It began with a rainy day in a moat.

The idea of a long swim through Britain came to the naturalist Roger Deakin in a period of personal sadness and isolation. The year was 1996: at the age of 53, he found himself alone, at the end of a long relationship. Besides that, he missed his son, Rufus, who was off surïŹng and adventuring on the eastern coast of Australia.

Though breaststroking across the moat near his home in a downpour might seem to be the very picture of misery, the act lent Deakin a sense of buoyancy and purpose. Watching the bright plash of raindrops dancing across the surface of the water animated him: “I grew convinced that following water, ïŹ‚owing with it, would be a way of getting under the skin of things…. In water, all possibilities seemed inïŹnitely extended.” That day set him in motion, leaving frustration and stasis behind. He would embark on an aquatic journey to ïŹnd something new—and surprising, and beautiful—in his country’s wild waterways.

He spent much of the next two years swimming and writing what would become the bestselling . First published in the UKÌęin 1999, the book quickly became the bible of a modern wild swimming movement, a word-of-mouth guidebook for those who wanted to dip into the waters he described. Though it’s now a celebrated classic of the nature-writing canon, Waterlog has never been available in the U.S.—. Its arrival to our shores couldn’t come at a better time.

Water, of course, connects us all. Planning his swimming travels made Deakin feel closer to his son, so many thousands of miles away but immersed in the same ocean. (We may give names to different parts of that ocean, but any map will show you that it’s all the same water.) In a funny kind of serendipity, during the time that Deakin was making his iconic swims across Britain as documented in Waterlog, I myself was in Australia, swimming and adventuring during a semester abroad. Perhaps I even crossed paths with Rufus in Byron Bay. All I know is that I, too, was moved to journey toward water, by a period of my own melancholy.

I was a 19-year-old college kid, and I knew next to nothing about the world. It was sophomore year; the only international travel I’d done was summer visits to my grandfather in Canada. I was twitchy with unhappiness: my parents’ marriage was about to end, my relationship with my boyfriend was imploding, and I couldn’t ïŹx either one of them.

“Proposed place of study.” I’d examined the study abroad application on my desk closely, rolling the words around in my mouth. Proposed place of study. I asked myself the question that heartsick young people everywhere ask themselves: What’s the farthest place I can get to from here?

The answer, it turned out, was Australia. And so I decided to go swimming in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef.

Like Deakin, I knew, even in the planning stages of my adventure, that I wanted magic: immersion in a world outside myself. I would learn how to breathe underwater. In the process, I would learn how to give myself over to possibility.

I’ve always been a swimmer, so it follows that I’ve always been a seeker. Even as a child, I often felt there was something more to see, and that water could take me there. I’ve spent much of the last several years seeking out the global swimming stories that became the book . Over many hours of research and reading, I got to know Roger Deakin, the bard of British open-water swimming, through the eloquent, watery words he put down.

What I ïŹrst loved about his writing on swimming was the otherworldliness he so keenly discerned. In Waterlog, the bewitching, Alice In Wonderland quality comes through: “When you enter the water, something like metamorphosis happens. Leaving behind the land, you go through the looking-glass surface and enter a new world…. You see and experience things when you’re swimming in a way that is completely different from any other.”

This passage ended up in my own book. “Your sense of the present,” he added, “is overwhelming.” Time itself could be altered; how awesome that was! What’s more, this was accessible magic, ready to be felt by anyone who made the plunge.

Upon rereading Waterlog this year, I noticed the shifting moods of a character as reïŹ‚ected in place. Of visiting the Norfolk coast—“close to home, yet remote”—Deakin observed that there was “no anti-depressant quite like sea-swimming.” Holkham was the place he usually went when he was feeling blue: “Striking out into the enormous expanse of cold sea, over the vast sands, I immerse myself like the fox ridding himself of his ïŹ‚eas. I leave my devils on the waves.”

I leave my devils on the waves. I am writing this, it must be said, in a time when our peripatetic ways have been profoundly changed, perhaps forever, by a global pandemic with no ïŹrm end in sight. So many of the days can feel dark and disconnected. But there are little joys, escapes, pinpricks of light. Even though the radius of our travels is smaller and closer to home, there is so much to notice, and appreciate.

Deakin, expounding on the sensory pleasures of his environment, reminds me to pay attention. He rendered the pulse of life in exquisite, granular detail: the rolling squeaks of starling birdsong, hairy tangles of seaweed, innocent tadpoles decanted from an aquarium into the wild. Plunging into an alpine rock pool caused one to spring out “on the knife-edge between aching and glowing.”

He reminded his fellow Britons of the rich swimming history embedded in their everyday. He communed with eel ïŹshermen in the Fens, traced limestone swimming holes in the Yorkshire Dales, observed (with a touch of concern) bridge-jumping traditions in Norwich. At the edge of an icy, high-altitude lake in Wales, he trembled, naked, pondering the geologic age of the surrounding rock, and saw the humor: “I was a prehistoric creature in my glistening wetsuit, ready to be fossilised unless I kept moving.”

Deakin was a traveling salesman for outdoor swimming; I mean that in the best way. His was the eye that noticed, and noted—the way a certain river with its salmon runs and shoreline barbecues, say, combined “the play of wild life with the play of human life.”

I, for one, was sold.

When I swam my way around Australia as a student, I saw immediately that the country’s obsession with swimming was something I could get behind. I landed in Sydney, a beautiful, sun-spackled city, so shiny and exhilarating to me. I spent more time sampling the public pools and glorious beaches than I did studying. I left, months later, my skin browned from the sun and marked by jellyïŹsh stings and other marine-life love bites.

I made trips to points west, along the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne, and north, to Byron Bay and the Sunshine Coast. Eventually, I worked enough to earn passage all the way up to Cairns, the jumping-off point to the most famous coral reef in the world. I remember the moment I ïŹrst sank into a pool with a scuba tank and made myself take a breath underwater. My body tensed, resisted. Not once had it ever been fully submerged and told to breathe in at the same time. It took deliberate thought, a conscious wrestling with primal, instinctive fear. That ïŹrst inhale through the scuba regulator in my mouth was deafening to my ears. It opened the portal to the undersea universe.

I spent two weeks on the reef, learning how to manage myself safely in the water. Eight of us travelers from all points on the planet had come together to live on a boat with our captain and our divemaster. We logged dives twice a day and wrote cryptic messages to each other underwater. We saw eagle rays, puffer ïŹsh, nurse sharks, massive mountain ranges of thriving coral. We learned to be gentle with the reef and the ïŹshes, and with each other. By the end we were no longer strangers.

It has been 25 years since I ïŹrst set off on what has become a career of writing and swimming and, more recently, surïŹng. What I have learned from this period of global swimming lessons—from being immersed in the wild, the world—is that water cannot wash away your troubles. But being in it can buoy you, long enough for you to register a fresh perspective.

I never met Roger Deakin; I wish I had. But I feel that reading his words, and discovering our parallel journeys, brings the world a little closer, draws the swimming community a little nearer, in a time when so many of us are feeling isolated and deeply alienated from our fellow humanity. More than two decades later, during a year-plus period of pandemic that closed most pools, open-water swimming has a ïŹerce new appeal for Americans. So many letters have come my way describing the writers’ elation at the freedom and magic that swimming in the great outdoors has lately granted them.

To cope with loss, pain, grief, we keep moving. We seek something new and beautiful to propel us to a different way of being. In the ïŹrst U.S. edition of Waterlog, Roger Deakin, one of our wisest watermen, guides the way.

Excerpted from WATERLOG: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain by Roger Deakin. Published with permission from Tin House. Copyright (c) 2021 by Bonnie Tsui.

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Civil twilight. Over the course of this past long year in California, it’s the one time of day I’ve allowed myself a sense of Before TimesÌęnormalcy. It’s during , when the stars still mingle with the moon in the sky but the sun announces that it’s on its way, that I’ve maintained a tenuous hold on the outside world through surfing.

I’ve been surfingÌęfor the past decade near my homeÌęin the Bay Area, but during the pandemicÌęit has become a near daily habit. In deepest winter, I’ll wake atÌę5:30 A.M.Ìęso I have a little time for coffee and a quick stretch. I’ll fill up a jug with hot water and load it in the car, along with my wetsuit, still dank and a little musty from yesterday. The surfboards are already packed up. The stars are still crisp against the night sky. I often see Venus.ÌęBut there’s been an imperceptible shift when the sun hits 18 degrees below the horizon.ÌęIt turns out that there are gradients of dawn, and they all have a name. This moment is theÌęfirst:Ìęastronomical dawn.

It’s still dark, and will remain so until I’m almost at the beach. The sun, creepingÌęfrom 18 to 12 degrees below the horizon, is working its way through astronomical twilight.ÌęThe roads are quiet, but the world is waking up. Lights flicker on in houses, and solitary runners with headlamps begin to dot the sidewalks and trails. By 12 degrees, nautical dawn, early-morning traffic starts to slow on the Bay Bridge, which I cross en route to Pacifica or San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.ÌęYetÌęthe night still hangs on, enough so that I can’t quite make out the faces of the other surfersÌęwhen I arrive. We chat from a car’s length as we suit up and try to see what the waves are doing. I have to use the flashlight on my phone to find the wax at the bottom of my bag.

When the sun isÌęsix degrees below the horizon, it’s civil dawn. ThusÌębeginsÌęcivil twilight, the phase when the sun makes its final move to the horizon. The sky brightens. This is when we paddle out, hoping to steal some uncrowded time with the waves.

I like this phrase—civil dawn. I like the sense that, when we’re in the water, we are respectful of the ocean and each other, together but apart. There is room for generosity. Few of us are out at this hour, soÌęwe have plenty of spaceÌęand a quiet lineup. In these momentsÌęjust before day breaks, it’s possible to surf by the glow of both the moon and sunÌęif the time of month is right. Sometimes we surf by the glow of the Pacifica Taco BellÌęif the lights are on. At Ocean Beach, the container ships blink just offshore.

Surfers can be a grouchy, territorial lot. All it takes is one person dropping in on youÌęto generate awful thoughts about humankind.ÌęBut I try to be my best self out there. I smile and say good morning and look before I go for a wave. By and large, the people I see at civil twilight are doing the same.ÌęWe are existing in a liminal space, between night and day, ending and beginning. Together and alone. The neither-norÌęquality of this period is somehow inclusive. In its fuzzy borders, I feel that we take more care.

To many, twilight suggests finality: the end of a day, the end of a career, the end of a life. But twilight bookends the day, presenting itself both at the beginning and the end. It is an in-between period, duringÌęwhich the sun isn’t yet visibleÌębut the earth is neither completely illuminated nor completely dark. It is a soft and scattering glow, the promise of both day and night held together.

I catch a wave, and in the moment I’m flying down the face, my focus is acutely intent:ÌęI am, however briefly, free of the world’s cares. That present sense of lightness is joyful. It’s because of surfing that I still know how to smile when things are otherwise grim. The unusually big swells of this winter season have also forced me to be prepared, push my limits, and handle rogue waves and hold-downs and other people’s flying boards and bodies. I know to expect the unexpected.

Civil dawn ends at sunrise. I stay for another hour or so, navigating the lineup until there are too many peopleÌęfor my comfort, both as a surfer and as a human mid-pandemic. I head home, back to a schedule of virtual work and virtual school and virtual community. I put on my force field and mask up with my sons for walks around the block or to the corner store. I stay inside and make dinner with my husband and read books and watch movies. TomorrowÌęwe’ll do it all again.

We’re awaitingÌęthe light at the end of the tunnel after doing this strange work—a low-level hibernation into the murk of a largely interior existence, intimate with our familiars in a too small space, in order to survive the raging uncertainty of a pandemicÌęand the unrest of a divided body politic. In December, color technology and design companyÌę: Ultimate Gray and Illuminating. Normally, there’s just one hue, but it turns out we need both—the dark and the light—to accurately represent the arc of the coming year.

The civil dusk of an old year and era merges and moves through nightÌęinto the civil dawn of a new one. Perhaps this is the sparkÌęafter the darkness. I am preparing for reentry, into a changed new world that is only just making itself visible. AndÌęthough it might not feel like it quite yet, so are you.

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It’s amazing that Ayana Elizabeth Johnson found the time to talk to me. To cite just some of the things the 40-year-old Brooklynite has been up to in the past year: running a conservation consulting firm, Ocean Collectiv; founding a coastal-cities think tank, ; advising Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign on the , an ocean-focused strategy for reducing carbon emissions and boosting the economy; taking over account to guide a dialogue on environmental justice; editing an ; and launching a podcast with industry heavyweight Alex Blumberg ambitiously titled .

So, yes, she’s been busy. And with good reason. With her expertise, personal story, and collaborative grassroots approach to problem solving, Johnson has emerged as a uniquely powerful voice in the environmental movement. She is one of a small number of scientists who operates at the nexus of climate change and racial justice, and the only one who has been able to connect the dots between those issues in a way that might actually get us somewhere.

Plus, she’s a natural entertainer. “Ayana is genuinely funny,” says Blumberg, the cofounder of podcasting juggernaut Gimlet Media, which sold to Spotify last year for a reported $230 million. As cohosts of How to Save a Planet, they examine achievable solutions to climate change. A common question they ask guests: How screwed are we? (Spoiler: It depends. We have a choice of possible futures.) “She’s an actual subject-matter expert who’s charismatic and can crack a joke and think on her feet. That’s rare.”

When I spoke to Johnson during a gap in her schedule, she described a life and career journey that began when she was on a family vacation in Florida at age five, sitting on the back of a glass-bottom boat with other kids throwing cheese popcorn to the fish. She is allergic to dairy and was covered in hives by the time her mom pulled her into the boat’s cabin to rinse off. There she found herself alone staring down through the glass at the life below. “I had a private view of this underwater magical world,” she says. That was all it took: she fell in love with coral reefs.

Johnson’s father was an architect, her mother a public-school teacher, and she was a brainy kid who spent hours digging up worms in their Brooklyn backyard. She studied environmental science and public policy at Harvard University, then earned her Ph.D. at the University of California at San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 2007, she began her graduate field work, in Curaçao and Bonaire, by redesigning fish traps to reduce bycatch and getting local officials to require their use. Her low-tech solution cut the capture of ornamental fish by some 80 percent and also convinced her that she “didn’t want to just write research papers that nobody was going to read, that wouldn’t result in any action.”

In that spirit, her dissertation on sustainably managed coral reefs was informed by interviews with hundreds of Caribbean fishermen and divers. The core of what she asked them: “If you could write the rules to manage fishing in the ocean, what would they be?” Their responses showed her the importance of engaging communities in the creation of policies that would alter their lives. “The hours I spent interrupting dominoes games and hanging out at the docks really changed the way I see the world,” Johnson says. She later applied that collaborative model in her work with the , a nonprofit focused on restoring fish populations, where she cofounded and directed an initiative that supported the citizens of Barbuda as they crafted their own marine regulations. The result was one of the most progressive and comprehensive ocean management policies in the region.

