An Amazonian outpost, an Italian farmhouse, a Moorish palace on Lake Titicaca—sometimes the best hideaways are the ones you're least likely to hear about

Tahuayo Lodge | PERU

Courtesy Amazonia Expeditions

The upper third of your cedar-paneled room is mesh, to allow in light and the early-morning dwoo-di-di call of tinamou birds. Buffet breakfast, like all meals, is served in the huge, high-ceilinged dining room, screened on three sides for views of the Tahuayo and the surrounding jungle. You wander along a maze of sturdy, polished-cedar walkways between the 17 bungalows to the outdoor showers or a shady, river-view hammock. You might venture out to a nearby lake for a swim, and then back to the lodge for a fresh fruit licuado while you peruse field guides in the library. At dusk, kerosene lamps emit a milky glow: no electricity, no generator noise.

Courtesy Amazonia Expeditions

Tahuayo Lodge is four hours by powerboat south of Iquitos, where the lodge picks you up. Contact Amazonia Expeditions, 800-262-9669; www.perujungle.com.  —Robert Earle Howells

Exotica | DOMINICA

Don't even consider driving your rental Neon to Exotica; part of the road looks like a rocky riverbed. Instead, rent a beefy four-by-four to bounce your way 2.5 miles past the village of Giraudel to the four-acre spread on the western slope of Morne Anglais. The Dominican couple who owns it is passionate about the wild domain filled with fruit trees and flowers like ylang-ylang, elaborate composting and water-recovery systems, and an organic farm that provides fare for the resort's Sugar Apple Café.

Settle into one of eight coubaryl-woodcottages with red tin roofs, each of which has two double beds and a kitchenette. You'll love the private verandas with views of the distant sea (watch for breaching whales), but not necessarily the motel-style furnishings. Still, things stay on eco-track with solar water heaters and gas stoves.

Ken's Hinterland Tours, the island's most reliable and intrepid outfitter, can take you on a hike up the Sari Sari River to spectacular Sari Sari Falls; on a trek along the rainforest foothills of Morne Diablotin, Dominica's highest mountain, where you'll see sisserou and jacquot parrots; and for a swim up the lava-carved Ti-Tou Gorge, where you can climb to Trafalgar Falls and bathe in hot mineral springs. Doubles cost $140. Contact 767-448-8839; www.exotica-cottages.com.  —Stacy Ritz

Terra Luna Lodge | CHILE

Courtesy Terra Luna Lodge

Indeed, just when you feel that the washboard road is going to vibrate your rear end down to the bone, up pop the red-tiled roofs of Terra Luna Lodge, the most welcoming sign of civilization since the free wine on the flight down from Santiago. Nestled between lenga trees on a grassy point overlooking Lago General Carrera, the second-largest lake in South America, the brand-new lodge, the house, and the bungalow feel as if they could be slopeside in Aspen: Oversize windows frame Mount San Valentín beyond the lake, and wood stoves, lambskin-covered easy chairs, brightly tiled showers spouting hot water, and a hot tub keep things cozy. Terra Luna sleeps 30 people in varying room configurations, including 20 in the lodge; if your group numbers six or more, consider staying in the house, which has two bedrooms, a generous front deck, and a varnished pine interior.

Courtesy Terra Luna Lodge

Terra Luna rents three-room apartments in the lodge that sleep up to six people each for $100 to $150 a night during the austral-summer high season, November 1 through March 15. You can rent the house, which sleeps up to ten people, for $120 to $190 a night, depending on the size of your group. All prices include breakfast. A six-day package filled with trekking, rafting, horseback riding, boat rides, and mountain biking costs $750–$1,295 per person, including food, gear, lodging, airport transfers, and transportation. Contact 011-56-2-735-8034; www.terra-luna.cl.  —Stephanie Gregory

Big Milly's Backyard | GHANA

"People plan to leave, but they get sucked in," admits Wendy Milner, aka "Big Milly," almost apologizing for the hypnotic hold her beachside lodge in Ghana retains over visitors. "Three days become three months. One girl stayed nine months, so I made her my general manager. She knew more than anyone else."

