Reports and advice on stays at hotels, resorts – any form of lodging
It’s cold, dark and the snow is dumping, but that doesn’t stop thousands of locals and their kids from turning out at Park City Mountain Resort to cheer on snowboarding superstars Shaun White and Hannah Teter, as well as other world-class athletes as they strut their stuff under the lights in their final competition before the 2010 Olympic U.S. snowboarding team was announced.
It’s cold and the snow is dumping but that doesn’t stop hundreds of locals from turning out to cheer on the Snowboarders in their final comp before the U.S. Olympic Team is named. “It’s fun family time,” says Dan Kemp, with his wife and two young daughters.
Eight-year-old Henry Silverman may be a little jaded—at least when it comes to Olympians, his mom Caroline admits.
You can’t really blame him since he’s growing up in Park City, Utah, a town that’s home to the U.S. Snowboarding Team and chock full of past and present Olympians. “We see Olympians every day,” she laughs.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
I’m bushwhacking up a trail in Patagonia, scrambling over loose rocks and getting more frustrated by the minute. My knee aches. The guide is not helpful or attentive. I wish I’d remembered to ask for hiking poles—they really help. I wish he’d remembered to offer them.
This isn’t our neighborhood–the sweeping expanse of Torres del Paine National Park in Chile’s Patagonia belongs to herds of rhea (small ostriches), the gray fox, and herds of guanaco—a kind of llama who totally ignore our presence 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.
The whole lamb is roasting on a spit over blistering hot coals in the middle of nowhere–literally. It smells delicious and has been soaked in beer and seasoned only with salt.
It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m writing this in perhaps the most unique resort I’ve ever seen—Hotel Remota outside the Patagonian town of Puerto Natales, a small (perhaps 15,000 people) but growing tourist town for those discovering the wonders of this region.
We are sprawled under giant eucalyptus trees, chickens squawking as we tuck into a picnic (our trays are the tops of oak wine barrels—at the Emiliana Winery, which makes only organic wines in the Casablanca Valley—one of Chile’s big wine-growing regions about 22 miles east of Valparaiso.
The town of Telluride is so safe that local parents let 10-year-olds run around on their own. Kids routinely hop the free gondola from the mountain village for the 12-minute ride into town where they can go to a movie (there’s one movie theater), get some pizza or a burger and some gummies at The Sweet Life. “Parents just have to be willing to give them the freedom and you will see them blossom,” promises Pam Bennett, whose three children are the fifth generation to be raised here.
The three of us love skiing… hard. Silverton satisfied our collective appetite for steep slopes, open powder fields and “earning our turns.” With only one lift (not counting the bumblebee-like helicopter that pilots experts to otherwise un-gettable peaks) the Mountain has a huge variety of terrain which can be accessed only by strapping one’s skis to backpacks and trudging up in ski boots.
DAY FIVE AAH. I’m face down with soft music playing at the Golden Door Spa at the Peak’s Resort in Telluride as the massage therapist works magic on my aching muscles (after four days of skiing )
Sixteen year-old Max Walker-Silverman, a Telluride native has a message for visiting teens: “Get out of the mountain village and spread our tentacles and you will find a cool historical town.”
Some people do make their dreams come true. “It’s a lot of hard work and a lot of fun and you just have to learn to roll with the punches when there is an obstacle in your path,” says Aaron Brill, the 38-year-old owner and founder, with his 37 year-old wife Jenny, of Silverton Mountain Resort in Colorado (www.silverton.com) that is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. This isn’t any ski resort. For one thing, there is only one lift and no bathrooms–just an outhouse.