In 2016, Johnson moved back to Brooklyn to seek a career that would enable her to have the biggest impact in ocean conservation and climate change. She took on a series of freelance gigs: working with XPrize on a contest for the best use of ocean data, aiding Greenpeace on a coral-reef initiative, and authoring a report for the World Wildlife Fund on waste in the seafood supply chain. She was getting so many offers she couldn’t handle it all alone—and she didn’t want to. So she called up “a dozen of the coolest people I knew” and in 2017 formed Ocean Collectiv with the goal of supporting conservation groups “that are trying to do something differently—and in a way that is always really careful about the justice implications of the work.”

Returning to New York gave Johnson a new appreciation for the city’s shoreline and eventually spurred her to cofound the think tank Urban Ocean Lab with entrepreneur and designer Marquise Stillwell and veteran congressional policy advisor Jean Flemma. Their hope is to cultivate policies that help America’s coastal cities adapt to the threats of rising sea levels and more powerful storms. Johnson points out that the role the oceans play in climate change is often overlooked: when congressional Democrats released the Green New Deal, the oceans were barely mentioned. This prompted her to coauthor for the environmental outlet Grist calling out the “big blue gap” in the plan, and that led to her being tapped to work with Warren’s campaign.

Even after the COVID-19 pandemic began, Johnson was a swirl of activity. Then came George Floyd’s death and the country’s explosive response. Suddenly she wasn’t able to get anything done, a fact that she expressed in a for The Washington Post that sharply identified the intersection of environmentalism and racism: “How can we expect Black Americans to focus on climate when we are so at risk on our streets, in our communities, and even within our own homes?”

“I wrote that out of fury and grief,” she told me. “To say, ‘White environmentalists, I know you just want to ignore racism because our environmental challenges are already massive. And I, too, wish we could ignore it, but I am proof that you can’t ignore it and still get this work done.’ ”

The piece elevated Johnson to a new level of intellectual leadership in the environmen­tal movement. There was perhaps no one who better understood what needed to be explained—or who was more capable of doing the explaining. On that same family vacation where she gazed in wonder at a coral reef, her father taught her to swim in a hotel pool. It was a joyous trip, but decades later her parents let her know that it had been tainted by racism. “My dad’s Black and my mom’s white,” Johnson says. “When my dad showed up, none of the white people would get in the pool.”

For Johnson, the environmental and civil rights movements are linked by a shared moral clarity and a relentless effort to make things better. “When I was five, I wanted to be a marine biologist,” she says. “And then at ten I wanted to be the lawyer who got the next Martin Luther King out of jail.”

She’s bringing that same urgency to How to Save a Planet, which launched on August 20. She and Blumberg have an odd-couple-like dynamic, which may well help them in their bid to produce “the podcast about climate change that people actually want to listen to,” Johnson says with a laugh. The anthology she coedited, ($29; One World), offers another unexpected approach to climate activism. The contributors include scientists, lawyers, and think-tank policy experts, but also farmers, artists, designers, and poets.

“My love of nature and humanity drive my work,” Johnson says. “It’s not some abstract interest in policy or science—those are tools for understanding the world and shaping it into something that is verdant and fair.”

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Most days, if I’m not in the ocean for a surf at first light, I get into the neighborhood pool by 8:30 A.M. Even when there’s frost on the ground, the water is warm. Unless you’re the lifeguard, blowing the whistle when you want me to get out, I don’t know you exist. For 60Ìęblessed minutes and 3,200 yards, I’m my only audience. In a pool there’s nothing much to look at once the goggles fog over. I have spit andÌęsprayed all manner of antifog fixes into them, and none has kept the mist from creeping up on my vision like cataracts. But I’m OK with that. Sound? The sloshing of water pretty much cancels out everything else. Taste and smell are largely of the chlorine and salt variety—though, at my old pool, I used to smell burgers cooking from the café downstairs. Nowadays I get whiffs of eggs and hash browns from the high school cafeteria next door. Despite all the tech advances of the last few years, you won’t see many swimmers wearing earphones or bone-conduction music devices: they just don’t work that well.

Submersion creates internal quiet, too. Sometimes swimming to blankness is the goal. We enter the meditative state induced by counting laps and observe the subtle play of light as the sun moves across the lanes. We slip from thought to thought, and then there’s a momentary nothingness. In that brief interlude, we are entirely liberated from the weight of thinking. When he was a child, Michael Phelps was diagnosed with ADHD; back then, the pool was his “safe haven,” in part, he says, because “being in the pool slowed down my mind.” More recently, in retirement, away from the stress of competition, he has talked about the pool as a place of sanctuary and renewed mental health.

What do we think about when we’re swimming? Unlike land-based exercise, swimming requires submersion and that characteristic isolation. But isolation in this context is a rare blessing. In the always connected modern age, the medium represents a means of disappearing. Each pool is in fact a potential portal.

In John Cheever’s 1964 short story “” Neddy Merrill swims home through the backyard pools of his suburban neighbors. To get there, he must navigate the parties and social merriment surrounding every body of water. At one stop, Neddy “stood by the bar for a moment, anxious not to get stuck in any conversation that would delay his voyage. When he seemed about to be surroundedÌęhe dove in and swam.” Water, then, is a bubble in which all social pressure is easily eluded.

, who spent two years teaching swim lessons in a combat zone in Baghdad, tells me that a long swim leaves his mind calm, collected, and organized in a way that other sports don’t.

“It’s hard to leave the pool angry about something,” he says. “It doesn’t lend itself to that.” As the world, with its escalating rings and pings, gets ever more hysterical, suspending yourself in water becomes ever more appealing.

Sometimes swimming is a wormhole through which to escape the grinding machinery of everyday life. I get in a lake and swim away, as far as I can. When I get far enough away, literally and figuratively, I know it, because I find I want to go back. It’s an exercise in thresholds. How much I can take, how much distance I need, how far I can get from shore before I feel afraid, at what point I desire to return to land. I brew and brood over things that seem to be of consequence, but by the end of a swim, the water has washed much of that away. I come out with my mood and mental clarity improved by a minimum of 48 percent.

“Theories and stories would construct themselves in my mind as I swam to and fro, or round and round Lake Jeff,” Oliver Sacks wrote in “,” one of my favorite essays of all time. Five hundred lengths in a pool were never boring or monotonous; instead, Sacks said, “Swimming gave me a sort of joy, a sense of well-being so extreme that it became at times a sort of ecstasy.” The body is engaged in full physical movement, but the mind itself floats, untethered. Beyond this, he added, “there is all the symbolism of swimming—its imaginative resonances, its mythic potentials.” Echoes of Lord Byron.

One recent weekday morning at the pool, I watch an eight-year-old boy and his teenage sister swim their laps beside me. The boy shivers on land, lips blue and knees knocking. But when he hits the water, he is confident, focused, as fluent in the medium as a seal. For a little while, there is just a boy in his buoyancy.

This is not to say that swimmers find it easy to be Zen masters. once told PBS that he and Hillary swim together every afternoon; if either dares to mention a political topic during the course of their swim, he said, “We will stop the other one.”

I ask , the 12-time Olympic medalistÌęwho has amassed countless training hours for her five Games, what she thinks about when she’s swimming. “I’m always doing five things at once,” she tells me by phone (at the time, she was driving a car). “So when I get in the water, I think about all the things that I have to do. But sometimes I go into a state—I don’t really think about anything.” The important thing, she says, is that the time is yours. “You can use it for anything. It depends where your head is at—it’s a reflection of where you are.”

The reflection of where you are: in essence, a status update to youÌęand only you. And the experience is egalitarian. You don’t have to be a great swimmer to appreciate the benefits of sensory solitude and the equilibrium the water can bring.

People often tell me about their swimming habits—for example, how, when they visit or move to a new city, the first thing they do is account for all the pools and open water. It’s a way to get to know a place. It’s how they map out unfamiliar geographies and make them their own.

When I was growing up, my father told me about Hainan Island, the “Chinese Hawaii,” perched on the South China Sea. To the Chinese, Hainan has always had a romantic, frontier air about it. As the southernmost point in China, it is the only tropical island, and it served for centuries as a place of exile for poets and politicos. To my father, a Hong Kong–born painter who divorced my mother and left New York to go back and live in China, it was a dream of a place, a palm-fringed paradise that represented the ideal inspiration for him.

There was a time in my early thirties when I hadn’t seen my father in three years. One morning I took a deep breath and called him up. My work would take me to Hainan that year. “Come swimming again,” I said, my stomach full of butterflies. “Come meet me in the South China Sea.” And he did.

The island was in the midst of a development boom, but still we were able to walk on stretches of empty white beach, with spearmint waves lapping the shores, and take drives to the rural inner parts of the island. A Chinese acquaintance back home wrote out a traditional poem for me from memory, a long verse with many characters about Hainan’s famously striking landscape. “Hainan is very beautiful,” he’d said. “I’ve never been there, but I learned about it in school.” I brought the poem with me, which my friend had written in Chinese, and asked my father to translate it for me when we were in Hainan. The island’s legendary mist-clad cliffs and coastlines, straight out of the old calligraphy scrolls and paintings, came to life.

I tried to forget that, as a child, my father was a daily constant in my life. Once, when I was 12, he told me I was his best friend. It hurt to remember that; as an adult, I saw him only every year or two. The first time I insisted on visiting him in China—on my way back from that college semester abroad in Australia—I screamed and cried at him, not for leaving my mother but for the way he did it. There was no swimming on that trip, but there was a pool’s worth of tears.

On Hainan Island, we came together in a truce. The trip was a pilgrimage for me, to a new, more forgiving place. I coaxed him into accompanying me on a swim. He, a former lifeguard, could not remember the last time he went swimming. His butterfly wasn’t half bad. The air was humid. The water was warm, enveloping, a balm. He looked happy. As I floated on my back and stared at that cloud-streaked sky over the South China Sea, I felt that I was, too.

Franz Kafka observed that “the truth is always an abyss. One must—as in a swimming pool—dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order later to rise again—laughing and fighting for breath—to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.” We dare to jump so we can see something new. And sometimes we do it to recover a sense of what we once had.

From Why We SwimÌęby Bonnie Tsui ©2020 by Bonnie Tsui. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.

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Journey to the Center of the Earth

Dreading winter’s chill? It’s always summer in Central America, where you can still surf untouched breaks, summit active volcanoes, and scuba-dive pristine reefs from Guatemala all the way south to Panama. Click on the links below to explore some of the regions best trips. Book now and thank us later.

Nicaragua
Panama
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Nicaragua

The contra-Sandinista war ended more than 20 years ago. It's time to go see the country's beautiful future for yourself.

The beach at Hotel Punta Teonoste

The beach at Hotel Punta Teonoste

The Cathedral of Leon

The Cathedral of Leon

The author on Cerro Negro

The author on Cerro Negro

THE WIND IS HOWLING, the bats are flying, and I’m on the wrong side of the zona de peligro—no pase sign, peering into what 16th-century Spanish priests considered to be the burning maw of hell. It’s after-hours at Masaya Volcano National Park, Nicaragua’s first, where a 36-square-mile caldera gracefully rises 2,095 feet above the dry tropical forest halfway between the capital, ­Managua, and the colonial city of Granada. The crater I’m peering into, ­San­ti­ago, is one of the most ­active in Central America, spewing as much as 1,200 tons of sulfur dioxide per day. The pulsing thump of glowing ­magma 1,246 feet ­below sounds like crashing waves. It’s so mesmerizing that I take a step closer.

If this park were in the U.S., there would be a six-foot chain-link fence topped by razor wire circling the crater rim. But Nica­raguans have a large appetite for risk and a practically nonexistent national-park budget. This no-barriers connection to what lies beneath, as well as nighttime tours of massive bat caves, are what make the park so sensational. My guide, Juan Carlos Mendoza, was here at Masaya in 2001 with 150 American tourists when it erupted.

“I heard a boom and thought it was dynamite,” Mendoza says. That’s when a volcanic rock bombed his bus, making evacuation difficult. Since everyone came out alive, Mendoza, a 50-year-old former Sandinista, remained calm. He’d seen worse.

“Su turno es su turno,” he tells photographer João Canziani and me as, on cue, a deep boom emanates from the crater and I leap toward the “safe” side of the fissure on the rim. In other words, when it’s your time to die, it’s your time to die. Not only do I respect Mendoza’s savant-like knowledge of Nicaragua—from bird species to batty politicians—but after a week traveling together, I’m also starting to get his Latin pícaro sense of humor. It’s dark, spicy, and not at all PC.

It also matches the mood of Masaya, which I’ve deemed the Dark Park because of the near perfect metaphor it creates for Nicaragua’s surreal and violent history. Hundreds of years ago, Masaya was used as a sacrificial altar by the Chorotega ­Indians, who threw maidens and small children into the crater to ­appease the goddess of fire. In the 1970s, dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle’s hit men dumped their tortured prisoners’ bodies here to disappear the evidence. “Beauty, in Nicaragua, often contained the beast,” wrote Salman Rushdie in his 1987 book The Jaguar Smile.

Most Americans know more about its beast than its beauty. Our collective knowledge of Central America’s largest country—slightly bigger than the state of New York, with a population of nearly six million people, and the second-poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere—centers on two events. The first was the five-year civil war that killed an estimated 50,000 Nicaraguans and ended with the socialist Sandinistas’ overthrow of Somoza in 1979.

The second was the contra-Sandinista war, a poorly masked U.S.-Soviet proxy conflict to control this resource-rich banana republic. The war lasted through most of the 1980s and killed 30,000 people, but for Americans the screaming headline was the Iran-contra affair, the 1986 scandal in which the Reagan administration illegally sold arms to Iran in order to fund the contras, the Nicaraguan soldiers trained by the U.S. to overthrow the Sandinistas.

Add a string of corrupt politicians and the 2006 resurgence of President Daniel Ortega, a populist Sandinista whose administration is heavily backed by oil subsidies from Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and it’s clear that while Nicaragua is no longer a dictatorship, it isn’t exactly a democracy, either.

But even questionably ethical leadership can’t keep Nicaragua from finally, fully taking advantage of its assets: it may come as a surprise to most Americans that the country is on par with Panama as the second safest in Central America, behind Costa Rica, according to United ­Nations statistics. It’s also one of the most biologically diverse. More than 18 percent of Nicaragua is protected in 77 parks and reserves, which include the more than five-­million-acre Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, the second-largest intact rain­forest in the Western Hemi­sphere. It has 25 volcanoes ­(seven of which are active); more than 750 bird species; empty, world-class surf beaches on the Pacific; unexplored jungles on the Caribbean; and a population that is pulling itself up by its bootstraps through tourism. With a growing number of colo­nial hotels and designer eco-lodges, the allure of Nicaragua is no longer a secret. More than a million foreigners—210,479 from the United States—visited in 2010. Like Costa Rica 20 years ago, Nicaragua is on the cusp of going mainstream.

