PATAGONIA

The journey to the bottom of the world flips you over the other way, around the arse/elbow axis, while equally strange things have happened to your buttocks and feet by the time you get there. Patagonia is a long way away. Out of the window of the plane, the geometry of the world is confusing all of a sudden. It's quite disorientating. Punta Arenas, close to the southern tip of Chile, feels more or less the end of the world. When you've gone that far south, it is a little disappointing not to be able to just keep on going, but we were now heading slightly north to the Torres del Paine national park.

The weather was quite busy when we arrived. It was a fight and the rain was winning, but the wind was trying to blow it all away. The hotel sent a van with blacked-out windows to ferry us the last couple of hundred miles. There was one road, pristine, made from concrete slabs, and it went on for hours. We rarely saw another car. The whole vast, yawning landscape was as neat and tidy as a seabed. The weather had turned really foul by now and I put my shades away, only to fish them out again half an hour later as dazzling sunshine broke through, with black clouds on the right, white ones on the left and clear skies ahead.

The Explora hotel in the Torres del Paine national park is a sexy, modern building right on the shore of a huge glacial lake. The last time I was in an area this wild I was overcome with a peculiar, listless nausea and I didn't know what to do with myself. There was no chance of that here. The place was humming with activity. It is the pet project of Chilean billionaire Pedro Ibañez. He operates a "fit in or sod off" policy. More and more I prefer to stay in places that represent the realisation of someone's mad vision of paradise, rather than places that try to please everybody.

Our room was beautiful but, as far as luxury goes, that's harder to measure. Most "luxuries" in hotels, like movies, room-service, massage, and that old enemy of the people, the minibar, are in fact just ways of screwing more money out of you. They surround you, or more significantly your wife, with temptations and bleed you dry. But there was no television or minibar here. Everything was included except phone calls and laundry.

Really great holidays aren't about the hotel, however. This is a unique and wonderful place to stay, but the true beauty is on the outside. Staying at Explora is about connecting with the subtle and powerful beauty of the natural environment. It would be possible to do this just by turning up in Patagonia, but at Explora they ensure you make the most of your time. It's a safari, really, and a high-class one. Every night there is a one-on-one briefing with a guide, and maps about the next day's activities, which might include kayaking, horse-riding and ice-walking.

For the first day we opted to go for a walk. The clear weather had held and we hauled ourselves through breakfast into a crisp spring morning. After 20 minutes' hiking, we crossed the brow of a hill as the wind whipped up. My army parka, a Britpop relic, seemed to hold up to the elements, but Claire's fashionable scarf and sweet little hat, which work very well in Soho, didn't cut it here so I leant her mine. From the top of the hill the park was laid out before us; whacking great mountains, grey and turquoise lakes full of icebergs, rolling hills and green plains.