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AFAR Hotels Editor Jen Murphy lays out five new luxury hotels to hit if you want a final outdoor adventure before summer ends.

There’s more to this landlocked country than you might expect.

Minsk, the austere capital of Belarus and a former Soviet satellite, harbors Beatles cover bands, bookish bohemians feasting on salo and vodka, and the curious legacy of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Ready to knock a fun water sport off your bucket list? This is South Florida, where you have the sun, lakes and ocean at your fingertips. It’s time to get out on the water and try waterskiing or wakeboarding. LTS makes your first experience a successful one by proving a “static boom” for support and stability while you learn how to stand on the board/skis. Once you have mastered the technique, you’ll be able to to cruise down a 4,000-ft lake. Before you know it you’ll be doing flips, turns and tricks on the water. It’s pretty addictive. LTS also offers extreme tubing, knee boarding and barefooting for the more experienced adrenaline junkies out there. The staff is helpful and safe, teaching you exact techniques to master in order to have a successful ride. There’s no age limit, so everyone in the whole family can attempt a super fun water sport.

Aqaba isn’t considered a prime beach destination, and indeed the city’s public beach is a slightly seedy affair. Instead, head just outside town to Berenice Beach Club. The private resort occupies nearly half a mile of beachfront in the heart of Aqaba Marine Park and has all the facilities you need for a day in the sun, from shaded loungers on the sand and a series of landscaped swimming pools to several restaurants and shops selling beachwear. If you want to get active, you can snorkel on the nearby reef, parasail, water-ski, or even take a boat cruise around the surrounding islands. The $14 single-day entry tickets conveniently include transportation from the center of Aqaba.

The peaceful, elegant Hotel Eden Roc enjoys an enviable location right between the mountains and the scenic Lake Maggiore in the charming Swiss village of Ascona. Interior designer Carlo Rampazzi is responsible for the retreat’s sumptuous visual appeal, which begins in the striking lobby, with its marble floors and palazzo ceiling, and runs through to the high-end fabrics, white granite, and mosaics featured in the colorful rooms and suites. All rooms have a balcony or terrace, free Wi-FI, and a refined but open feel that perfectly suits the lakeside location—especially the newly renovated rooms in buildings I and II. Rooms in the adjacent Eden Roc Marina have a maritime theme, and are connected to the main hotel by a walkway. The private beach is a boon for sunbathers, and there’s a spacious panoramic pier with private yachting marina, a quartet of very good restaurants, and a huge spa area.

Why we love it: A vast resort on Table Rock Lake with every imaginable amenity

The Highlights:
- A lakeside location surrounded by miles of Ozark hiking trails
- A full-service marina for exploring the water
- Family-friendly amenities like a kids’ club and movie theater

The Review:
Just 10 miles from bustling Branson, Chateau on the Lake offers luxury accommodations in a serene lakeside setting. Nicknamed the “Castle in the Ozarks,” the property, with its signature blue-green roof peaks, is sprawling. Even the smallest guest rooms measure nearly 400 square feet, each with French Country furnishings, deep-wood accents, and views of the lake—often from private balconies. If you really want to stretch out, book the palatial Presidential or Vice Presidential suite, where four-poster king beds, separate sitting rooms, and jetted tubs make for an upscale stay.

When not relaxing in your room, take a dip in the indoor and outdoor pools, practice your serve on the tennis courts, hit the movie theater, or drop the little ones at the Crawdaddies Kids Club and head to the 12,000-square-foot Spa Chateau for treatments like the Table Rock Hot Stone Massage. Also on-site is a full-service marina for boat rentals, sailing charters, and activities like water-skiing, tubing, and fishing, as well as more than two miles of nature trails for hiking and bird-watching. When you factor in dining options as varied as an award-winning grille, a café and wine bar, a bakery, and a deli, there’s really no reason to ever leave the property—except to swim in Table Rock Lake.

Why we love it: A wilderness retreat full of natural beauty and rustic luxury

The Highlights:
- A wide range of accommodations, including luxurious glamping tents
- More than enough activities to keep the entire family entertained
- A spectacular spa with fireplaces in each treatment room

The Review:
Nestled deep in the Ozark Mountains, Big Cedar Lodge was built in the early 1920s as a lavish country retreat for two prominent Missourians. It was purchased in 1987 by Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris, who turned it into a fishing camp, then converted it to a high-end wilderness resort spread over 4,600 acres of wooded hollows. Today, it’s a popular place to connect with the great outdoors—amid some serious luxury. Overlooking the blue-green Table Rock Lake, the resort is focused on water recreation, offering activities like fishing, water-skiing, tubing, and rides on just about any boat you could imagine. A favorite choice is the Goin’ Jessi, an exact replica of a 1934 Chris-Craft named after Waylon Jennings’s wife, on which guests can take hour-long tours with champagne. Also on-site are two full-service marinas, four golf courses, and a 50,000-square-foot entertainment center with everything from go-karts, bumper cars, and laser tag to a ropes course, bowling alley, arcade, and climbing wall.