It’s impossible to see the entire country in ten days, so we’ve started in Managua and are making a figure-eight loop northwest to the city of León and the beaches of the Pacific; then to Granada; then ­turning south to the expat surfing hot spot San Juan del Sur. From there we’ll visit the newly anointed World Biosphere ­Reserve of Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua—the ­largest freshwater body in Central America—and finish back in Managua.

Tonight we’ve diverted from the gringo trail altogether. The park is deserted, and we have the glow of the Masaya Volcano and the distant view of moonlit Lake Nicaragua to ourselves. From this vantage point, it feels like Nicaragua’s moment is now.

“I CONSIDER MYSELF to be very nationalistic. I love my country,” Mendoza tells me as we speed toward Managua in a white SUV. We’ve been poking around the ruins of León Viejo, the second-oldest Nicaraguan city, founded in 1524 and destroyed by a severe earthquake in 1610. This former gold-trading center is Nicaragua’s first World Heritage site.

“Our history is very heroic,” Mendoza continues. “This country has so much potential, but I don’t think I’m going to live long enough to see its future.”

Mendoza is the future of Nicaragua. Five foot eleven and barrel-chested, he speaks impec­cable English, wears a military buzz cut, has a massive jaguar tooth dangling around his neck, and never takes off his name tag. He’s the country’s conduit to the world—from everyday people on up. When Pope John Paul II was scheduled to visit in 1996, Mendoza was the man assigned to show him around. Unfortunately, the plans were changed at the last minute.

“I could have ridden in the Popemobile!” he says dejectedly.

Mendoza was also, as they say, “en la lucha”—in the fight. After graduating from John F. Kennedy High School in Fremont, California (his family sent him to the U.S. after an earthquake demolished Managua), in 1980, he was selected by the ministry of tourism to undergo a yearlong intensive training program, studying the history, geography, wildlife, flora, fauna, and volcanology of Nicaragua. In November 1983, he was hired as one of the country’s first official tour guides. Five months later, he was drafted into the Sandi­nista army. Mendoza went off to the jungle without complaint.

“I thought it was correct to defend my country,” he says.

After two years, Mendoza was allowed to return to his tourism job; he was assigned VIPs like Kuwaiti princes and a Central American president. He’s been at it ever since, guiding for Careli Tours, a company owned by the Melchiors, the ­family that pioneered Costa Rican environmental tourism.

It’s impossible to fully under­stand a country as conflicted and convoluted as Nicaragua. While it helps to study the past, it doesn’t do any good to dwell on it. Within an hour’s radius of LeĂłn, there are plenty of ways to ditch the beast and connect with the beauty. We hiked 2,395-foot Cerro Negro Volcano, a jet-black dome with a crater so active that it melted Canziani’s hiking boots. On Juan ­Venado Island, a mangrove-lined estuary that parallels the Pacific, we saw caimans and a pale-billed woodpecker so elusive that Mendoza had to look it up in his Birds of Costa Rica book—Birds of Nicaragua doesn’t yet exist. A few miles up the coast in the village of Las Peñitas, we ate ruco, a whitefish fried whole and ­sautĂ©ed in tomatoes and red sauce, under palapas over­looking a wild beach that stretched for miles.

A day later, we’re 80 miles southeast on a 23,100-square-foot island in the northwest corner of Lake Nicaragua. It’s one of the only freshwater lakes in the world populated by sharks. (The dictator Somoza delighted in feeding them cows.) We’re sharing Jicaro ­Island Ecolodge with a Colombian photo­grapher, his assistant, and a Brazilian model, who are here to shoot a cover for a tony U.S. travel magazine. This stunning and simple nine-casita lodge, which opened in 2010, was the vision of British businesswoman Karen Emanuel, who partnered with British architect ­Matthew Falkiner to create an oasis made from local volcanic rock and recycled wood. This is one of those getaways where, after you’ve completed your yoga, meditated, and taken a dip in the lake, the chefs will prepare you a honey-infused tropical-fruit smoothie for breakfast before you sprawl out by the pool.

But sometimes the beast rears its head even in paradise. An employee at Jicaro, who wished to remain nameless, began fighting for the Sandinistas at 17.

“I try to forget it. It wasn’t a good time,” he told us at break­fast. “If I wanted to smoke a cigarette, I had to hide it in a ­banana leaf so the enemy couldn’t see the light and kill me.”

The only benefit of the war, he adds with a smile, was that when it finally ended there were seven women for every man. “I’m so happy because my wife is young and I enjoy life,” he says. “The war was over 20 years ago. Now all we have is a beautiful future.”

FOR THE GOOD LIFE, wealthy Managuans and expat surfers congregate on the Pacific coast at San Juan del Sur. Twenty-five miles northwest of the Costa Rican border, the beach town of 18,500 people sits on a half-moon bay with a statue of Jesus looking down from one hillside and the guests at the luxury Pelican Eyes resort looking down from the other. We’re in town only long enough to pick up Rex Calderon, the 19-year-old Central American surfing champion, who grew up a block from the beach. The unassuming five-foot-six, mustached and muscled pro is going to show us how to catch a wave Nicaragua style.

From San Juan del Sur, Mendoza drives 30 minutes north on a dirt track through the dry scrub and stops at a wooden gate manned by two armed security guards. One of them pokes his head into our SUV and charges $3 per person to enter the private property that grants ­access to Playa Hermosa, a beach so untouched that the last two seasons of Survivor were filmed here. A few miles beyond the gate, the road dead-ends at a parking lot where a truckload of local surfers are packing it in for the day. The offshore breezes here are generally perfect in March and April, but it’s February and the heavy winds blowing off Lake Nicaragua, to the east, are chopping up the swell.

Beyond the palm trees and palapas, the beach opens up into a mile-long crescent. To the southwest, the mountains of Costa Rica rise in the hazy distance. Out on the water, Calderon, who has been sponsored by Quicksilver since he was 13 and is Nicaragua’s answer to Mick Fanning, is ­cutting through the waves with the grace of a cat, launching impressive air and popping effortless 360s. To his right is Johnny Goldenberg, a 43-year-old Canadian expat and local real estate entrepreneur who moved to San Juan del Sur five years ago. With a gap-toothed smile and a body full of tattooed Buddhist wisdom, Goldenberg is Calderon’s benefactor, ­providing him with Eberly boards.

“Rex is a good kid—he doesn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs,” Goldenberg tells me as he zips up his wetsuit. “And he’s a coldhearted killer in a contest. The only problem is trying to get him to leave Nicaragua to compete. He loves it here.”

“I’ve had to travel far and wide to find a surf spot with only three guys in the water,” he continues. “The only way I’m leaving is if I can’t afford to live here anymore. Nicaragua is a cross between Cuba and Cabo. It’s got that natural beauty, but the look and feel of socialism. The nervousness when nobody would invest is gone.”

A friend of Calderon’s has just finished telling me how safe it is here when a security guard wearing a BEER IS AN APPETIZER T-shirt drives up in a rusty Land Cruiser and urges me to hide my camera. The only other person within a mile is a woman in a bikini sunbathing. I wonder out loud who he thinks might steal it. The security guard points to the dense jungle scrub behind the beach and is about to expound when a surfer appears out of the water. He intro­duces himself as Juan Manuel Caldera, a local developer.

“It’s very simple. We have kids who watch surfers with fancy sunglasses and shorts, and they start snatching things,” Caldera explains. “We’ve solved that by putting security here.”

Caldera, it turns out, is a Nicaraguan journalist who covered the contra-Sandinista war for NBC and now owns the off-the-grid solar-powered development Las Fincas, a few miles away. He, like Mendoza, had the resources to leave Nicaragua during the worst years. But for both men, the pull toward home was too strong to resist.

“Nicaragua is the safest, most wonderful country in Central America,” Caldera tells me as we slowly walk back down the empty beach. “But it’s all about perception. We have got to change the perception.”Ìę

Fishing in Panama

Redefine roughing it in Islas Secas

Life in Panama

Life in Panama

Fishing near Isla Parida

Fishing near Isla Parida

A palapa at the Islas Secas Resort

A palapa at the Islas Secas Resort

The path to dinner

The path to dinner

They left us there, on that deserted island. My husband and I watched as the 40-foot Munson landing craft pulled away, beaching us on a speck of jungle surrounded by the Gulf of ChiriquĂ­. We had only our bathing suits, two beach umbrellas, a double kayak, snorkels, masks, fins, a cooler of Balboa beer, two fresh pasta salads, four fluffy towels, sunscreen, bug stuff, and a shortwave radio. These meager provisions would have to last us three hours.

It was our two-year anniversary. We waved and set off in our kayak to explore Isla Pargo, one of 16 islands in the remote private archipelago of Islas Secas.

I’d heard about Islas Secas Resort from my childhood friend Carter Andrews. Carter and I grew up normally enough in Nashville, Tennessee, but then he went on to become one of the world’s best fishing guides, with sea-monster cameos on ESPN. Last year he signed on as the fishing director for Islas Secas and several other properties owned by a conservation-minded billionaire. “You’ve
got to get down here,” he told me. “This place is ridiculous.”

He wasn’t kidding. The approach alone is like something out of Jurassic Park. From the small mainland fishing-lodge settlement of Boca Chica, we hopped in a 34-foot SeaVee boat and roared an hour toward the Pacific horizon. By the time we sighted Islas Secas, 25 miles out, the mainland had disappeared. We slowed past green cliffs lined with frigate birds and arrived at a long dock where ­Enrique the bartender waited with two papaya smoothies.

Islas Secas is my kind of roughing it. Guests stay in seven solar-powered yurts, each with its own bathroom and a plantation bed wrapped in mosquito netting. Every morning at 6:30, Enrique delivered a fresh carafe of coffee. Dinner was a stroll to another yurt on a crescent-shaped beach, where chef Alexander Rojas cooked up fish curry and fresh-picked-mango cheesecake on a bay that, each August, fills with breaching humpback whales.

That’s the real draw of Islas Secas: the sea life—parrotfish, puffer fish, king angelfish, shovel­nose guitarfish; whitetip reef sharks, green and ridley turtles, spotted and spinner dolphins. The Gulf of Chiriquí serves as a nursery for the Tropical Eastern Pacific Marine Corridor, a nutrient-rich highway of currents stretching from Costa Rica all the way to the Galápagos. To put that a little less scientifically: the fishing and diving are insane. Much of this bounty is found in Coiba National Park, a 430,825-acre sanctuary surrounding the 124,320-acre volcanic island of Coiba. Coiba was belched up from the Galápagos hot spot 70 million years ago. More recently, until 2004, it was Panama’s most notorious penal colony. Now a Unesco World Heritage site, the park includes the most biodiverse waters in the region. Islas Secas is the closest jumping-off point.

We circled Coiba one day with Carter and his family, his three-year-old daughter, Payton, snorkeling alongside her mother in 25 feet of clear water. But most days we fished, banging 30 miles out to the seamount of Montuosa to cast popping lures for 50-pound yellow­fin tuna. Carter has a bear’s physique and a bruin’s mane of hair; his first mate, local Juan Spragge, is a 21-year-old fishing prodigy. The other captains call them Yogi and Boo-Boo, which might bother them more if they weren’t tagging and releasing more 700-pound marlin than anyone else on Panama’s Hannibal Bank. At one point, we came upon four boobies sunning themselves on a floating log, watching for fish. Carter stopped the boat. “Mahi—under there,” he said. One cast and a dorado was on the line, flashing green. Carter handed me the rod.

“You know what you caught there?” he said, radioing back to Chef Alex that dinner was in the boat. “Passion-fruit ceviche.”

Surfing in Costa Rica

Get schooled on the Nicoya Peninsula

WITH MORE THAN 700 species of birds and an expanding national-park system, Honduras is no slouch when it comes to land-based offerings. But the real draw is underwater. If you’ve heard of Roatán, it’s for good reason: deep cuts in the reef around the island drop thousands of feet, offering vertiginous wall diving, wreck exploration, blooming coral, and high visibility. Head to the island’s laid-back West End for white-sand beaches, open-air bars, and the Cocolobo hotel, which has a sweet infinity pool and ten balcony rooms. Nearby you’ll find accredited dive outfitters of long standing like Coconut Tree and West End Divers. If you’ve got the cojones, explore the bizarre deep-sea universe of jelly-nosed eels and ghost sharks with Karl Stanley, a 37-year-old American inventor who takes aspiring Nemos thousands of feet down in his homemade submarine, Idabel.

Guatemala

Learn Spanish—and set up base camp—in Antigua

In the Spanish colonial city of Antigua, you’ll find Centro Linguístico Maya, one of the country’s best Spanish language schools. In the shadow of three towering volcanoes, the Centro offers one-on-one instruction up to seven hours a day with a private tutor; then practice what you’ve learned at outings to local markets and ruins. For total immersion, stay with one of the school’s hand-vetted local families or check in to the lush digs at El Convento, across from the partially intact ruins of the 18th-century Capuchin convent. Antigua is a perfect jumping-off point to stunning, more than thousand-foot-deep Lake Atitlán—30 miles away in the western highlands—with sheer-cliff trails and vibrant Maya villages. But don’t go it alone: petty theft and violent crime are on the rise throughout the country. Always travel in a group with an experienced guide.

Belize

Track jaguars and whales from a Caribbean eco-lodge

SANDWICHED between Mexico and Guatemala, English-speaking Belize boasts more than two million acres of forest, 180 miles of pristine ­Caribbean coastline, and dozens of innovative eco-lodges. Two of the best? The Hamanasi Resort has treehouse bungalows on a 12-mile stretch of beach minutes from 100-foot waterfalls. The soundtrack is chacha­laca birds calling raucously, and daily activities include tracking jaguar prints in the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, ringed by the Maya Mountains. For diving, head to Francis Ford Coppola’s posh Turtle Inn, where the Meso­american ­Barrier Reef—the largest in the Western Hemisphere—is just offshore. From April to June, you’ll dive with migrating whale sharks, which come to feed on coral spawn during the full moon.

Surfing El Salvador

Explore the Libertad coast's Pacific breaks

Uncrowded breaks

Uncrowded breaks

THE CIVIL WAR is long past, but ongoing gang violence—though it rarely affects travel­ers—means robberies can happen. Which is why you’ll see armed guards at the supermarket and why we recommend going with a guide. But don’t wimp out, because this tiny country is packed with empty surf, 7,000-foot active volcanoes, and killer pupusas—fresh corn tortillas filled with refried beans and cheese. Plan a multisport trip with the locals at Cadejo șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs. Start 30 minutes south of San Salvador on the La Libertad coast, where uncrowded ­Pacific breaks range from mellow El Sunzal to perilous Punta Roca, a legendarily long and bone-crushing right. Luxury can be had for less at Casa de Mar, a series of hillside cottages overlooking El Sunzal. After a few days of ­guided wave hunting, head inland to El Imposible National Park for two days of hiking and canyon­eering through epic gorges, with rare emerald ­toucans and aardvarks for company.