It's not difficult to understand the vortex here. In a region notable mostly for gruesome civil wars, evangelical missionaries, and the expanding Sahara, Big Milly's Backyard is perhaps the most tranquil spot in all of West Africa. Located 20 miles west of Accra in the languid fishing village of Kokrobite, this backpacker magnet cultivates a live-and-let-live atmosphere amid a ramshackle collection of thatched huts, tile-roofed bungalows, double-wide hammocks, and an open-air bar, all shaded by palm trees and cooled by ocean breezes. Chickens roam freely between gardens of giant sunflowers. Bar tabs go unpaid for weeks. Staffers deliver pasta and fresh tuna to guests napping beneath coconut trees, and the only rhythms that compete with the pounding Atlantic surf are the marathon drumming sessions that break out at sunset, orchestrated by the master drummers Kokrobite is famous for.

Big Milly (a tiny British woman, given the nickname by schoolmates who dubbed her younger sister "Little Milly") lures shoestring travelers and vacationing Peace Corps volunteers with all this atmosphere and rock-bottom rates: For $2 you can unroll your sleeping bag beneath a bamboo pavilion, and for a whopping $10 you can command Milly's sole cottage with a private bathroom. That leaves guests flush to purchase the two best things for sale around here—drumming lessons from the local masters (negotiable) and a massage from Big Milly's resident therapist ($7). The only other activities worth rolling over for—bodysurfing the ten-foot breakers and rising at sunset to watch fishermen launch their colorful dugouts—are free. As for a departure date, Milly encourages guests to leave that line on the registration form blank. And while she's happy to take reservations (fax: 011-233-21-22-9988; no phone), she says people rarely make them. Observes Milly: "I've found that young budget travelers don't really have what you'd call 'a plan.'"  —Paul Kvinta

Il Bergamotto | ITALY

Call it Tuscany with rough edges. Calabria, the hardscrabble region at the very toe of the Italian boot, has the leafy mountains, vineyards, olive groves, and medieval villages, but not the sheen of refinement—nor any tourist infrastructure, for that matter. So it came as a happy surprise a few years ago to Tiziana Sergi, a young woman from the north of Italy, when she stumbled across a Tuscan-style agrituristica, a working farm that took in the occasional guest, while on a hiking vacation. She immediately fell in love not only with its mulberry-shaded veranda, which overlooks an orange grove and a river winding through purple hills to the sea, but with the owner as well.

Tiziana is now the lady of the house, and Il Bergamotto—the name means "bergamot", a sweet-smelling citrus fruit that is the farm's primary crop—has been transformed from a backpacker-in-the-barn kind of place into a rustic but sophisticated example of Italian country style, with six guest apartments occupying what used to be a water mill, a shepherd's bunkhouse, and an olive-pressing barn. Geckos may skitter across the scrubbed stone walls and beamed ceilings of your bedroom, and you may be awakened by the braying of a donkey outside the window, but even Martha Stewart would approve of the decorative Calabrian rugs on the walls.

After a day of hiking the surrounding hills to nearby villages and ruins (in Amendolea, just up the road—and we mean up—is an 11th-century Norman castle), you'll return for a family-style dinner; the house specialty is roasted goat packed in clay and cooked five hours in a wood-fired outdoor oven. The cheese, olives, salami, pasta, and red wine are all organic and made on the premises. But don't bother looking for a label on the wine bottle. If you're hung up on that kind of stuff, go to Tuscany. Rates are $22 per person per day, including dinner and breakfast. Call or fax 011-39-0965-727-213.  —David Noland

Mago Estate Hotel | ST. LUCIA

No one ever said a bedroom has to have four walls—especially if it's stuck straight into the side of a St. Lucia mountain. Which is why 30 years ago, when German architect Peter Gloger created his fantasy island house, he constructed most of the Mago rooms with just three walls, leaving one side open to the jungle and dramatic views of the sea.

