In August, Nayara Alto Atacama serves up the stars.

Forget the sunrise, tequila or otherwise. At the end of August, just after the stunning sunsets in Chile’s cloudless Atacama desert, the galactic spiral of the Milky Way rises in a sky free of urban light pollution–and is visible almost all night long. This natural light show is the stellar attraction at the high-end eco-resort chain Nayara’s Alto Atacama hotel.

The 42-room adobe getaway sits in an oasis 2,500 meters above sea level in the red-rock splendor of the world’s driest desert in Chile’s Salt Mountains, three kilometers outside San Pedro de Atacama, which can be reached by daily flights from Santiago, or by land from Bolivia or Argentina.

Atacama is primarily an adventure travel property where visitors hike, bike, and ride across mesas, through slot canyons, over mountains, and sand dunes and past flamingo-filled salt lagoons, rock formations and ancient cacti. It is also an oasis of culture, with a long view stretching from the area’s earliest 24-century-old indigenous people, the ancient Licanantay, along the trade routes of Andean commerce, to the time of the Spanish conquistadors. But what caught the eye of Carnet de Voyage was Atacama’s seasonal stargazing offerings.

The sky, of course, needs no introduction, and is visible even to the naked eye, albeit less so every day. Thanks to the global spread of 24/7 artificial light—even in the countryside—only a fraction of the jaw-dropping, gasp-inducing night sky can be discerned nowadays. But at Atacama’s Ckepi open-air observatory—the word means eye in the extinct Kunza language of northern Chile and southern Peru—beneath what is likely the clearest sky you will ever experience, astronomical guides and a professional telescope make other worlds your oyster. An hour-long program places visitors in eight swivel chairs, introduces them to the wonders of the universe and explains how the local people perceived the cosmos. That’s thanks to the low humidity, high altitude, absence of clouds and the splendid solitude of Alto Atacama’s unique geographic position.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, we may live in a civilized gutter, but in this place, at least, you can feel as if it’s possible to be one with the stars.