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Easy Does It

What a tough guy can learn from an island off Belize

EXACTLY 12 HOURS after walking out the front door of our Brooklyn apartment into a snowstorm, my wife and I stood on the dock at St. George's Caye Resort, in Belize. I was holding my fly rod while she sipped a fruity cocktail and teased me about my bombastic claim that commercial flights do not count as real travel. Any self-respecting adventure traveler, I often say, needs to follow his flight with a couple of days on a train or the top of a bus in order to feel as though he's actually gotten somewhere.

My perspective on the issue was not well supported by St. George's Caye. It's only a 20-minute boat ride from Belize City, yet it feels like a place that should take a couple of days to reach by outrigger canoe. The two-mile-long island is sandwiched between the Belize Barrier Reef and hundreds of square miles of mangrove swamps and bonefish flats that support raucous colonies of seafaring birds and a few local manatees. You could count the permanent human population on your fingers and toes. But my wife didn't need to mention any of this or cite the relevant statistics. Instead, she simply pointed to the school of tarpon lolling in the shallows 30 feet away.

For the rest of the trip I continued to eat my words—along with immense amounts of spectacular food, such as spiny lobster delivered directly to the kitchen by local fishermen. Between meals—served communal style, on the beach, by a smiling crew in flip-flops—we joined a few planned expeditions. There was snorkeling and diving on the reef; a night cruise in search of crocodiles; and fishing for bonefish and permit with a private guide. But, mostly, we took off on our own makeshift adventures. The resort provides plenty of kayaks and sailboats without the fees, rules, and boundaries that too often turn island getaways into chaperoned walks on the beach. We discovered secluded sand, secret swimming holes, hungry schools of fish, and a curious manatee. At night, we kicked back in one of a dozen thatch-roofed cabanas. We could hear the Caribbean roll in just beyond our front porch. Beyond that, nothing. This self-respecting adventure traveler slept well.

GET THERE: St. George's Caye Resort (om) provides guest transport from Philip S.W. Goldson International Airport. Cabanas for two from $218, including meals and local rum punch. One-tank dives, $60; half-day fishing trips, $325.

Fire on the Mountain

Playing in the shadow of a volcano in Papua New Guinea.

Papua New Guinea

New Britain's Tavurvur volcano gets feisty

IN 1994, a 2,257-foot volcano erupted on the island of New Britain, Papua New Guinea, burying the city of Rabaul under seven feet of ash and prompting 30,000 people to evacuate. Only 3,000 returned, leaving the town essentially like Kauai pre–Captain Cook, only with more pyrotechnics: The island is populated mostly by members of some 50 indigenous tribes, and the resident volcanoes, Tavurvur and Vulcan, are still very much active. Go now and you can lounge on a black-sand beach and watch Tavurvur burp up lava and small columns of ash as many as four times an hour.

I arrived two years ago to find an ashy town—the swimming pools were gray—set on an active caldera with countless adventure options just beyond the city limits. One can scuba-dive at a reef wall that served as a berth for Japanese submarines in World War II; sample grilled crocodile at a sustainable farm in New Britain's jungle; or take a helicopter flight over inland waterfalls so remote, nobody has bothered to name them. But the highlight of New Britain is the paddling. On my third day in Rabaul, I drove five minutes south to Matupit Island and rented a dugout canoe with a guide from the Tolai tribe. We paddled across Simpson Harbor while a hot ash cloud boiled overhead. Afterwards, my guide brought me back to the Tolai village and served me bananas poached in coconut milk, which he said was a traditional feast commemorating the arrival of Fijian missionaries—whom the Tolai ate.

GET THERE: Air Niugini flies here at least twice daily from Port Moresby, on the south side of PNG's mainland (from $300; ). Lodging in Rabaul is limited to the Hamamas Hotel (doubles from $59; ). Ask the staff about tours of the OISCA farm ($18 with crocodile lunch; ) and rides to Matupit. The Tolai guides will find you; a day trip is $9.

Vieques Rising

Puerto Rico's Vieques has come a long way from when the Navy played war games on its beaches.

Back in 2001, the Navy was still using Puerto Rico's Vieques for war games on the beaches. There was just a handful of restaurants and hotels on the 21-mile-long, four-mile-wide Caribbean island, and it was the kind of place where guests didn't wear shoes. Today, the Navy is gone and the old bombing ranges have been designated a national wildlife refuge. Now, Vieques is exploding in a different way: New roads are being built; old ones are getting paved. One of the military's old bunkers is now a sports bar by day and a disco by night. Swanky hotels, like the W, which opened in March (doubles from $379; ), and restaurants, like El Quenepo (787-741-1215), are popping up.

But don't worry. While it's now possible to have the resort experience, Vieques is still funkier and more laid-back than most Caribbean islands. Book a łŠČčČúČčñŸ±łÙČč—one-room cottage—at La Finca (doubles from $125; ), a clean but rustic joint with outdoor showers and mismatched towels. Then head for the sand. There are more than 50 beaches—perfect for everything from kayaking (Green Beach) to snorkeling (the islet of Blue Beach) to paddling at night in one of the biggest bioluminescent bays in the world (Puerto Mosquito, a.k.a. “Bio Bay”). The best way to see the latter is in a clear canoe from the Vieques șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Company (two-hour rentals, $45; ), which, should you start getting antsy for more action, can also set you up with decent mountain bikes to explore all the old military roads ($25 per day) or take you kayak fly-fishing for tarpon ($150).

Twilight Zone

Happily lost on a Croatian island haunted by vampires.

Lustava

Northern Lustava

Dalmatian dinner, Croatia

Dalmatian dinner.

BY THE TIME we reached Lastovo, we were made of salt water and octopus. For a week, my family—14 of us, from age 78 down to 16—had sailed along Croatia's Dalmatian coast in a 100-foot Turkish gulet, gorging on grilled fish and pickling ourselves with local wine. We'd come far from the cruise ships of Dubrovnik and left the nightlife of Korcula behind. Lastovo (pop. 800) was the last and most remote island, one big national park with, from the look of the charts, great sheltered kayaking. But even our guide, adventure writer Maria Coffey, had never been.

We'd heard there were vampires on Lastovo—in the 1700s, the island had a little problem with vukodlaci, undead corpses that rose, as our guidebook said, “to visit the beds of bored wives and pleasure them in the night.” This sounded fine to some of our clan, but the island still emitted a creepy vibe. Even today, one of Lastovo's biggest celebrations involves the ritual humiliation of a straw puppet led through town on a donkey.

Sure enough, the crags showed little sign of life—just crying gulls and the colorful towels of naked Germans, the predominant pink-skinned species here, found sprawled along Dalmatia's rocky coast. But the little harbor of Skrivena Luka was a miracle, a still blue bay ringed with stone cottages. At the lone restaurant, Porto Russo, the proprietor brought out homemade verbena-infused Croatian grappa, then white wine (from his own grapes), home-cured olives, and local squid cooked for hours pod pekom—under a metal bell in a wood-fired outdoor oven. Later, in Lastovo Town, a 15th-century wonderland of vineyards and minaret-topped churches teetering on the island's summit, the local street sweeper—who still uses a broom—dragged us into his courtyard for thick, sweet coffee.

Did we come here by plane? Was the World Cup still going on? What was my name again? The Dalmatian islands aren't exactly off the beaten path, but in Lastovo you can feel like you sailed in and discovered them yourself.

GET THERE: Hidden Places owners Maria Coffey and Dag Goering guide ten-day kayaking-and-sailing trips along the Dalmatian coast for $4,550 per person ().

Sweet Bondage

There's no vacation quite like a Colombian-prison-island vacation.

BETWEEN 1960 AND 1984, visitors to Colombia's Isla Gorgona arrived shackled and blindfolded and slept behind barbed-wire fences, on wooden bunks without mattresses. The 2,500 inmates of Gorgona Prison were warned that, if they escaped, the venomous snakes on the tropical island would kill them and, if they braved the ocean, the sharks would get them instead.

Today, the lush, 6.5-square-mile island, 30 miles off Colombia's Pacific coast, is a national park; the lodging here has been managed since 2006 by the winner of the Colombian version of the TV show The Apprentice. Which is to say, this is one strange escape. I arrived last September via speedboat from the coastal town of Guapí. Upon touchdown, military police searched my bags for alcohol (it interferes with the requisite antivenin) and weapons. The other guests—the island hosts 130 at a time—were mostly schoolchildren and besotted couples, enjoying king-size beds in the updated guard quarters by the beach.

I spent my days exploring: first, the grisly ruins of the mammoth stone penitentiary, said to be modeled after a Nazi concentration camp and now overrun with capuchin monkeys and foot-long basilisk lizards, then the dense tropical jungle that covers 85 percent of Gorgona, for which the island provides obligatory boots. There really are pit vipers and coral snakes here, as well as easier-to-spot (and mostly harmless) boa constrictors.

The trekking's good and the kayaking better—I spent a few afternoons dipping into the equatorial water as blue-footed boobies and frigates flew overhead—but the main activity on Gorgona is diving. The island has a fully equipped dive center, and I'd regularly see 20 to 30 moray eels at any site, many as thick as my thighs. Gorgona's nature preserve extends to a six-mile radius around the island, so fish and turtles are plentiful, intrepid, and big. But size is relative. From July to September, humpbacks come to Gorgona's banks to mate and calve, and to see them breach and slap the surface with their gargantuan tails is to forget that once this was a place no one ever, ever wanted to go.

GET THERE: Three-night packages, including three meals daily, island transfers, and flights from Cali to the coastal town of GuapĂ­, in the Cauca department, from $463 (). Two-dive day trips from Gorgona's dive center, $90. Kayak rentals, $5 per hour.

King Kauai

Lush greenery, volcanoes and an endless supply of hidden beaches.

The Big Island has size on its side, not to mention fun volcanoes. Oahu has the storied North Shore. And Maui—well, let's just say that the honeymooners storming its beaches year after year don't come for nothing.

But little Kauai has it all: lush greenery, volcanoes, small towns not yet overrun, and a seemingly endless supply of hidden beaches for surfing, snorkeling, and sunbathing.

This year, all those options are more accessible than ever. On the island's north shore, the St. Regis Princeville opened its doors last October (doubles from $385; ); after taking over the historic Princeville Resort, St. Regis revamped the whole place with a classy retro look. (Think coconut palm floors and a new spa and restaurant by ĂŒber-chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.)

But you don't go to Kauai to lounge. Join the locals for stand-up paddleboarding in Hanalei Bay—there's a great SUP surf break by the Hanalei Pier—or along the flat calm of the Hanalei River. Kayak Kauai offers lessons and boards (rentals from $42 per day; ). In the nearby Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge, a coastal wetlands teeming with endemic bird species, you'll find the Okolehao trail—a windy, two-mile path offering views of Hanalei Bay and the mind-blowing Na Pali coastline. If it's surf you're after, head 45 minutes south to Poipu, rent a board at Nukumoi Surf Co. ($6 per hour; ), and try the Poipu Beach surf break, one of the island's best. Afterwards, crash just 50 yards away at the year-old Koa Kea, the first and only boutique property here (doubles from $299; ).

Trippin' on Indo

Short-term memory loss in the South Pacific.

Indonesia

Shrines decorated for the Hindu Odalan festival.

Indonesia

Lembongan traffic

LEMBONGAN ISN'T EXACTLY out of the way—just seven miles southeast of tourist-clogged Bali—but it stays perfectly out of your way. Nothing about the place gets between you and your vacation. A three-square-mile speck of coral reefs, empty beaches, and hillside bungalows, the Indonesian island is what Henry Miller meant when he said of Big Sur, California, “There being nothing to improve on in the surroundings, the tendency is to set about improving oneself.”

The easy access from Bali—plus the presence of several consistent surf breaks and dive spots—has given Lembongan a small but steady tourism economy to supplement the traditional kelp farms. My wife and I thought it might be a nice change of pace during our 16-day honeymoon on Bali. It ended up being the highlight of our trip.

It's hard for either of us to say exactly why. I know we surfed and took a beginner scuba excursion. But mostly what we have are hazy recollections of long naps, afternoon strolls, and laughing over dinner about how we'd managed to fill another day doing … er, well, we were never quite sure. And still aren't. We barely even have any photos from our stay. That's Lembongan's gift: letting you let go.

I imagine this empty-mindedness is the sort of self-improvement people seek from meditation retreats. But this retreat has cold beer and a really hollow reef break—from what I can remember.

GET THERE: Island Explorer Cruises offers day trips to Lembongan for $85 per person, including food and activities, and beachside bungalows for two from $90 per night ().

Have Lots, Want Not

The curious challenge of living it up on a private island in Fiji.

Fiji

Three acres of paradise: Wadigi

Indonesia

Wadigi's open air suites

I HAD TWO WHITE-SAND beaches and an infinity pool that overlooked an endless sea. I had a boatman ready at a moment's notice to take me snorkeling, water-skiing, windsurfing, fishing, or paddling in a glass-bottom kayak. I had two chefs waiting to prepare any whim; an open-air villa; an on-call masseuse; and a statuesque hostess who greeted me with a fruity cocktail in a fresh-cut coconut. In other words, I had Wadigi, a tiny islet in Fiji's Mamanucas, at my command.

I'd been sent there by a dive magazine to experience the singular indulgence of a private island. And, as a chronically underpaid writer, I planned to soak up every last perk. But after a couple of days of diving among spiky lionfish at half a dozen world-class sites, dinners with too many courses to count, and enough gin-and-tonics to get me kicked out of any self-respecting American bar, a funny thing happened: I found myself doing absolutely nothing.

As it turns out, when you have everything you might want, your wants start to subside. OK, so I never did get bored with that glass-bottom kayak, but I spent most of my free hours simply lolling around and contemplating the preposterous views. On my last evening, instead of ordering extravagant cocktails and back-to-back massages, I ate all the home-baked cookies in the jar and then simply sat in the pool watching the sun dip below the horizon and the clouds sweep across the mirror-still sea.

GET THERE: From $2,327 per day for two, including meals, most activities, and lodging; two-tank dives, $100;

New Outposts

Seven island getaways to fit every fantasy.

