This Luxe Eco-Lodge Puts All Other Puerto Natales Hotels to Shame

@epic.stays When in #Patagonia staying at 📍Hotel Remota is a must 🤩 🎥 @hikeupyourskirt #cabinlife #patagoniatravel #chiletravel #chilepatagonia ♬ Keeping Your Head Up (Jonas Blue Remix) [Radio Edit] – Birdy

Enter Hotel Remota — a four-star ecolodge south of the park entrance that starts at a shockingly affordable price (for Patagonia, anyway). The hotel is truly one-of-a-kind, with a unique architectural design that pays homage to the regions sheepherding history. But if sleeping in a hotel inspired by sheep sounds unappealing, think again — apparently, sheep live in luxury in Patagonia. The hotel has large rooms with rain showers, a stunning outdoor/indoor spa, and packages that include activities ranging from hiking sections of the famous W Trek to horseback riding with gauchos through private nature reserves and going for early morning puma-spotting safaris.

Here’s why Hotel Remota is among the best Puerto Natales hotels you can book, and what to expect at the award-winning property.

The location

Photo: Suzie Dundas

Photo: Suzie Dundas

The downright gorgeous indoor pool at Hotel Remota. Photo: Suzie Dundas

Hotel Remota is one of the most unique Puerto Natales hotels. Puerto Natales is one of two main tourist towns of Chilean Patagonia (the other is Punta Arenas, three hours south). The hotel sits on the shore of the fjord looking out on glaciers and the mountains beyond. It’s about a 15-minute walk to town, though bikes are available for guest use, which make the trip much faster.

Like nearly all the Puerto Natales hotels, it’s about a 45-minute drive to Torres del Paine National Park. Fortunately, all excursions come with shuttle drivers so you can enjoy the landscapes (or take a nap, if you’re leaving for an early morning hike) while someone else does the driving. It may seem far, but the drive goes by very fast and the scenery is beautiful.

If you don’t stay in Puerto Natales, the only other option convenient to the park is to stay at one of the lodges in the park. That certainly can be a good choice, but they tend to be extremely expensive, and you won’t have any options for going to restaurants or local cafes if you want a change of pace. And moving around the park can be tough, with a limited shuttle system and rough roads.

Staying outside the park also means you’ll be much closer to the activities outside the park boundaries, like glacier hikes, horseback riding, fly fishing, exploring ancient caves, and mountain biking. The actual Torres del Paine park isn’t huge, but the entire region is gorgeous, and you’ll definitely want to spend time away from the popular tourist areas during your stay — which makes a Puerto Natales hotel like Hotel Remota a much better pick (in this writer’s opinion).

Orvis Adventures at Remota Lodge

Many of the best rivers for fly fishing in Patagonia are on private land. Photo: Suzie Dundas

If you’re used to visit national parks in the US and think visiting Torres del Paine will be just as easy, think again. It can be a little hard to figure out trail distances, weather patters and transportation and bus schedules within the park, so trying to travel on your own throughout the park is difficult. And many of the best adventures in the area, like non-park hikes, remote areas where you can spot pumas and condors, rivers for fly fishing, and gorgeous vistas for horseback rides, are on private land. In some cases, you need to have permission from the landowner to use the land, and in other cases, you’re allowed to access the areas freely.

But good luck knowing what areas are which, finding distances and directions to starting points, or knowing what areas pumas frequent while you’re down there. There’s not a lot of signage outside the park and there’s no central database of trailheads or glacial lakes. Planning from afar can be really, really difficult (and time-intensive). Speaking Spanish may make it a bit easier, of course.

There are tons of gorgeous road biking routes around Puerto Natales — but you have to know where to go (and they’re not on Strava). Photo: Suzie Dundas

Fortunately, you can opt out of all of that if you book your Remota Hotel via an Orvis Adventure, as this writer did. Orvis Adventures are similar to REI Adventures, except they’re based in one location, and fly fishing is always an available activity. When I booked my trip as an Orvis Adventure, it included everything: pre-arrival information on what to pack, available activities, and a point person to help with travel issues and arrange an airport pickup.

