The vast waterlogged plains of the Pantanal stretch for over 50,000 square miles—some estimate much more—across Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay and host the largest concentration of flora and fauna in South America. Sadly, however, the world's largest freshwater wetland is threatened throughout by deforestation, hydropower projects, water pollution, overfishing, and poaching....

After a two-hour motorized canoe ride down the Napo River, followed by a half-hour hike on a jungle-lined boardwalk plus a dugout-canoe crossing of Garzacocha Lake, guests are greeted at La Selva with cold towels, snacks, and juices. They're then shown to cheerful bamboo and thatched-roof bungalows, likely stopping along the way to watch monkeys, sloths, and rare birds at play in this...

The Point is the pinnacle of Adirondacks luxury. Built on Saranac Lake by William Rockefeller, The Point is the most elaborate of the Adirondacks' early 19th-century Great Camps. It's rustic, yet completely refined. In fact, one of its elemental luxuries is that very sense of sophisticated simplicity. Whether watching fresh snowfall or spending lazy summer evenings watching the sunset, guests...

Open since November 2010, Azul Fives is the newest of three Azul properties on Mexico's Riviera Maya, the popular resort area that lies south of Cancun. If the toy-lending library, featuring playthings by Fisher-Price, isn't enough to lure you to Azul Fives for your all-inclusive family vacation in Mexico, perhaps the huge Azulitos Kid's Club and its array of My Gym equipment (ropes,...

Like the Florida Keys themselves, Amy Slate's Amoray Dive Resort isn't about lounging in luxury on land, but instead provides falling-out-of-bed-easy access to the world-renowned reefs, wrecks, and mangroves offshore. The hotel property is built around the dive dock, which houses the resort's two dive boats. Amenities are simple, comfortable, and built for serious divers, with a heated pool,...

Wide-open meadows, thick pine forest, pretty aspen groves, and looming mountains… welcome to nature on steroids at Vista Verde, a luxury, all-inclusive guest ranch near Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Vista Verde may be a dude ranch, but this property offers so much more than just horseback riding. Think gourmet meals, whitewater-rafting and fly-fishing trips, mountain biking, a plethora of...

This simple lodge in Alberta's Bighorn Wildland country is the kind of place visitors return to time and again. Even though they want to keep it a hidden gem, guests blab to their friends and word gets out. And why wouldn't it? Part of the lure lies in the gracious hospitality of hosts Madeleine and Alan Ernst (and Cora, their canine sidekick) and their killer cooking. For others, it's Aurum's...

It has perhaps the most spectacular view in all of Kenya: From Ol Donyo Wuas Lodge, a casual viewer can see Kilimanjaro, the continent's loftiest peak, stretching a full 100 miles from end to end. Beneath it, elephants lumber through the grasslands; in the other direction, tropical mist forests lie beyond the Chyolo Hills, lava outcroppings studded with succulents.

In business for...

What perhaps strikes visitors most upon arrival at the NamibRand Nature Reserve, a 445,000-acre desert conservation area the size of some small countries, is the quiet solitude and utter enormity of the desert, one of the oldest in the world.

The four camps on the reserve share one overarching philosophy: exist in harmony with this landscape. At the tastefully posh Dunes Lodge, which...

Visitors to Banjaar Tola typically come seeking one thing: glimpses of the area's celebrity species, the tiger, of which only about 4,000 remain in the wild. But after the long journey there, which requires a five-hour drive from the nearest airport, it's not uncommon for travelers to be pleasantly surprised by the tented camp's ample charm itself.

Situated on the banks of the Banjaar...