Anguilla

The Viceroy, Anguilla

FISH
Islas Secas, Panama
A group of 16 private islands, Islas Secas sits 25 miles off the Pacific coast, close to the wahoo, marlin, and grouper crowding Hannibal Bank. On land, the place is Gilligan's wildest dream, its seven solar oceanfront yurts holding only 14 guests. Go for the surfing or diving, but mainly go fish: Last winter, fishing director Carter Andrews helped a guest set seven world records here. In a week. Six nights, $6,600 per person;

SAIL
Scrub Island, British Virgin Islands
This 230-acre private island, which opened in February, is the first new resort in the BVIs in 15 years. At the heart is a 53-slip marina, the perfect base to launch a sailing excursion of the BVIs. Or stick around in one of the island's 52 rooms to enjoy day sailing, diving, hiking, and three restaurants. Doubles from $359;

DIVE
Shearwater Resort, Saba
Set some 2,000 feet atop Saba, a five-square-mile volcanic island in the Neth­erlands Antilles, Shearwater offers panoramic ocean views but is only a ten-minute drive from the docks. There, dive boats will take you out to some of the Caribbean's best snorkeling and scuba. (Ask Shearwater about custom packages.) The newly renovated rooms offer flatscreens, iPod docks, and wi-fi. Doubles from $175;

WATERSPORT
Viceroy Hotel and Resort, Anguilla
With three restaurants and three pools, you might be inclined never to leave the grounds of this year-old, 35-acre resort on the shores of both Barnes and Meads bays. But do: The 3,200 feet of coastline on the two bays offers spectacular sailing, snorkeling, and swimming. Doubles from $595;

SURF
The Atlantis Hotel, Barbados
Following a complete refurbishment in 2009, this swank, eight-room lodge on Barbados's east coast offers fast access to Sand Bank, a beginner-friendly beach break, and Soup Bowl, a tenacious reef break that Kelly Slater has called one of the best in the world. Doubles from $255;

MULTISPORT
The Landings, St. Lucia
A 19-acre waterfront resort on the northern tip of lush St. Lucia, the Landings offers complimentary 78-foot sailboats, snorkel gear, and sea kayaks . Pick up one of the latter and paddle 400 yards to little Pigeon Island for a hike to an 18th-century British fort. And don't forget to look inland: St. Lucia's Piton mountains offer some of the Caribbean's best hiking and vistas (you can see neighboring St. Vincent). Six nights, $1,755 per person, double occupancy;

INDULGE
Terre di Corleone and Portella della Ginestra, Sicily
Until recently, these properties were owned by mafia bosses Bernardo Brusca and Salvatore Riina. Thanks to a 1996 Italian law that uses government-seized mafia assets for social purposes, they've been converted into inns and cooperative farms producing fresh pasta, honey, legumes, and, of course, plentiful red and white wines. Doubles from $45;

Fresh Trips

Seven island getaways with the perfect balance of adventure and indulgence.

Belize

Off Ambergris Caye, Belize

PADDLE
Palau
Boundless Journeys' Oceania Odyssey starts with infinity-pool luxury at the Palau Pacific Resort, on Koror, before going rustic: For the next week, no more than ten guests camp on two smaller islands; snorkel over sunken World War II planes; sea-kayak the saltwater Black Tip Lake, accessed by marine tunnel; and dine on fresh-caught parrotfish. January–October; from $4,695 per person;

SAIL
Isle of Skye, Scotland
On the new seven-day Sailing & Walking Around Skye trip from Wilderness Scotland, local skipper Angus MacDonald Smith will ferry eight guests around Skye on his 67-foot yacht, Elinca, seeking out the old pirate anchorages, hailing passing fishermen to buy prawns, and cruising up inlets to launch guided hikes in the steep Cuillin Hills. Go in May or June for 20-hour days and peak seabird nesting. $1,400 per person;

MULTISPORT
Madagascar
Gap șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs' Madagascar Experience focuses on inland beauty. From the capital of Antananarivo, your crew will head south by minibus, stopping to hike in lush rainforests, bike around (and swim in) Lake Andraikiba, and explore the eroded sandstone Isalo Mountains. March–December; $1,449 per person;

FISH
Seychelles
On Frontiers Travel's new six-day Desroches Island Flyfishing șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű, guests cast for hard-fighting bluefin trevally at offshore atolls by day and crash in private villas by night. Casting arm need a break? Explore the 3.5-mile-long island with kayaks, bikes, or snorkels and fins. $7,600 per person, double occupancy;

MULTISPORT
San Juan Islands
REI șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs' San Juan Islands trip is a six-day mash-up through Washington's Puget Sound, including a 50-mile road-biking spin around Orcas Island, sea kayaking with killer whales near Sentinel Island, and one night at a remote campsite. (The other four are spent at the Lakedale Resort's tent-cabins, which have real beds.) From $1,899 per person;

DIVE
Half Moon Caye, Belize
On the seven-day Lighthouse Reef trip from Island Expeditions, you'll kick back in safari-style tents and napping hammocks strung in coconut groves on 44-acre Half Moon Caye, some 50 miles off the mainland. Of course, you'll probably spend most of your time in or on the water, diving the Blue Hole—a famous, 400-foot-deep well—snorkeling in shallows, and exploring the reef by kayak. From $1,789 per person;

RIDE
Crete
Backroads' new six-day Crete cycling trip starts from IrĂĄklion, on the northern coast, and ends, after 268 miles of pedaling, at Akrotiri Cape, in the west. In between, you'll spin past lush vineyards and olive groves and Venetian harbor towns, where fresh seafood and plush inns await. $3,598 per person, double occupancy;

The post Cay Party appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Isolate in Panama
Private islands are neither affordable nor easy to come by. An exception to this rule: Isla Boca Brava, an eight-square-mile spit of land off Panama’s Pacific coast. Situated on the boundary of the lush, tropical Golfo de Chiriqui National Marine Park, the secluded island is home to the new, solar-powered Cala Mia eco-resort (doubles from $220; ). Once you arrive (via puddle-jumper flight from Panama City and a boat ride from the town of David), base yourself in one of 11 oceanfront bungalows. Next up: days spent snorkeling and kayaking the surrounding coastline (think endless sand, clear water, and abundant reef fish). Or take a dive-boat-supported scuba trip to the submerged mountains of Los Ladrones, where humpback whales and manta rays roam. At day’s end, try the organic cheese, which is made using ingredients from the resort’s own farm.

Get Lost: Surf Oaxaca

Though it’s no longer a secret, Puerto Escondido, located on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, still delivers exactly what you need on a Mexican vacation: relaxation and solitude. (Even now, there’s only one daily flight from Mexico City.) Escondido is best known among surfers for Mexpipe, a bone-crushing break on Playa Zicatela, right off the central area. For mortals, there’s the bodysurfing-friendly Playa Principal, to the north, plus no end of lagoons for swimming and snorkeling. When I was here last fall, locals directed me to their favorite hideout, Playa Carrizalillo, a palm-fringed beach that’s great for swimming and mellow longboarding (board rentals, $3.50 per hour; lessons, $20 for two hours; both available at the beach—ask for RamĂłn). Stay at Villas Carrizalillo (doubles from $150; ), situated on the cliffs above.

Get Lost: Bird-Dog Costa Rica

Great Green Macaw

Great Green Macaw

Little-known fact about Costa Rica: The country—known for being, in essence, one big West Virginia–size eco-resort—experi­ences one of the highest deforestation rates in Central America, thanks to cattle ranching and logging. To promote conservation through tourism, the Rainforest Biodiversity Group recently opened Central America’s first birdwatching route here. Modeled on similar trails in the United States, the Costa Rican Bird Route comprises 5,000 acres on 13 remote sites with 520 avian species. Order a map and a field guide ($13; ) and, once you land at the San JosĂ© airport, rent a four-wheel-drive (about $50 a day) and hit the rainforest for a week of day hikes. Start in the Tirimbina Rainforest Center (about 1.5 hours northeast of San JosĂ©) and make for the northernmost part of the trail, near Boca San Carlos, home to the endangered great green macaw. Your launchpad: the Maquenque Eco-Lodge (doubles, $105; ), next to the newly created wildlife refuge of the same name.

Get Lost: Surf El Salvador

Surfers have a knack for scoping out adventure hot spots, and El Salvador is a great place to look: Along the La Libertad coast, just 35 minutes from the capital, San Salvador, small lodges are popping up to cater to the international wave seekers flocking here. Another plus: Surfer chic means surfer cheap. Overlooking two of the region’s best breaks—El Sunzal and La Bocana—is Tekuani Kal, a six-room, Nahua-influenced guesthouse with thatch-roofed patios (doubles from $84; ). The villages along the coast still have a rustic feel—I visited last year and was blown away by the friendly mingling of local and global surfers—but it won’t be long before fancier places move in. For now, it pays to get insider intel. Call on San Salvador–based Cadejo șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs, which rents boards and offers guided day trips for beginners and experts alike (from $85 per person; ). When you’ve had your fill of surfing, consider the singular experience of scuba-diving inside a dormant volcanic crater at Lake Ilopango, exploring caves and vertical rock walls that drop 600 feet ($90).

Get Lost: Catch a Buzz in Nicaragua

Travel agents like to paint Nicaragua as the next Costa Rica, a volcano-studded landscape full of cloudforests and glassy lakes. Sadly, word has gotten out, and Vegas-size developments are coming to the country’s Pacific coast. But inland, you can still find untrammeled adventure. And damn good coffee. Make a pilgrimage to Finca Esperanza Verde, an eco-lodge and organic coffee farm close to Matagalpa, the country’s cafĂ©-cultivating center (two-night package, $186; ). The finca’s owners pioneered responsible coffee production and the use of solar power in the region. Hike the Purple Trail, which takes you to the highest point of the 265-acre farm, a 4,000-foot vista overlooking the Dariense mountain range. Afterwards, cool off on the Blue Trail, a circular route that leads through sloth-filled jungle to a swimming hole at the base of a waterfall. It’s a little cold, but you can always warm up with some organic shade-grown in the lodge.

Get Lost: Paddle Belize

Yes, it’s easy to get around English-speaking, dollar-accepting Belize. But the good stuff can be harder to find than you think, and sometimes it pays to turn to the experts. Take Island Expeditions’ new Maya Reef Explorer trip, which brings you to the rich, remote Glover’s Reef Marine Reserve, a World Heritage site 70 miles southeast of the capital, Belize City. From a safari-style base camp, guests sea-kayak the 82-square-mile lagoon in the company of a marine biologist and local guides, hopping from reef to reef (there are more than 700) and poking around sea fans and elkhorn coral in the shallows. After a few days of scoring stellar underwater views, it’s off to the Maya ruins of Lamanai and Altun Ha, where you’ll play Hiram Bingham in the ancient cities before crashing at an eco-lodge near the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary (five-day trip, $1,199; ).

Get Lost: Honduras

Following the military coup in Honduras this past summer, the hyper-wary U.S. State Department did what you might expect: It issued a travel alert for the country. șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű-travel outfitters also did the expected: They kept on leading trips, despite late-summer riots in the capital, Tegucigalpa. In 2010, Mountain Travel Sobek will run its regular multisport itinerary to Pico Bonito National Park (seven days, $2,995 per person; ). Meanwhile, GAP șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs is continuing its trips to the Maya ruins at CopĂĄn (three days, $659 per person; ). “Our itineraries don’t visit Teguc, and the unrest has nothing to do with tourists,” says Sobek trip leader Mark Willuhn.

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Om Away from Home: Jungle Bay Resort & Spa, Dominica

Waterworld: Mesoamerican Reef, Belize

O Captain! My Captain!: The Arabella, St. Barthélemy

Greco-Caribbean Fusion: The Beach House, Barbuda

A Resort Reborn: Club Med Buccaneer's Creek, Martinique

Fly Me to the Surf: Macaw Air, Costa Rica

Om Away from Home

Jungle Bay Resort & Spa, Dominica

Jungle Bay Resort

The Path to Laziness and Enlightenment: Jungle Bay Resort

Wellness is the operative word at Jungle Bay, a yoga-centric tropical getaway that opened last February on Dominica. The locale is all restorative calm: Fifty elevated hardwood cottages—with white cedar platform beds, private outdoor showers and decks, and swaying hammocks—are tucked away in the rainforested foothills near Morne Trois Pitons National Park, an eastern-Caribbean UNESCO World Heritage site. Visitors salute the sun at dawn yoga classes on an easterly veranda overlooking the Atlantic—or throughout the day in the airy 2,400-square-foot studio, housed in the volcanic-stone-and-hardwood main lodge. Just up the trail is Jungle Bay's spa, where guests can opt for a deep-tissue aromatherapy massage in an open-air pavilion suspended over the crashing surf.

Afternoons are for island explorations: Spot pods of sperm whales from the cockpit of a sea kayak or grab a mountain bike and blaze the island's long, steep grades. Better yet, take a hike: The ten-hour round-trip trek to 4,747-foot Morne Diablotin, the island's tallest peak, is a lush visual feast, with massive tree ferns, orchid blooms, banana trees, and endangered and endemic red-necked and imperial Amazon parrots. Fuel for all the jungle tramping and warrior ones: Dominican specialties like breadfruit salads, roasted plantain, and fresh-squeezed tamarind juice. Seven days from $1,400 per person, including airport transfer, meals, and all activities; 767-446-1789,

Waterworld

Mesoamerican Reef, Belize

Many water-faring visitors to Belize bomb through coastal Belize City and beeline straight for the Blue Hole, the country's best-known diving-and-snorkeling attraction. Starting this winter, World Wildlife Fund is offering a brand-new snorkeling expedition that dives into many other wonders of the Mesoamerican Reef, the world's second-largest barrier reef and a WWF priority conservation zone that's home to more than 60 species of coral and more than 500 species of fish.

Traveling from Belize City aboard Le Levant—a 45-cabin expedition ship featuring a fleet of Zodiacs for land excursions, on-demand scuba gear, and lip-smacking French cuisine—the trip carves a counterclockwise loop through some of the most pristine and least visited expanses of the reef. Led by renowned marine biologist Joel Simon, guests will snorkel through far-flung spots like South Water Caye Marine Reserve, the habitat of choice for endangered manatees and rare longsnout seahorses, and the Turneffe Islands' soaring coral pinnacles. There's also landlubber adventure, with guided visits to red-footed booby reserves, secluded mangrove forests, an important grouper spawning ground at Glover's Reef atoll, and Carrie Bow Caye, a Smithsonian marine-research field station. A team of lecturers and naturalists complements the site visits with expert analysis and explanation. And don't worry: The ship even calls at the rightly renowned Blue Hole. Eight days from $4,390, all-inclusive; 888-993-8687,

O Captain! My Captain!

The Arabella, St. Barthélemy

Arabella

All Tans on Deck: Island hopping on the Arabella

If you've always wanted to yacht like a blue-blooded New Englander but couldn't stand the chill, take note: This January, the 160-foot Arabella will add a seven-day itinerary through the islands of St. Bart's, French St. Martin, and Anguilla to its list of regular northerly routes. Starting in Marigot, the café-filled village capital of St. Martin, you'll sail around the Caribbean in style: The intimate 20-stateroom yacht has in-cabin satellite television and phones, a hot-water spa, and daily deckside hors d'oeuvres and spiced rum punch. You can also arrange for one-on-one sailing tutorials on the Arabella's operations with the ship's captain and crew.

