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Luxury that doesn’t cost the earth
Five top-class eco-friendly resorts, from a private Indonesian archipelago, to iceberg-watching in Patagonia.
Castara Retreats: treehouse-style apartments with incredible views
(Image credit: Alex Treadway)
Castara Retreats in Tobago's Castara Bay is built into the hillside, with 15 treehouse-style apartments "all with incredible views", says Jennifer Hale in The Scottish Sun. What makes this resort "unique is the people who run it". The best way to fill an evening is sipping cocktails and listening to their stories about life on Tobago and in Castara. It would be easy to lie on the beach every day and come back refreshed, "but it would be a shame not to sample the adventures the island has in store".
"Imagine waking up in the heart of a national park surrounded by majestic mountains and crystal-blue icebergs," says Talia Avakian in Travel + Leisure. That's where you'll find yourself when staying at EcoCamp Patagonia, a resort at the foot of Chile's Torres del Paine National Park, which offers the region's first fully sustainable accommodation. Guests stay in "luxury domes with windows in the ceiling for the ultimate glamping experience", a design inspired by the semi-circular huts used by the nomadic Kaweskar people of the region. Guests spend the majority of their time exploring, but community domes "invite everyone to come together to enjoy cocktails and traditional Chilean cuisine in the evenings".
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Join more than 165,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with latest financial news, insights and expert analysis to help you understand what really matters when it comes to your finances.
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Visit Frgate, the Seychelles' most distant island, to "play out your childhood fantasies of being lost on a desert island", says Max Johnson in Spears. Fregate Island Private is "an eco-lodge of rapturous luxury every dreamt-of activity is catered for". Yet biodiversity management is taken very seriously to preserve the island's ecosystem, which includes birds, turtles and fruit bats.It's eco-tourism "done the right way".
Residences from €5,600 per night during high season. Details on Fregate.com.
As remote as it gets in Europe
On Manshausen, a Norwegian island 62 miles inside the Arctic Circle, polar explorer Brge Ousland has created a place for exploring "the harmony between people and nature", says Peter Carty in The Guardian. Guests stay in cabins that emphasise natural materials but with floor-to-ceiling glass wrapped around their fronts, they "look like outsize sound-system speakers jutting out from the island". There are opportunities for hiking, climbing, kayaking and diving, and then there's the hot tub or the spa to relax in afterwards. "Nevertheless, for many guests, simply sitting and gazing from the cabins will be top of the list of activities here."
Rooms from £55 per guest per day. Visit Manshausen.no for more details.
A private archipelago
Bawah Private Island in Indonesia is "an antidote to the polished properties of nearby Bali", says Jennifer Ashton Ryan in the Robb Report. This cluster of five small islands and three lagoonshouses35 properties, from beach villas totents suspended over the water. The resort's creators aimto keep it in "pristine condition, initiating a zero-pesticide [and] zero-waste programme".
From $2,950 per couple per night. Full information at BawahIsland.com.
Go on safari in Kent
At the new Port Lympne Reserve Tiger Lodge, set in a 600-acre animal safari park in Kent, guests can enjoy a close-up sight of the reserve's Asiatic cats prowling right outside their window, says Jane Fryer in the Daily Mail. The accommodation comprises a two-bedroom cabin "that backs on to the safari park's (very spacious) tiger enclosure in one direction, and looks out across the Channel in the other". All the enclosures are big, the staff are well informed and the cafes and restaurants are "sympathetically done". In one enclosure, the biggest in Europe, there are more than 250 beasts, including giraffes, water buffalo, rhinos, bison and zebras.It is "the only animal park I have ever visited in the UK that actually made me feel as if I was on safari", says Fryer. "I'd return in a shot." Stays cost from £450 for four people.
Join more than 165,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with the latest financial news, insights and expert analysis to help you understand what really matters when it comes to your finances.
Alice grew up in Stockholm and studied at the University of the Arts London, where she gained a first-class BA in Journalism. She has written for several publications in Stockholm and London, and joined MoneyWeek in 2017.
Alice is now Consumer Editor at The Sun and covers everything from energy bills to Social Security.