Empty spaces: something the Hotel Remota guides know how to find. Photo: Suzie Dundas

Doing the 11-mile, 4,000-foot-gain Towers Base Camp hike is a lot more pleasant when you have a private guide and can set your own pace. Photo: Suzie Dundas

I requested a hike with no people, and my guide delivered a six-mile hike without a single other person in sight -- pretty amazing for such a popular park. Photo: Suzie Dundas

At the lodge, the package included all my food and drink (including alcohol), my room, and activities every day. And it’s not lame, “only some activities are included and you have to pay extra for the good ones” activities — it’s anything. On my first day I went out with an incredibly skilled, Orvis-approved fly fishing instructor who took me to some of the most beautiful rivers in the area, and on the second day, I had a guide and driver who took me to a remote area of Torres del Paine and put together a custom point-to-point hike for me.

Day three was mountain biking to an archeological cave site, and on day four, we did the famous “Torres del Paine” towers hike (in about five hours, no big deal). On my final full day, Remota Lodge booked me on a catamaran tour out to the famous grey glacier, complete with a calafate sour cocktail on-board.

A boat tour to the park's Grey Glacier was one of many activities to choose from when I booked an Orvis Adventure at Hotel Remota. Photo: Suzie Dundas

A calafate sour, made with glacier ice. Photo: Suzie Dundas

Having the ability to choose my activity every day and having a private Orvis-approved guide meant the excursions moved at my pace; I wasn’t stuck in a group of hikers who needed to stop every 15 minutes or cycling with athletes who treated rides like the Tour de France. Knowing that I tell the hotel what I wanted to do every day and they’d take care of it was a huge stress-relief and allowed me to actually relax in the evenings, rather than spending all my time trying to research and plan activities for the next day. I would definitely not hesitate to book an Orvis Adventure again.

High-end service at a low-range price

The outdoor hot tubs overlooking the water at Hotel Remota. Photo: Suzie Dundas

While booking a package deal can be pricey, Remota Hotel is actually fairly inexpensive: rooms and breakfast start at $130 per night. As expected, all-inclusive packages are far more expensive, and travelers should expect to spend anywhere between $300 and $700 a day, depending on whether they want private or shared guides and “soft” or more cardio-heavy adventures. Rates are highest between mid-December and mid-January and lowest in April through October, so visit in the off-season for a much more affordable trip.

The service is exceptional, from the guides to drivers and restaurant staff. And of particular note is the excellent spa facility, offering reasonably priced hot stone massages that are practically a must-do after a 10-mile hike to the Torres del Paine base.

Getting there, and other Puerto Natales hotel options

 

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It was only a few years ago that the only way to get to Torres del Paine National Park was to fly into Punta Arenas and drive roughly three hours north to Puerto Natales. Fortunately, there’s a new and easy-to-use airport in Puerto Natales, so you can fly directly to the town and save the long drive. Flights run daily in the tourist season (November through April) and more like once or twice a week during Patagonian winter.

Flying directly to Santiago then connecting to a flight to Patagonia is easier and quicker than you’d think. The airport is served by SKY Airlines, LATAM, and JetSmart, and connects to Puerto Montt and Santiago. It’s about a three-hour flight from Santiago, and once you arrive, it only takes about 10 minutes to get from the airport into town.

The small town of Puerto Natales. Photo: Suzie Dundas

While Remota Lodge is certainly one of the most popular Puerto Natales hotels, it’s not the only option — though it may be one of the most affordable, at least by nightly rate. And it’s the only Orvis-approved property in the area, which gives you some peace of mind knowing it’s already been vetted by adventure travelers. But other nearby hotels in Puerto Natales include:

• The Singular Patagonia: This eco-chic boutique is similarly stylish, but more expensive in terms of total cost for Puerto Natales hotels. Excursions are a la carte and range from $260 per person for a half-day excursion to $520 per person for a full day.
• Hotel Simple Patagonia: Hotel Simple is similar to Remota, but smaller, with just 11 rooms. It’s also a bit more expensive. All stays include breakfast, but everything else has an extra cost. Rooms start around $200 a night in the off season, compared to Remota’s starting rate closer to $140 for similar dates.
• Factoria Patagonia: For something extremely budget-friendly by Patagonian standards, head to this hotel in Puerto Natales. Factoria Patagonia has private and group dorm rooms, plus an on-site excursion booking desk. Rates start around $100 a night.