Leave the mother ship for day trips swimming and snorkeling at Colombier Bay Beach, a private, sandy cove accessible only by boat or a half-hour hike along a steep, rocky goat path. Or drop anchor at Île Fourche, a jewel of a deserted island that teems with undersea life, for world-class diving and sea kayaking. The trip finishes off with a dinner at the exclusive Eden Rock hotel, in St. Jean—once a hideaway for Garbo, it's perched high on a rocky promontory. Here, you'll be right at home uttering her famous line from Anna Christie: “Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy, baby!” From $1,295, based on double occupancy, including most meals and activities; 800-395-1343,

Greco-Caribbean Fusion

The Beach House, Barbuda

Greko-pillared Beach House

The Greeks Have It: The Greko-pillared Beach House

Miles of pink-sand beaches front the aptly named Beach House, a tranquil 21-room lodge that opened last year on the tiny scuba paradise of Barbuda, one of Antigua's sister islands. The look is Greek-island-meets-minimalist, with distinctive whitewashed buildings, teak deck chairs, and spare walls hung with black-and-white photographs. But the atmosphere is Caribbean luxe: Guests are met with frosty cocktails brought by “service ambassadors,” designated personal butlers who set up complimentary welcome massages and diving, fishing, and horseback excursions around the island. A gleaming saltwater pool is the centerpiece of the open-air Club House, which also features a library, bar, and fusion restaurant with seafood specialties like lobster tagliatelle. A short walk through the lounge leads to breezy beaches where snorkelers can mingle with rays, dolphins, and schools of barracuda. Post-swim, settle into an overstuffed white recliner and ponder the gushy collision of the Atlantic and the Caribbean. There are no televisions in the guest rooms, which feature king-size four-poster beds, but rest assured: Upon departure you'll wish you were always so unplugged. Doubles from $750; 888-776-0333,

A Resort Reborn

Club Med Buccaneer's Creek, Martinique

Club Med is branching out into more “upmarket” territory, and the company's $60 million overhaul of its Buccaneer's Creek resort, which reveals its white-sand beaches in mid-December on the Caribbean shores of Martinique, in the Lesser Antilles, sets the new standard.

The 55-acre, coconut-palm-grove property blooms with bougainvillea, hibiscus, and frangipani, as befits Martinique's hothouse status as the “Island of Flowers.” The resort's 293 brand-new French Caribbean–style rooms and suites come with goodies that wouldn't have been dreamed of back in 1969, when the resort originally opened: pillowtop beds, CD players, flat-screen televisions, and deluxe “rainshowers.” Other resort trappings include a jetted, 5,000-square-foot infinity pool surrounded by a flotilla of plush daybeds with glittering sea views. Club Med specializes in nonstop activity, so the resort's three beaches cater to every sand-and-surf whim. Seaside Zen? A new fitness palapa hosts yoga, meditation, and Pilates. Jet skiing? Head to the water-ski-and-wakeboard dock, on the same stretch of sand as the beach volleyball and live music. Quiet beach time more your thing? A third shore is strictly nonmotorized. Seven nights from $1,775, based on double occupancy, including airfare, meals, and activities; 800-258-2633,

Fly Me to the Surf

Macaw Air, Costa Rica

Every surfer worth his wax dreams of Costa Rica's tropical beaches, sun-glinted waves, and minimal crowds. But if the surf drops off at your favorite break—Tamarindo, for instance—you might be stuck thumbing through the latest le CarrĂ© novel while the waves crank away down south at the country's longest left, Pavones. After all, it's two days of jangling, potholed driving between the breaks.

Surfers now have an alternative. Launched in the fall of 2004, Macaw Air is the first coastal airline catering to the wave-chasing set. The brainchild of former Canadian mountain guide and charter pilot Chris Uniacke, Macaw neatly fills a hole: “No one was flying up and down the coast, and that's what surfers want to do,” explains Uniacke, who partnered with tour operator Greg Rothermel to offer reasonably priced, swell-dictated surf adventures. Packages like the Pavones and Matapalo Surf Getaway include the spectacular flight from Tamarindo to Puerto JimĂ©nez, an air-conditioned shuttle ride to Matapalo Point's wicked breaks, and accommodation at a jungle eco-lodge—all for less than $600. But if the surf's better elsewhere, Macaw will whisk you there.

You don't have to be a surfer to fly Macaw, either: Spend the morning deep-sea-fishing off the coast of Playa Flamingo, then sleep the night deep in the southern jungle amid the whoops of howler monkeys. Itineraries and prices vary; 011-506-653-1362,

Additional reporting by Shanti Sosienski

The post Warming Trends appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE. Reflected in the massive expanse of Kamloops Lake, sharply blue through the picture window, visible overhead through the railcar’s glass dome. I’m aboard the luxury-class Rocky Mountaineer train threading more than 500 miles from Vancouver to the Canadian Rockies, but if I squint just a little bit, the passengers napping on cushy recliners fall away, leaving just desert sagebrush and bighorn sheep.

CHUG IT: tunneling through Yoho National Park, British Columbia

The unbroken landscape is a testament to the fact that trains can still take you where nothing else can. Disembarking at Kamloops, I run along the canyon trails high in the hills above town; in Jasper, I’m drawn toward the magnetic blue of a glacial lake. Back on board, I head outside to the vestibule between cars to suck up the clean mountain air. I’m not supposed to stick my head out over the railings, but I do anyway, like a dog drunk on scents—or, in my case, mimosas expertly prepared by the crew.

But train travel isn’t just about the killer views and access to remote wilds. It’s about arriving in high style: Spacious coaches, white tablecloths and fresh flowers in the dining car, eggs Benedict over lobster for breakfast, and a glass of wine served at my seat. The superb service gives a nod to the glory days of luxe train travel, with the added benefit of adrenaline-packed adventure. Here are six of the best journeys worldwide.

The Rocky Mountain Mountaineer: Vancouver to Jasper, Canada

CHUG IT: Jasper-bound on the Rocky Mountaineer

Miles: 532
Rolling out among Canada’s wilds is the reason to ride the Rocky Mountaineer. For two full days the train’s glass-domed GoldLeaf coaches give a front-row seat to British Columbia’s hyperdynamic landscape. First, heavy stands of rainforest yield to rolling pastures. At the intersection of the Fraser and Thompson rivers, the geography shifts from verdant to arid: striking sulfur- and iron-striped cliffs, bald eagles in ponderosa pines, and ospreys roosting on enormous nests atop old telephone poles. From Kamloops, day two gains elevation through the 11 glacier-topped mountains of the Premier Range, and suddenly 12,972-foot Mount Robson, the Canadian Rockies’ highest peak, is in full view. The ultimate high: crossing the Continental Divide at 3,711-foot Yellowhead Pass into Alberta’s jagged Jasper National Park. Overnights in Kamloops and Jasper give you the chance to mountain-bike hoodoos, trek across the Athabasca Glacier, and raft Class III rapids. Next summer, Rocky Mountaineer Vacations launches a new two-day, 642-mile Fraser Discovery route from Whistler through Quesnel to Jasper.

ACCESS + RESOURCES
» CANADA: Rocky Mountaineer (800-665-7245, ) runs two-day trips between Vancouver and Jasper, from US$869 per person, double occupancy, which includes all meals and overnight accommodations in Kamloops.

The Eastern & Oriental Express: Singapore to Bangkok, Thailand

CHUG IT: traversing Thailand on the Eastern & Oriental Express

Miles: 1,260
This ain’t no backpacker cattle car. Bearing the Orient-Express’s elegant pedigree, the E&O celebrates its 12th anniversary this year as the only luxury train in Southeast Asia, taking passengers on a three-day jaunt from Singapore north through the Malay Peninsula to Bangkok, Thailand. Far-flung spots include the island of Penang, Malaysia (where you can take a rickshaw past historic Hindu and Chinese temples), and Thailand’s infamous River Kwai. Train cabins are outfitted in embroidered linens, intricate Thai carvings, and polished brasswork; even standard Pullman compartments have convertible seat-beds, private showers, and panoramic windows; and in the restaurant cars, you’ll chow down on Malay curries and mango-filled samosas. Tack the three-day Thai Explorer itinerary—introduced last year—on to the end of your trip and you’ll get to check out silk artisans at work in Chiang Mai and hike among Ayutthaya’s crumbling temple ruins.

ACCESS + RESOURCES
» SOUTHEAST ASIA: Run by Orient-Express, the Eastern & Oriental Express (800-524-2420, ) travels twice a month between Singapore and Bangkok; from $1,730 per person one-way, including all meals, bunk-bed-style accommodations, and tours. Fares on the Thai Explorer begin at $1,360.

The Deccan Odyssey: Round-trip from Mumbai, India

Miles: 1,490
The famously lavish Delhi-to-Rajasthan Palace on Wheels finally got some competition last year with the Deccan Odyssey, a new 21-car luxury train with all the trimmings. Leaving from Mumbai every Wednesday, the train traverses Maharashtra’s colorful coastal region, then hits the beaches of Goa. Its weeklong itinerary includes visits to the Ajanta caves—home to ancient Buddhist paintings and sculptures dating to the second century b.c.—and ashrams in the historic city of Pune. But the onboard facilities are all 21st-century fabulous: Forty-eight cabins have private bathrooms and 24-hour room service, with separate dining cars and a business center with Internet access. Looking for a little om away from home? Rest easy—there’s even a gym and Ayurvedic health spa.

ACCESS + RESOURCES
» INDIA: On the Deccan Odyssey (888-463-4299, ), prices include sightseeing packages and start at $2,450 per person, double occupancy, for eight days, including all meals.

American Orient Express: El Paso, Texas, to Copper Canyon, Mexico

Miles: 1,312
A vast network of gorges and rivers four times the size of the Grand Canyon, Mexico’s Copper Canyon is an often overlooked miracle in the Sierra Madre Occidental. American Orient Express (no relation to the European original) unveiled its seven-day itinerary in 2003, and it’s one of the most scenic routes in the world. Restored vintage railcars—including those used on the New York Central and Union Pacific railroads during the fifties—shuttle you on tracks used only by freight trains for the past half-century. Watch barrel cactus with bright-yellow blooms, roadrunners, and Gila monsters whiz by as you chug south. Stops include 93-foot CusĂĄrare Falls, in Creel, and Balancing Rock Overlook, near the isolated canyonside village of Divisadero, where you’ll witness a traditional dance performance by the native Tarahumara tribe.

ACCESS + RESOURCES
» MEXICO: American Orient Express (800-320-4206, ) runs its seven-day Copper Canyon and Colonial Mexico trips ten times a year. From $3,990 per person for vintage Pullman sleeper cars, made famous by films like North by Northwest; prices include meals and excursions.

The Blue Train: Cape Town to Pretoria, South Africa

Miles: 1,000
It’s a day-and-a-half journey from Cape Town’s white-sand beaches to Pretoria’s jacaranda-scented interior. On this trip, soaring Table Mountain gives way to valley vineyards, sheep farms, Kimberley’s diamond mines, and the mining shafts of the Witwatersrand gold-strike basin. The exotic landscape is matched by the exotic eats: Try karoo lamb and impala—the African antelope—paired with local South African wines. Aboard this high-tech train, plush suites have TVs and VCRs, and there’s a channel dedicated to short documentaries on the passing scenery. Zebra-print pillows, gleaming hardwoods, and picture windows bring the outdoors in. If you happen to be sipping a cognac in the smoking lounge, you won’t miss a thing—images from the train’s locomotive camera are piped to a central monitor.

ACCESS + RESOURCES
» SOUTH AFRICA: A double suite on the Blue Train (011-27-12-334-8459, ) for the day-and-a-half trip from Cape Town to Pretoria starts at $1,180, one-way, including meals and off-train excursions.

The Ghan: Adelaide to Darwin, Australia

Miles: 1,850
Last year, the first north–south Australian passenger train made its inaugural trip on the fresh-laid track between the red-rock heart of Alice Springs and the sultry tropical surrounds of Darwin. Named for the Afghan camel drivers who first ran the route after European colonization, the train now covers nearly 2,000 miles from Adelaide to Darwin, traveling through some of the world’s most sparsely populated regions. From a new station in the outback town of Katherine, intrepid travelers can take a helicopter flight through the 20-million-year-old canyons of Katherine Gorge. Big spenders can opt for the stylish Chairman’s Car, a private carriage with its own lounge and an exclusive dining room for eight.

ACCESS + RESOURCES
» AUSTRALIA: A two-night trip on the Ghan (011-61-8-8213-4592, ) from Adelaide to Darwin starts at US$340 per person for a Day-Nighter seat and US$1,404 for a sleeper, which includes meals.

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COLORADO :: ASPEN & ASPEN HIGHLANDS

FORGET THE FURS AND THE FENDI. Beyond the bling, Aspen is still America’s quintessential ski village, a funky cosmos where World Cup steeps belong to the fearless.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Where else can you sit next to Kurt and Goldie while wolfing lunchtime bratwurst, then follow the sun around Bell Mountain’s bumps for the rest of the afternoon?
NUMBER-ONE RUN: The finest float in Colorado? Atop Aspen Highlands is the 40-degree, 1,500-vertical-foot Highland Bowl. After the hike up, and before the glorious, seemingly endless descent, rest your bones in the summit swing and feast on high-octane views of fourteeners Pyramid Peak and Maroon Bells.
HOT LODGE: Chichi yet cool, luxe yet Lab-friendly, the St. Regis Aspen features s’mores in its cozy aprĂšs-ski lounge, beds for beloved canines, and a spanking-new 15,000-square-foot spa-complete with a little something called the Confluence, artificial hot springs where more than the waters mingle. (Doubles from $385; 888-454-9005, )
SOUL PATCH: Tucked in the trees on Aspen Mountain are shrines to Elvis, Jerry Garcia, Marilyn Monroe, and, of course, Liberace. But Walsh’s Run, one of the steepest drops on Ajax, is where you’ll find sacred ground: The Raoul Wille shrine, a tiny shack festooned with prayer flags and elk bones, honors a longtime local who died climbing in Nepal.

NEW MEXICO :: TAOS

Taos Ski Resort

A GROOVY CONVERGENCE of Native American culture, ski-hard style, and the freest of spirits, Taos is the black diamond in New Mexico’s high-desert crown, offering steep transcendence (and lots of green chile) in the wild, wild West.
WHY WE LOVE IT: ÂĄViva variedad! Park your journeyman Subaru wagon or beat Jeep CJ right next to that limited-edition Mercedes with the Texas plates—they’ll appreciate the contrast. Then look heavenward and feast your begoggled eyes on runs so close to vertical they’ll steal your heart (or sink it, if you’re toting a prohibited snowboard).
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Longhorn, a lengthy and snaky double black, shoots between palisades of tall pines, dropping 1,900 vertical feet to a catwalk that spits you out at the base. Masochists should save it for the end of the day, when the bumps are the size of small igloos.
HOT LODGE: In the heart of town is a grand adobe abode called the Fechin Inn, built beside Russian artist Nicolai Fechin’s former home, a 1927 structure listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The elegant, Jacuzzi-equipped 84-room hotel is just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Adobe Bar, current home of wicked margaritas. (Doubles, $114-$208; 800-746-2761, )
SOUL PATCH: Dog-tired and depleted? Stop off at art-infested Taos Pizza Outback, where the cooks spin tasty sesame-sprinkled crusts, blank canvases just waiting for your own creative topping conglomerations.

