If the new hotel Remota, in the Patagonian fishing village of Puerto Natales, looks slightly less beautiful than the surrounding vistas, that's exactly how Chile's green-architecture luminary Germán del Sol planned it. "A good hotel is not itself the object of desire but the instrument," says del Sol. Now open for its first prime summer season (guests began arriving during a soft opening earlier this year), the 72-room Remota, set into a boulder-and-grass-decorated hill above Señoret Channel, conjures Patagonia's infamous weather with preemptively crooked timbers and oblique window facings. All of the surfacesfrom the black-stained lenga-wood molding to the slate and coconut fiber on the guest-room floorswere crafted locally for a feel that's as close to the fishing-and-herding culture as it is to the land. But nice as it is inside, you'll still want to venture out. Like del Sol's iconic Explora hotel, framed by the Cuernos del Paine massif, 50 miles southeast, Remota serves as a gateway to Chile's glaciated peaks and sea-kayak-perfect fjords. Doubles from $330; remota.cl
INSTRUMENTAL: Patagonia's hand-wrought Remota hotel Photographer: courtesy, Remota
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