There are hotels with kids’ clubs: places where parents can drop off their children for face painting and pool games while they get on with the serious business of vacationing. And then there are hotels that have tapped their inner kid and put true care and work into their programming. Rather than simply keeping younger guests occupied, they give them experiences they’d never get at home—and ones that could stick with them for life—such as tracking animals across the Serengeti, digging up their lunch with a trowel in Tuscany, or spending a morning caring for a Sumbanese pony before taking it for a dunk in the Indian Ocean.

Happily, more of the world’s great hotels are beginning to fall into the latter camp, making the old leave-the-kids-at-home approach to high-end travel increasingly unnecessary. At the best of them, children have far too much fun to notice they’re learning anything in the first place.

For the Gaucho-in-Training: La Bamba de Areco

Ruta 31 Km 7.5, San Antonio de Areco, Argentina

+54 (0) 2326-454-895

An hour and a half outside Buenos Aires, the city peters out into the immense grasslands of the pampas, where La Bamba occupies an early-19th-century estancia shaded by enormous old trees. Horses are everywhere: The rooms are named after famous thoroughbreds, and the estate has two polo fields, where the resident polo team trains regularly. Teenagers—La Bamba currently welcomes children from age 12—can get into the saddle for rides across the estancia, while nearby San Antonio de Areco offers a deeper dive into gaucho culture, from the Museo Gauchesco Ricardo Güiraldes to workshops with local silversmiths and leatherworkers plying their centuries-old trades. Beyond the equestrian offerings, there’s mountain biking, fishing, and the very Argentine game of bochas.