WYOMING :: JACKSON HOLE

DUDE, IT’S LIKE MECCA. If you take sliding around on snow seriously, you’ll eventually make a pilgrimage to the Hole. Hardcore types rightfully revere the sick Wyoming vertical, heavy powder showers, and Euro-style open backcountry. Yep, this is the place . . . to pack a shovel, transceiver, probe, and change of underwear.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Rip, rip, rip all you want: The harder and stronger you ride, the more these Tetons throw at you. And once you think you’re the master, listen for the laughter coming from the lines that have yet to see a descent.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: You’ll find the finest fall-line skiing in the country here, so steel yourself for the best run of the bunch: The Hobacks is 3,000 vertical feet of crazy steeps. Enjoy.
HOT LODGE: When legendary ski mountaineer and cinematographer Rob DesLauriers got sick of living out of his van, he built the new Teton Mountain Lodge, a premium slopeside property with rustic Wyoming written all over it. Just don’t let the high-end accommodations and dining fool you; Rob’s still a ski bum at heart. (Doubles, $149-$329; 800-801-6615, )
SOUL PATCH: The Mangy Moose remains Jackson Hole’s must-hit saloon. The bleary-eyed crew from Teton Gravity Research, pros decked out in next year’s wares, and perma-tan instructors call this place home. But don’t fear the locals; just get what they’re having.

UTAH :: PARK CITY

LIKE ST. MORITZ WITH MORMONS, Park City is not only a vast powdery playground; it’s a true ski-in/ski-out town with big-city swank. After you’ve zonked your mortal coil dropping off cornices and carving down chutes, head to town and knock back an espresso: You have to be awake to enjoy the finer things.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Oh, the mountain comes off as harmless at first—what with those rolling hills flush with cruisers—but it drops the hammer a couple lifts in, making for delighted schussers, from expert on down. There’s terrain-park action, and the superior lift service (14 chairs, including four high-speed six-packs) can move more than 27,000 butts an hour.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Not for the timid or the kamikaze, O-zone drops 1,000 feet off the lip of Pinyon Ridge, down a 30- to 40-degree face, before delivering you into forgiving tree trails that lead to a high-speed six heading right back up.
HOT LODGE: Right on chic Main Street is the Treasure Mountain Inn, a locals-owned lodge with a great little café. This eco-minded pad has a range of homey accommodations, from simple studios to decked-out apartments, as well as a Jacuzzi and heated pool beneath the stars. (Studios, $125-$300; 800-344-2460, )
SOUL PATCH: Once a wild silver town, Park City’s gone all civilized. The high-end gastronomic fusion served up at 350 Main will have you double-checking your coordinates—and for boozophobic Utah, the cocktails are mighty sinful.

BRITISH COLUMBIA :: WHISTLER BLACKCOMB

DOUBLY HEINOUS STEEPS mean twice the fun at Whistler Blackcomb, home to the biggest vertical in North America and an astounding variety of snow conditions. Sister peaks, these British Columbia bad girls practically flaunt their grand vert, true glacier skiing, and leg-burner runs up to seven miles long.
WHY WE LOVE IT: By virtue of the vast and varied terrain (larger than Vail and Aspen combined), this resort has always drawn a cosmopolitan crowd. The number of rowdy young immigrants will surely redouble as opening day of the 2010 Winter Olympics approaches. And the village is at only 2,140 feet, so sea-level folk can let loose without fearing hypoxia-empowered hangovers.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: These peaks have long been a favorite stop on the World Cup circuit, thanks in part to the exhilarating 1.5-mile highway known as the Dave Murray Downhill, which rolls off the south shoulder to Whistler’s base.
HOT LODGE: The Fairmont Chateau Whistler is a wonderland of sprawling penthouses and romantic turrets at the foot of Blackcomb Mountain. Luckily, there are more than two dozen bistros and nightclubs nearby to tempt you out of your mountain-view room on the stormier nights. (Doubles, $256-$446; 800-606-8244, )
SOUL PATCH: From the top of Horstman Glacier, traverse under the summit cliffs and cross the ridgeline via Spanky’s Ladder. This brings you to a trove of hidden chutes plunging through a cliff band down to Blackcomb Glacier.

CALIFORNIA :: MAMMOTH

THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA VIBE dominates Mammoth, reflecting surf culture at its most authentic. Witness the resort’s massive superpipe and meticulously sculpted terrain parks, home turf of snowboard phenoms like Tara Dakides, Shaun White, and Olympic silver medalist Danny Kass.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Rising high in the eastern Sierra, this hill is surrounded by the Ansel Adams and John Muir wilderness areas, and Yosemite’s just a few valleys north. The volcanic terrain, nice and steep everywhere you look, gets layers of prime frosting from Pacific storms that drop up to four feet of snow at a time. Otherwise, it’s clear blue skies.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: From the summit, drop off the back side and hike to fantastic Hemlock Bowl: Ski left and follow the signs (or locals), then enjoy Mammoth’s deepest shots. Afterwards, hop on Chair 14 and rest up for another hike. Repeat.
HOT LODGE: If cookie-cutter condos don’t do it for you, check out Mammoth Country Inn, a Bavarian-style bed-and-breakfast. The seven rooms feature bedding worthy of royalty, and two have Jacuzzis. Your hosts, the Weinerts, serve up home-style breakfasts, and it’s just a short scamper to the bus. (Doubles, $145-$185; 866-934-2710, )
SOUL PATCH: Geothermal springs with panoramic mountain vistas, anyone? South of town, just east of Highway 395, Hot Creek gloriously blends a f-f-freezing stream and feverish springs. (Stay out of the scalding stuff.) Sadly, panties are mandatory here. But you can drop your drawers at wilder hot spots like Hilltop and Crab Cooker.

COLORADO :: STEAMBOAT

SOMETIMES COLORADO’S I-70 is a bit, well, constipated, so head for secluded Steamboat, some two hours north. We’re talking relentless powder, some of the West’s best tree skiing, and a chill ambience—on the slopes and back at the lodge.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Located in the Park Range—where Pacific-born storms usually hit first in Colorado—Steamboat soaks up heavy snow dumps that often skip peaks to the south and east. And many of the aspens are perfectly spaced, as if a gift from God. From the mountain, take a free shuttle the three miles to tiny, colorful Steamboat Springs, where you’ll find a surprising slew of kick-back bars and upscale eats.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Step into the Closet, a forested roller coaster spilling down the west side of Storm Peak, and shake off the dust. Just make sure you’ve got your turns dialed—and wear a helmet.
HOT LODGE: Across from the gondola, the plush 327-room Steamboat Grand Resort Hotel serves up a deluxe spa, a fitness center with steam bath, an elegant steak-and-chop house, quiet rooms replete with hardwood furniture, and a cavernous stone lobby with, yep, a stream running through it. (Doubles from $159; 877-269-2628, )
SOUL PATCH: On the Grand’s spacious deck, which looks out on 8,239-foot Emerald Mountain, two truly giant Jacuzzis and a heated outdoor pool offer some of the most luxuriant aprĂšs-ski lounging in the Rockies.

MONTANA :: BIG SKY

Big Sky Ski Resort

LONE MOUNTAIN ERUPTS from the Madison Range like an 11,194-foot catcher’s mitt, nabbing storms swollen with dry Rocky Mountain powder. The utter lack of lines just sweetens the pot. With almost twice as many acres as skiers, Big Sky virtually guarantees instant lift access all day long.
WHY WE LOVE IT: You can dress like a cowboy—unironically—and then snorkel through the fresh, pausing to ogle the remote 10,000-foot summits of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness. Come night, it gets so dark you can see the band of the Milky Way splitting the sky.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Off Lone Mountain’s south face, roar almost 3,000 vertical feet down the ridiculously wide Liberty Bowl and through the Bavarian Forest, where you can bob and weave through spruce and fir.
HOT LODGE: Want quintessential Montana? Rent a log cabin with a hot tub on the deck: The Powder Ridge Cabins have woodstoves, vaulted ceilings, and a lift nearby. (Cabin with three doubles, $525-$772; 800-548-4486, )
SOUL PATCH: See what “big sky” really means: The tram up to the peak offers an eagle’s view of the resort’s most daring lines, plus thousands of square miles of wilderness. Watch a local work the Big Couloir—a 50-by-1,500-foot lick of 48-degree terror—and it won’t be just the views stealing your breath.

UTAH :: ALTA & SNOWBIRD

Snowbird Ski Resort

THESE PEAKS ARE THE ODD COUPLE of mountain resorts—think hardcore Alta dudes and snazzy Snowbird debs—but their souls are united by heavenly powder.
WHY WE LOVE IT: In a word, the white stuff. At Little Cottonwood Canyon, the light-and-dry goods are nonpareil. The evidence? When the Ringling Bros. circus sued Utah for using the slogan “The Greatest Snow on Earth,” the case went all the way to the Supreme Court—and Utah won.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: A long, technical traverse perches you atop Alf’s High Rustler, a 40-degree, 2,000-foot pitch aimed straight at the Alta parking lot. Legend has it that veteran ski-school director Alf Engen once bombed the whole run, with nothing but nipple-deep powder to slow his mad descent.
HOT LODGE: Snowbird’s Iron Blosam threads the ski-lodge needle: It’s got all the perks of a high-end hotel—two-story windows, private decks, full kitchens, and an outdoor hot tub-but it’s steeped in a laid-back atmosphere that reminds you of a family cabin in the mountains. (Doubles, $249-$539; 800-453-3000, )
SOUL PATCH: After Snowbird’s last tram heads down for the day, don’t be afraid to join the contingent of ski-crazy locals who gather at the top of Lone Pine for what is usually a low-key party, then take in the sublime view of the spectacular, canyon-framed sunset.

VERMONT :: STOWE

IT’S THE BARNS AND COVERED BRIDGES draped with snow that tip you off: You’re in classic Vermont. This historic resort hails from the hungry thirties, but you’ll be plenty satisfied. With just 4,000 or so permanent residents, Stowe’s got small-town soul galore, and the mountain tempts with wild, winding expert runs—and a slew of less challenging ones.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Time has made Stowe a giant on the eastern ski scene, with the help of 4,393-foot Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak. You can’t beat it for nordic action: The Touring Center at Trapp Family Lodge (owned by a member of the singing von Trapp clan, of The Sound of Music fame) features excellent trails. And where would snowboarding be without a certain resident named Jake Burton?
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Test your mettle on the famous Front Four—National, Lift Line, Starr, and Goat—the mountain’s snaking double-black centerpieces. Prepare to be humbled.
HOT LODGE: Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the sumptuously restored Green Mountain Inn pumps up the luxe with modern accoutrements like gas fireplaces, marble bathrooms, Jacuzzis, and a heated outdoor pool. Forget fatigue with a Swedish deep-tissue massage—or have hot cider and homemade cookies by the blazing fire. (Doubles from $125; 800-253-7302, )
SOUL PATCH: Get a little wacky with the locals during the Stowe Winter Carnival, in late January: Among other fun, there’s off-season volleyball, a snow-golf tournament (costume required, natch), and the chilly Wintermeister triathlon.

COLORADO :: VAIL & BEAVER CREEK

TALK ABOUT HIGH CONTRAST: These resorts may be virtually side by side, but they don’t see eye to eye. Vail is the gold standard for manicured pistes and big bowls, regularly making it one of the country’s most popular destinations, while Beaver Creek is more of a sedate escape with a profusion of secret stashes.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Via the combo of dry snow and friendly terrain, intermediates feel advanced—and experts feel untouchable (if they didn’t already). Roughly half of the resorts’ vast terrain is taken up by the famous Back Bowls, at Vail, and Beaver Creek’s long, challenging Talons, many of which cut through the trees.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: On Vail’s Ledges, the steep bits run 300 feet, then level out and let you regain your wind, then drop another 300, and so on—descending for more than a mile, all the way home. At Beaver Creek, Harrier rolls off the west shoulder of Spruce Saddle, becoming a wide, hilly cruiseway perfectly pitched for GS turns.
HOT LODGE: The Austrian-style Hotel Gasthof Gramshammer has been au courant for 40 years. The 38 rooms are arrayed with knee-deep down comforters and traditional woodwork, game dishes are served up in the cozy Antlers dining room, and high indulgence awaits at the steam room, sauna, and two indoor hot tubs. (Doubles, $195-$245; 800-610-7374, )
SOUL PATCH: Don’t miss the Colorado Ski Museum: Dig the roots of modern snow sports and revisit such luminaries as World War II heroes/powder hounds the Tenth Mountain Division, among others.

CALIFORNIA & NEVADA :: HEAVENLY

CAN YOU SAY GIGANTIC? Good, because that’s what Heavenly is. Plus it can claim some of the most ravishing views of any American ski hill: It rests in the limbo between the supernatural blue of Lake Tahoe and the scorched Nevada desert far below.

WHY WE LOVE IT: Nobody skis off-piste on this mountain! A private wonderland awaits those who venture into the trees or take a little hike, but if you want to stay on track, you’ll find that the sheer immensity (almost 5,000 acres) spreads out the skiers nicely. Besides, the groomers are like boulevards—and just as smooth—so you can really dig your turns here.

NUMBER-ONE RUN: The Milky Way Bowl, a ten-minute hike up the Skyline Trail, has a steady vertical drop and an utter dearth of other souls. Continue down the chutes of Mott Canyon and have a chuckle at the expense of all the schnooks who ever turned their noses up at this peak.

HOT LODGE: Heavenly’s speedy gondola is two minutes from Lake Tahoe’s Embassy Suites Hotel, very cushy digs with a dizzying nine-story atrium, glass roof, flourishing gardens, and 400 two-room suites. (Suites from $200; 877-497-8483, )

SOUL PATCH: The spectacle of Caesars Tahoe is Disneyland for the savvy gambler. A nonstop bacchanal revolves around slot machines, top-notch shows, and the ubiquitous gaming tables—but without that Vegas overkill. When in Rome . . .

