Reports and advice on stays at hotels, resorts – any form of lodging
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.”