Recent years have seen the creation of luxury accommodation right in the heart of Patagonia's savagely glaciated countryside. You stay at three of these properties in Torres del Paine National Park, the Los Glaciares National Park and the volcano–dotted Patagonian lake district.

The holiday plunges into the Patagonia of Chile and Argentina, an area of outstanding natural beauty which still has a remote wilderness feel. Fly south to the ice caps, glaciated jagged mountains and lakes at the tip of the Andes. Visit the minty blue, cathedral-high Perito Moreno glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina, and the ice-clad towers of Torres del Paine National Park, Chile’s large and well-established reserve. The south has just a few rough roads cutting through a frost-bitten landscape of glaciers, luminous lagoons, snow-tipped pinnacles and wind-strafed steppe, but it is nevertheless readily accessible to visitors.

Travel north to explore the indigo lakes, ancient woodland and snow-capped volcanoes of the lake district in northern Patagonia where, amidst its lakeside resorts and summer visitors, is a land of fairyland forests and lonely roads carving their way through a virgin landscape.