Now he welcomes travelers to his secluded indoor-outdoor inn about a ten-minute walk north of Soufrière, on the island's southwestern tip. A mango tree (mago is local patois for "mango") pokes into the lounge, with a purple-cushioned napping loft nestled in its branches. At the first hint of daylight, butterflies drift through the six bedrooms, which have antique carved-mahogany beds; two of the rooms have clouds painted on the ceilings. The dining room, where Creole specialties like fresh flying fish in ginger and garlic are among the menu choices, overlooks the stone-edged, freshwater pool and St. Lucia's cone-shaped Pitons. The mountainside sands at Anse Chastanet are a ten-minute van ride (free) away, and just off the beach you can snorkel or scuba dive in some of St. Lucia's most lively coral reefs. If you'd rather stay landward, manager Monica Lenihan-Charles will arrange an all-day rainforest tour that includes a trek through the island's "drive-in" volcano, Mount Soufrière, where ancient craters and sulphur springs hiss with steam. Doubles cost $90–$300 any time of year (the more expensive rooms have private terraces), including breakfast. Call 758-459-5880; www.magohotel.com.  —S.R.

Mourouk Ebony Hotel | RODRIGUES

The words on the notice board at the entrance to the Mourouk Ebony Hotel ("petanque," "bienvenue") make you think of France. The spicy pepper sauce served over the fresh fish you're eating could be Thai. The traditional after-dinner dance performed by locals calls to mind a Scottish ceilidh. The dancers themselves look like they're from Africa. And the view from your room's veranda is of a sea that could be the Caribbean. But this world-wide mix means you're on Rodrigues, an 11-mile-long island in the Indian Ocean 400 miles east of Mauritius. The two places share a president, but that's about all they have in common: Mauritius is tropical, English-speaking, and mostly Indian and Hindi, while Rodrigues is arid, French-speaking, and mostly African and Catholic.

Perched on the southeastern edge of Rodrigues, the Mourouk doesn't try to compete with the nearby luxurious Cotton Bay Hotel, which is where the stuffier faction of the Italians and French who know about this island go. But the cozy, 30-room Mourouk is where you'll find the real heart of the island. The staff outnumbers the guests in the ten neatly arranged, red-roofed bungalows, each of which contains three rooms done up in pastel florals and wicker. Everything else you'll need is at hand: a vanishing-edge pool, mountain bikes to tackle the steep roads over Mount Limon to the capital of Port Mathurin (stop for some chilies and seafood along the way at John's Resto Pub), gear to snorkel and scuba through some of the best hard coral in the world, and boards for windsurfing and kiteboarding. A circular reef surrounds Rodrigues, as do 18 tiny, uninhabited islands that you can visit by boat. At that point, you might have the sneaking suspicion that you're not even in this world. Double rooms cost $67 per person per night; contact 011-230-831-6351; www.rodrigues-island.org/mourouk.html.  —Edward Robbins

Brooklands Wilderness Camp | BRITISH COLUMBIA

Improbably situated on a secluded arm of Tagish Lake, 20 miles from the nearest town, road, or Homo sapiens, Brooklands Wilderness Lodge has nonetheless played host to everyone from Alaskan businessmen to adventure outfitters to the senator of the Yukon Territory. To get to the property's three rustic 14-by-16-foot cabins—think running water but not Ethan Allen or Cuisinart—which sleep up to four, guests must choose between boarding a float plane or a jet boat either in neighboring Atlin, population 500, or in Whitehorse or Juneau.

What's the draw? Fishing, for one. Tagish is B.C.'s second-largest freshwater lake, rife with trout, pike, and Arctic grayling, and the job can be done from shore or in a powerboat supplied by the lodge. Hardy visitors can pilot a boat to the abandoned Engineer Gold Mine ten miles away to scout for old bottles. Buck headwinds another ten and you'll reach a valley called Ben My Chree—"Girl of My Heart"—choked with wildflowers and poppies planted by an English sea captain to lure his sweetheart to the remote tract (it worked; the couple lived there happily the rest of their days).