When visitors aren’t busy having fun, they’re spending quality time in Big Cedar Lodge’s plentiful accommodations, which range from lodge rooms to cottages to private log cabins with stone fireplaces, private decks, and jetted tubs. For something really unique, however, book an overnight experience at Camp Long Creek, an area just minutes from Big Cedar with camp huts, cabins, and glamping units right on the lake. (Outfitted with king canopy beds, chandeliers, and outdoor living spaces with a fire pit, shower, and galvanized tub for alfresco bathing, the tents are particularly exceptional.) Dining options are equally varied, from a casual café to a fine-dining restaurant to a wine-and-whiskey cellar. Still, the Cedar Creek Spa & Salon is alone worth a visit, thanks to its beautiful stained glass windows, hand-hewn timber ceiling, and stone floors crowned by chandeliers. There’s even an ice room and a candlelit grotto with body jets, plus 12 treatment rooms equipped with fireplaces and robes that are warmed up for post-treatment relaxation.

Situated on the Lyngen Fjord, this timber lodge is well suited for boat skiing. From March through May, a skipper ferries guests to nearby islands, where they hike up peaks and ski back to the beach.

Superlatives reign at this massive Palm Beach resort. Among the outsize offerings? The biggest casino in Aruba, with more than 500 slot machines and 26 gaming tables, as well as the island’s largest spa. Its 414 accommodations aren’t lacking for space either: Each room has a walk-in closet, double-sink bathroom, and private balcony; the highest-end suites are so palatial their balconies alone measure up to a sprawling 500 square feet—with ocean views to sweeten the deal. When you’re not playing roulette or indulging in a moisturizing coconut-milk wrap, kick back in one of the beachside palapas, or practice your breaststroke in the free-form pool, complete with cascading waterfalls and a volleyball net (a serene adults-only pool features a swim-up bar if that’s more your speed). In keeping with the more-is-more theme, guests are spoiled for choice with seven on-site restaurants, bars, and cafés, including a Ruth’s Chris Steak House, where the 500-degree plates ensure another best—the hottest meal in town.

At the end of a secluded peninsula, right on Coco Point, which is Barbuda’s southernmost tip, Coco Point Lodge is one of only a few modern hotel resorts on the island. Although not five-star fancy, this all-inclusive property, is plenty comfortable offering a mix of rooms and private cottage rentals in small buildings scattered across the grounds. Bordered by some 2.5 miles of gorgeous white sand beach and safe, reef-protected swimming in the clear turquoise waters of Cocoa Bay, it is a good choice for active types as included activities feature everything from sailing to snorkeling, waterskiing to windsurfing and sea kayaking. Deep-sea, reef or bone fishing expeditions can also be arranged, as can day trips to the Frigate Island Sanctuary for birds.

Despite its name, Ilha do Mussulo (Mussulo Island) is actually a sand bank formed by sedimentation from the Kwanza River. Accessible by boat—and by jeep when the tide is low—Mussulo is where residents of Luanda head when they want a break from the pace of the capital. The expansive white-sand beach is scattered with coconut palms, and the waters of the bay are calm, which makes conditions ideal for any number of water sports; you may want to join the locals who are windsurfing, snorkeling and water-skiing.

Minnesota famously boasts that it’s the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but Saskatchewan outdoes the state by an order of ten. With 100,000 lakes there is no shortage of opportunities to swim, sail, go fishing, or sunbathe on a beach. You can also choose to raft, waterski, jet ski or charter a house boat and live on the water for a few days and nights. The largest of the lakes, Athabasca, is some 3,000 square miles, but everywhere you turn, you’ll find bodies of sparkling water underneath sunny blue skies. (Seen here is Lake Diefenbaker which has almost 500 miles of coastline and is found in the southern part of the province.) Beachcombers may want to visit Good Spirit Lake Provincial Park, which is home to one of Canada’s top ten beaches (as named by MacLean’s). Boaters can choose from Duck Mountain, Greenwater Lake, and Saskatchewan Landing, as well as other parks with marinas, when they are ready to get out on the water. Photograph by Greg Huszar Photography