Author: Eileen Ogintz

Destinations | Families & Groups | Lodging | Snow Vacations | Travel Diaries

Day 3 in Park City — what recession?
ByEileen Ogintz January 28, 2010June 28, 2023

I’m lying on a heated massage table in the spanking new spa at the St. Regis Deer Crest at Deer Valley. “We’ve been very busy,” the massage therapist tells me. It is a great massage complete with paraffin treatment to soften and help the blood flow in my tired feet and a scalp treatment. Great steam room! Another massive luxury hotel property is on line to open next year. The people checking in to the St Regis don’t seem concerned about the price of the rooms.

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Day 2 — so this is what it”s like to be numero uno
ByEileen Ogintz January 27, 2010June 28, 2023

Deer Valley has been named the #1 ski resort in North America in 2008, 2009 and again this year in North America by the readers of SKI Magazine.

Add in 300 annual inches of famous Utah dry powder, 100 trails, six bowls, 21 chairlifts and a limited number of skiers allowed on the mountain each day; three day lodges glowing warm with firelight and gourmet food, the well respected Ski School and Children’s Center; and the sheer ease of the place — parking lot shuttles, complimentary ski storage, ski valets and more.

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Destinations | Families & Groups | Food and Dining | Lodging | Snow Vacations | Travel Diaries

A trip to park city — day one
ByEileen Ogintz January 26, 2010June 28, 2023

A GIRL’S JUST GOTTA HAVE FUN! I’m sitting in one of ski country’s newest posh resorts—The St. Regis Deer Crest in Deer Valley. My room looks out over the groomers Deer Valley is known for and I can see the hotel’s hot tubs. There’s a fireplace and a marble bath and oh-so-comfy beds.

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Destinations | Families & Groups | Lodging | Parks & Outdoors | Weekly Column

Taking the Kids — To Patagonia
ByEileen Ogintz January 24, 2010June 28, 2023

The locals in Chile’s famous Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia are rhea, small ostriches, the gray fox, and herds of guanaco — a kind of llama who totally ignore us as the males chase each other (only one male can be dominant in a herd of females) and the females nurse their oh-so-cute babies. More than a dozen condors fly overhead so close we can make out the white on their wings, which span nine feet across!

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LAST DAY IN CHILE — Llama kabob anyone?
ByEileen Ogintz January 24, 2010June 28, 2023

We’ve stopped in a native village called Machucha Town –at over 12,000 feet where local Attacamas stay while herding their llama. Today we don’t see llamas—just tourists—and a local man dishing up llama shish kabab while a woman fries llama empanadas inside. In case you are wondering, llama tastes like lamb.

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To the hot springs
ByEileen Ogintz January 22, 2010June 28, 2023

I’m not dreaming. The handsome, long-haired 29 year old Chilean is Max Vera, who is guiding us on a challenging hike uphill along the canyon floor, scrambling over big rocks, along a sandy trail, in between large “fox tails” that grow in this region and Cacti that are 12 feet high with needles so sharp that local Indian women use them as needles to sew and knit.
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Chaxa Lake
ByEileen Ogintz January 21, 2010June 28, 2023

Day 10 — Welcome to Laguna de Chaxa (Chaxa Lake) and the National Reserve of Flamingoes that is about an hour from St. Pedro, Chile from where we’re staying at the lovely 32-room Tierra Atacama

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Who knows why glaciers are blue?
ByEileen Ogintz January 19, 2010June 28, 2023

DAY 8 — We’re in Bernardo O’Higgins National Park, the largest in Chile with several hanging glaciers including Balmaceda and Serrano Glaciers. We’ve taken a small boat from Puerto Natales, about five minutes from Hotel Remota (www.remota.cl) where we are staying for a three-hour cruise—past a huge waterfall and condor nest! “You read about it in books and then you can look and see it,” says Sandy VanLandingham, from Arizona visiting here with extended family.

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Destinations | Families & Groups | Lodging | Parks & Outdoors | Travel Diaries

Whoa Horsie!
ByEileen Ogintz January 18, 2010June 28, 2023

DAY 7 in Chile — It is one of those vacation days I think I must be dreaming. I’m in the Patagonian hills of Chile riding a gentle horse named Chinosca as we climb higher and higher on a traditional estancia or ranch, past grazing sheep and cattle. The hills are dotted with stumps of the traditional Linca trees—cut down in the early 1900s, our guide Alvaro Jaime tells us, both for energy in the new settlement of Puerto Natales and to provide more grazing land in those days.

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Beach Vacations | Destinations | Families & Groups | Lodging | Weekly Column

To St. Lucia
ByEileen Ogintz January 17, 2010June 28, 2023

Boiling mud pots, rain forests, and a drive-in Volcano. All that and spectacular beaches, too, on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, which promises a lot more than your typical resort getaway. With a culture that has borrowed from both the British and French — the small island midway between Martinique and St. Vincent changed hands some 14 times before finally gaining independence in 1979.

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