Travel I
Checking in: Refugia Chiloé
WORDS: NICOLA CHILTON | IMAGES: TIERRA CHILOÉ
There’s magic in the air at Refugia Chiloé. Early on my first morning, surrounded by the scent of damp earth on the hotel’s dew-covered backyard trail, a hummingbird stops to peer at me with beady black eyes, iridescent feathers shimmering in the pale light, wings a blur as it hovers in my eyeline. It’s gone in an instant but the image remains, a harbinger of the many precious moments that await guests at this 24-room hotel set on the edge of the remote
Rilán Peninsula.
Many visitors to Chile miss out on Chiloé Island completely, sailing past or flying over it on their way down to the jagged peaks and sprawling plains of Patagonia. But stop here and you’ll find a bucolic land of myth and mystery where people welcome sailors with warmth and wit, and encounters with nature – the world’s smallest deer, arrayán trees with trunks cold to the touch, black vultures circling languidly in cloudless skies – feel life-affirming.
Until April 2025 known as Tierra Chiloé, the hotel opened in 2012. Operated by the Purcell family, the owners of Chile’s 70-year-old Ski Portillo resort and co-founders of the Tierra Hotels group, this year it returns to family ownership as Refugia Chiloé. The hotel’s architecture, inspired by the island’s palafito stilt houses, combines traditional local materials and modern building techniques, resulting in a modernist silhouette that sits above the calm, clear waters of Pullao Bay. Natural cross-ventilation keeps the building cool in summer, and wooden shingles keep it warm in winter. Rooms are cosy and comforting with floors, ceilings and walls made from honey-coloured wood, large windows framing views of the sea and big bathtubs with wine holders for those times when you want to sip and soak up the view.
There’s a small-island vibe on Chiloé, even though it measures 190 kilometres from top to bottom. During the winter, penguins flock here to escape the bitter Antarctic chill. When I visit in April, silvery dolphins race us as we head out on the Williche, the hotel’s wooden boat crewed by a fun and friendly team of Chilote sailors, to see neighbouring islands, UNESCO World Heritage-listed timber churches and huge sea lions lazing on top of navigation buoys.
It’s excursions like this, ones that bring hotel guests and the local community together, that are part of the beauty of Refugia Chiloé. On the nearby island of Quinchao, Sandra Naimán welcomes guests to her pink wooden home and smallholding where she grows more than 60 crops. An indigenous huilliche woman, Naimán has single-handedly built a seed bank to safeguard the island’s native plant species, and chats over lunches of garden-fresh salads and veggies about how she empowers other island women through agriculture.
Over on the Pacific Coast, the 20,000-hectare Tepuhueico conservation park is the place to see Chiloé’s wilder side, with long hikes through ever-changing scenery that takes in woodland, rolling sand dunes and high sea cliffs covered in prehistoric nalca plants, along with glimpses of crested caracara raptors.
Back at the hotel, the Uma Spa beckons with treatments centred on ingredients such as Chilean hazelnut, thermal mud and maqui berries, while steam and hydro-massage help soothe muscles worn out by the day’s exertions. Outside on the terrace, steam rises off the bijou infinity pool with views out over the bay, the surrounding meadows and the snow-capped Andes in the far distance.
Evening is the time to pull on the woollen socks – knitted by women from the neighbouring villages – and pad your way to the lounge for pisco sours by the copper fireplace. Outside, the sunsets are so dramatic – all Tiffany-blue skies scrawled with wispy pink clouds – that the hotel staff often join guests on the wooden terrace to take photographs. Even though they see the same view every day, it never seems to lose its ability to dazzle them.
Refugia Chiloé draws a laid-back, sensibly dressed, outdoorsy crowd of families, honeymooners and older couples, all sharing the same sense of awe at just how surprising this island is. You’re likely to find yourself dining with new-found friends on food that honours local farmers and fishermen, made with seasonal ingredients such as native potato, giant garlic and razor clams transformed into hearty, comforting dishes and delicate yet punchy ceviches. Some evenings, curanto is on the menu, a traditional Chilote feast where mounds of red meat, sausages, mussels and clams are cooked underground over heated stones and covered with nalca leaves, which chefs remove ceremoniously to reveal the steaming bounty within.
At night, silence envelops the hotel. Jet-black skies are studded with stars and the Milky Way reaches down to the horizon in a long, clear sweep. The hotel staff who move to Chiloé each season talk of how they’ve fallen in love with the place. Refugia Chiloé is somewhere to come when you’re tired of the daily grind and want to remind yourself just how wonderful life can be. As the name suggests, it feels like a calming refuge from the world. Waking up from an undisturbed night’s sleep in a snug bed with the anticipation of another stunning Chiloé day ahead, it’s easy to find yourself falling in love a bit, too.
