Niche Travel

BY THIS stage of the summer you may already feel you know what it’s like to live under a waterfall, but if you don’t, we have the hotel for you – Magic Mountain, Chile.

In what must truly be a “unique selling point”, the hotel is shaped like a mountain and stands under a waterfall. Look outside and you’ll see water cascading down your window. (Again, I know).

Still, this hotel is situated in the middle of the vast Huilo Huilo eco-reserve in the Patagonian Andes so, if you feel the need to get away from it all, it’s about as far as you can go.

The reserve is a private, protected area with 100,000 hectares of native forest, lakes and rivers.

There are a number of accommodation options including traditional canvas tenting and wooden tree houses accessed via a bridge, with windows set low so you can see shy creatures foraging beneath you.

The Magic Mountain Hotel is the star however, looking exactly like Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree, with Dame Washalot having a particularly bad day.

It’s actually great for children, with special kids’ club activities as well as mini-golf that brings you through the forest on a course that, in parts, rises 40ft above the ground.

For grown-ups there is the novelty of hot tubs hewn out of ancient boles, quirky curved rooms and furniture made from branches and tree trunks. The dining areas continue the theme, with tables set in alcoves that make you feel you are in a cave, or rather, the cavernous root system of a giant tree.

A week’s stay for two at the end of August costs €1,600.

[ huilohuilo.com ]