The lodge, run by the Brooks family, who've occupied a cabin on the site for almost 25 years, also offers air tours of the Juneau Icefields, backpacker or kayaker dropoffs in the neighboring wilderness, and custom tours of other trackless terrain—though one of the most popular things to do at Brooklands is just to sip a Yukon Gold ale by the shore. The cost is US$115 per party for transportation to and from Atlin; $330–$500 from Juneau or Whitehorse. Lodging is $84 per person per night; guests prepare their own meals in the cabins' modest kitchens—BYO Cuisinart. Call 250-651-7716 or fax 250-651-7740.  —Carol Greenhouse

Casa Morada | FLORIDA KEYS

Islamorada, in the Upper Florida Keys, has always made a point of being different (locals say calmer) from its neighboring isles, first as quiet fishing grounds for the likes of former president George Bush, and more recently as an artsy, but not too polished, place to kayak, bird-watch, dive, and relax between forays into the far corners of the Everglades. Riding this latest wave is Casa Morada, a new hotel that opened last June, slipped into a quiet neighborhood by Florida Bay. From the bayside tiki hut you can watch ten-foot-long manatees nose into the hotel's lagoon beneath a 1950s footbridge. Then take a dip in the peanut-shaped freshwater pool where little blue herons take their morning drink. Inside both of the two-story, periwinkle-blue-and-white buildings, you'll feel as much in Mexico as in the Keys. All 16 suites go south of the border with leather-wrapped equipal tables and benches from Guadalajara and carved platform beds and wrought-iron headboards from Mexico City. (Everything's for sale, by the way.) The floors are cool 1950s terrazzo, and the mahogany cabinets are stocked with a kettle and mini-fridge. Use the Casa's double sea kayaks ($35 for a half-day) or arrange for guided kayaking and bird-watching trips or ecotours of the Everglades (by boat or van).

You can also take a dive on the nearby oceanside reef ($40 per person for a two-tank dive), or snorkel a few breaststrokes from the lodge's floating sun deck. Of course, there's still great fishing in Isla-morada; sign on for a backcountry fly-fishing tour of Florida Bay to cast for bonefish or go deep-sea trolling for marlin and mahimahi. At sunset, you can stroll to Squid Row (try the fried grunt platter), or barbecue bayside while watching roseate spoonbills wing through a pink-painted sky. Doubles cost $130–$230 September 1 through mid-May, and $145–$190 mid-May through August. Contact 888-881-3030; www.casamorada.com.  —S.R.

La Cúpola | BOLIVIA

At first glance, La Cúpola's white-domed towers don't seem quite real. Seen from the Plaza Sucre in Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca, they seem to be floating above the town's brown adobe walls and red-tile roofs. Once you find yourself standing in the middle of the inn's tiled courtyards, eucalyptus grove, and terraced gardens, each filled with statues of mythological and anthropo-morphic figures, you'd swear you were in Greece or Morocco.

"Actually, the inspiration was Tunis," La Cúpola creator Martin Stratker tells me after I inquire about a room. Four years ago, the German sculptor and his wife, Amanda, fresh from their honeymoon in Tunis, came to Copacabana and made it their new home. "Our original plan was to build a cultural center and vegetarian restaurant, but so many people asked for rooms, we kept adding on. Now there are 17 rooms. I think maybe I'm ready to stop now." Some have high vaulted ceilings; all are quirky. The honeymoon suite, reached by trapdoor at the top of the original tower, has a tiled patio with a view of Lake Titicaca's Isla del Sol.

The inn's primary attraction, though, is its laid-back ambience and notable lack of those bargain-obsessed, chain-smoking Gringo-Trail backpackers who seem to spend most of their time glaring at other travelers. What you get at La Cúpola is a smiling crowd with chipless shoulders. An English woman with whom I shared a quinoa salad and a bottle of wine on the restaurant's second-floor balcony summed it up neatly: "Sometimes when traveling I get into this 'go-go-go' mind-set. When I hit this place, it said, 'Stop, slow down, chill out.'" Rates are $8–$28 per person per night. Call or fax 011-591-862-2029.  —Kent Black