The writer was a guest of Explora. A four-night stay begins at $2,820 per person, including all meals, transfers, park fees, and expeditions
Mary Holland is a New York–based writer who contributes to the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Monocle