ALBERTA :: LAKE LOUISE

JAW-DROPPING vistas of Banff National Park greet the lucky folks up top of Canada’s biggest ski area, and world-class terrain awaits below.
WHY WE LOVE IT: This place splits styles: At the south side’s terrain park, huck junkies can air their grievances with gravity while fans of pure carving hit the quieter north face to ride the bowls.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Take the SUMMIT Platter up 8,765-foot Mount Whitehorn and cruise Brown Shirt, taking in views of the Bow Valley. Or head out from the Larch area, locate Lookout Chute, and disappear into the trees—just make sure you reappear.
HOT LODGE: From the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, gaze out at the glacier-fed namesake lake. To fight off the Canadian chill, try steaming truffle fondue at the hotel’s Walliser Stube; wash that fungus down with some ice wine, made from grapes frozen on the vine. (Doubles, $344; 800-441-1414, www .fairmont.com/lakelouise)
SOUL PATCH: With faraway Victoria Glacier as backdrop, a spin on Lake Louise’s skating rink makes for high entertainment. During January’s ice-carving competition, you can see frozen stars like Winnie the Pooh, then toast marshmallows at the braziers nearby. (Appropriately enough, the silly old bear has been quoted as saying, “Fight fire with marshmallows.”)

COLORADO :: TELLURIDE

A TRUE COWBOY TOWN where down jackets thankfully outnumber mink stoles, Telluride still caters to the glamorous. Spot a hot starlet living it up in one of downtown’s ritzy establishments? Big whoop—unless she was thrashing her guide in the steep and deep earlier.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Due to its remote setting—there’s just one road leading into this southwestern Colorado box canyon-the mountain always gets far fewer folks than it’s designed to handle. So the queues are quick, the runs pretty much empty, and the midmountain bartenders not too busy. NUMBER ONE RUN: As you float, fly, or surf down the three ridgeline miles of See Forever, looking 100 or so miles west toward Utah’s La Sal Mountains, you are permitted, though not really encouraged, to holler corny lines from Titanic, like “I’m on top of the wooorld!”
HOT LODGE: Live it up at Wyndham Peaks Resort & Golden Door Spa: Think king-size beds, homemade cookies on your pillow (if you ask nicely), and the San Juan Mountains out your window. Head to the spa and baby your fried quads by soaking them in the 102-degree mineral pool—perfect prep for a 50-minute Skier Salvation massage. (Doubles from $229; 970-728-6800, )
SOUL PATCH: Melt into an overstuffed leather chair, order a horseradishy bloody mary, and toast tomorrow in Wyndham Peaks’ high-ceilinged great room. That’s good medicine.

MONTANA :: BIG MOUNTAIN

CRAVE A COCKTAIL of wide-open groomers, perfectly spaced trees, and backcountryesque meadows? Look no further than crowdless Big Mountain. And with lots of off-piste powder stashes just waiting, it’s no wonder so many of the snow junkies here sport free heels.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Monster storms transform the mountain’s evergreens into “snow ghosts,” and locals—suited up in polyester straight out of the Carter era—love to rip through this hoary host. And it doesn’t hurt that the skyline’s fraught with the lofty peaks of the Canadian Rockies, Glacier National Park, and the Great Bear Wilderness.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: East of North Bowl, you’ll find hundreds of feet of superb vertical, starting with the Nose, then continuing down two shots known as Performance and the Chin. Don’t look for these last two on the map, though: After hogging all that fluffy stuff, you won’t want to tell anyone, either.
HOT LODGE: The ski-in/ski-out Kandahar lodge, right off the mountain, just screams Montana. Think wooden beams, a river-rock fireplace, and rustic rooms with lofts and a bunch of primo down sleeping gear. (Doubles, $109-$309; 800-862-6094, )
SOUL PATCH: When the lifts shut down, the planks and boards stack up outside the Bierstube, where you’ll find local folks swilling pints of Moose Drool beside Seattle techniks escaping the city for the weekend. Be sure to ask your barkeep for one of the ‘Stube’s mysterious souvenir rings—it’s a surprise—then tip at least 20 percent. But you knew that.

CALIFORNIA :: ALPINE MEADOWS

ALL MOUNTAIN AND NO ATTITUDE, Northern California’s Alpine Meadows is designed to take maximum advantage of the spectacular terrain. Though it’s got that laid-back, down-to-earth vibe the West is known for, it’s certainly no bore; far from it. It simply lacks the attendant aggression of resorts with similarly radical steeps.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Chutes and rock bands line this High Sierra bowl, spilling out into gentle grades—so there’s something here for all skill levels. The hike-to skiing and open-boundary policy (not found at neighboring Squaw Valley) equal acres and acres of untouched snow, and the hill’s south side is enormous, wide-open, and drenched with sunshine in the morning.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Palisades, a classic double black diamond off the Alpine Bowl lift, looks skyscraper-steep once you’re staring down it, but fear not: Since it’s north-facing, the snow’s way silky.
HOT LODGE: From the lifts, it’s just a quick ten minutes to the unbeatable Resort at Squaw Creek, with its 403 fine rooms, four restaurants (ranging from diner fare to haute cuisine), outdoor swimming pool, Jacuzzis, and nearby recreation like dogsledding and sleigh rides. (Doubles, $229-$349; 800-403-4434, )
SOUL PATCH: The northern ridge, beyond Estelle Bowl, may take a quarter of an hour to hike and traverse to, but the sweet silence and enormous cedars you’ll find will make you forget the trip. As will the powder.

UTAH :: THE CANYONS

A DECADE BACK, the resort that would become the Canyons was a pretty shabby, and not too popular, locals hill. Now it’s the biggest, most unabashedly go-go resort in Utah-and, miraculously, it’s crowd-free.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Besides the sharp new base village, it’s got the real goods: Days after other Wasatch resorts are all skied out, you’ll still be finding powder stashes hidden among the—count ’em—eight peaks.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Take the hike up Murdock Peak right off the Super Condor Express Lift, then choose from among seven tempting lines. You’re bound to find your favorite flavor: steep glade, wide-open bowl, or gnarly chute?
HOT LODGE: When NBC’s Katie Couric and Matt Lauer wanted posh digs for their two-week Olympics gig, they picked the deluxe Grand Summit Resort Hotel—for good reason. After a soak in your jetted tub, survey the scene at the heated outdoor pool below, and the rest of Summit County, from the bay windows flanking your fireplace. And, of course, there’s the supreme access: If the gondola were any closer, it would be inside. (Doubles, $279; 888-226-9667, )
SOUL PATCH: Take a snowcat-drawn sleigh to midmountain, cross-country or snowshoe it through the woods, and hit the resort’s secluded Viking Yurt for a delectable five-course Scandinavian feast. Go ahead and carbo-load—afterwards, the snowcat will drag you right back down to base.

OREGON :: MT. BACHELOR

THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE gave top skier Bill Healy, of the Army’s Tenth Mountain Division, permission to put three rope tows up the face of central Oregon’s Bachelor Butte way back in 1958. Since then, his dream come true, now known as Mt. Bachelor, has grown to 71 runs serviced by ten lifts. And for those seeking big air, there are three terrain parks.
WHY WE LOVE IT: With as much as 30 feet of snow piling up annually in the mountains of Deschutes National Forest, Mt. Bachelor is one of the Pacific Northwest’s treasures, and an agreement with the Forest Service has spurned commercial development, preserving its wild side.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Head for the Northwest Express chair and exit, if you dare, to Devil’s Backbone, a mettle-testing black diamond. Though steeper up top, it’s good and bumpy almost all the way down its nefarious spine.
HOT LODGE: The Inn of the Seventh Mountain, between Bend and Mt. Bachelor, is the place to sleep if you want first chair the next morning. The lodge-style decor—wooden beams, fireplaces, leather recliners—just oozes cozy, and with the Cascades so close by, grand views are there for the feasting. (Doubles, $135-$195; 800-452-6810, )
SOUL PATCH: Hit the Lodge, in Bend, for pints of local 20″ Brown Ale and scrumptious buffalo burgers. Then make good and sure you patronize the McMenamins folks—God love ’em—renovators of, among others, the old St. Francis school in downtown Bend, home to a hotel with Turkish baths, a pub restaurant, and a throwback cinema.

IDAHO :: SUN VALLEY

HOLLYWOOD HOTTIES, Olympic skiers, and John Kerry may flock to sexy Sun Valley these days, but America’s first ski resort has been drawing us hoi polloi since ’36. Swaths of immaculate corduroy run for miles here, so pray your legs last. No sweat if they don’t: French chefs and other fanciness await below.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Fantastic snow- making gear, five-star base facilities, and runs so fast and long you can attempt to break the sound barrier—after stuffing your face with beignets, of course.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: Crank the bindings and launch down Warm Springs. After a continuous 3,100-foot vertical loss on a blue groomer, your quads will glow like an Apollo capsule on reentry.
HOT LODGE: Stay in Ketchum, Sun Valley’s neighbor and the epicenter of the aprĂšs action. The Best Western Kentwood Lodge, situated right in the mix, has an airy stone-and-wood lobby, big rooms, a hot tub, and a pool. (Doubles, $159-$179; 800-805-1001, )
SOUL PATCH: Clomp into Apple’s Bar and Grill, at the base of Greyhawk, and mingle with folks who packed it in after logging 30,000 feet of vert—by lunchtime. Notice all the passes tacked to the wall? You could once trade yours for a pitcher of suds. Talk about priorities.

VERMONT :: KILLINGTON

KILLINGTON’S legendarily long season stretches from October through May (sometimes into June), and with seven mountains, the resort has more acreage than any place in the East. Lately, though, Killington’s known as the town that tried to secede—from Vermont, not the Union—a tribute to residents’ fiery, tax-evading Yankee spirit.
WHY WE LOVE IT: Behold the Beast’s 200 runs—including high-altitude bumps, endless cruisers, terrain parks, and a halfpipe—which keep legions of devotees coming back thirsty.
NUMBER-ONE RUN: You don’t have to be an ace to experience the hair-raisingly steep moguls of Outer Limits, on Bear Mountain—just grab a pint and watch the wipeouts from the deck of Bear Mountain Base Lodge.
HOT LODGE: Nab yourself some comfy slopeside digs: The Killington Grand Resort Hotel is well worth the substantial change you’ll drop. This 200-roomer offers studios and suites—all with kitchens, many with fireplaces—and the views from the outdoor Jacuzzis and pool are unbeatable. (Doubles from $150; 877-458-4637, )
SOUL PATCH: It may have turned 40 last year, but the Wobbly Barn still parties like a teenager. This steakhouse-cum-nightclub has a hoppin’ happy hour, live music, and a serious boogie jones.

MONTANA :: MOONLIGHT BASIN

Moonlight Basin Ski Resort

EVERY GOOD SKI AREA has a split personality—part nurturer, part dominatrix. But no resort behaves more like Jekyll and Hyde than Moonlight Basin, the one-year-old resort 45 miles south of Bozeman that shares a boundary with Big Sky. First it lulls you, then it tries to kill you.

The lull part: Moonlight is a real estate venture, and the kindly blue and black pistes that meander down the north face of 11,194-foot Lone Mountain are tailored to those looking for vacation homes. The new Lone Tree lift will fill out those offerings this winter, adding more than 500 acres of open glades and unintimidating expert runs.

Moonlight’s sadistic side? Just look up: The Headwaters is a forbidding wall striped with nine chutes pinched by bands of sharp shale and scree. Three Forks is the boast-in-the-bar run, a 1,200-foot plummet into Stillwater Bowl that nudges 50 degrees in spots. (Until a lift is built, reaching such lines requires a 25-to-45-minute hike.)

Moonlight Basin can’t yet keep you occupied for a week—the base area’s swanky lodge doesn’t even have a gear shop or ski school—but it’s one more reason to book that trip to Big Sky.

IDAHO :: TAMARACK RESORT

THE VIEWS RECALL TAHOE. And the terrain? Call it Steamboat West. That’s the early line on Tamarack Resort, 90 miles north of Boise, which opens in December. The Tahoe analogy is plain from a 7,700-foot spot on West Mountain’s ridge: Far below, 22-mile-long Lake Cascade glistens in Long Valley. What’s more, the resort sits far enough west to rack up 300 annual inches of snow (100 more than Sun Valley), yet it’s east of Oregon’s high desert, ensuring that the bounty arrives talcum-dry.

Don’t expect Tamarack to max out your Pocket Rockets. The tree skiing in glades of aspen and subalpine fir, and the languorous blue runs that unspool down the mountain’s 2,800 vertical feet, summon Steamboat—diverting, if not exactly heart-stopping. Snowcat skiing will be offered this year on 500 acres to be made lift-accessible in the next few years. It’s all part of a $1.5 billion plan to make Tamarack a year-round resort with some 2,000 chalets, condos, and hotel rooms. (At press time, just 60 chalets and cottages were available.) For the best aprĂšs-ski, head to the old logging town of McCall, 17 miles north.

:: SKI EMOTIONALLY NAKED!

STUCK IN INTERMEDIATEVILLE and dreaming of a transfer to the friendlier slopes of Advanced City? I sure was, so last winter I gambled on a four-day ski clinic in Utah’s Wasatch Range. I was up for anything that would get me closer to black-diamond bliss.

Ski to Live—launched in 2003 by extreme queen Kristen Ulmer, at Alta and Snowbird resorts—takes a uniquely cerebral, holistic approach to improving performance on the slopes, promising nothing less than self-transformation via a cogent blend of hard carving, refreshing yoga, and an intriguing flavor of Zen known as Big Mind. No $200-an-hour therapist ever promised so much.

The 38-year-old Ulmer, veteran of countless ski flicks and former U.S. Freestyle Ski Team member, is a sensitive but sure coach, possessing an infectious buoyancy of spirit that makes every powder acolyte under her wing believe a camera’s rolling just for them over the next mogul. She says conventional instruction is too heavy on mechanics, virtually ignoring mental outlook: “Understanding yourself translates into your skiing in a big way. It’ll catapult you into a whole new level of learning.” So she does it her way. During my Ski to Live weekend, my 13 fellow pupils and I spent about as much time contemplating life in intensely reflective Big Mind sessions as we did tackling Snowbird runs like the steep straitjacket of Wilbere Bowl.

The first night, we shared our hopes (huck big air!) and fears (hairy chutes, sharks). Next morning, we fell into a pleasant rhythm: wake-up yoga; a fat breakfast; lots and lots of skiing in small groups with Ulmer or another instructor; evening sessions with Genpo Roshi, 60, who heads up Salt Lake City’s Kanzeon Zen Center and developed Big Mind; a to-die-for dinner; then profound slumber at the Lodge at Snowbird.

Under Ulmer’s tutelage, skiers and snowboarders employ mantras, which can improve focus, and learn to execute proper form, like correctly positioning shoulders through turns. (Chanting Charge! in one’s head at each turn actually does have a way of refining performance.) Throwing Roshi in the mix proves to be even more radical: He uses challenging discussions and role-playing exercises intended to help you harmoniously integrate the sometimes conflicting aspects of your personality, thus allowing you to dig out from the solipsistic center of your own little universe. It’s pretty cool.

But my defining moment came not when I face-planted right in front of the video camera (hello, embarrassing playback!) nor when I carved some relatively pretty turns in Mineral Basin; it came in a whiteout, during a three-below-zero cruise along the Cirque Traverse, at nearly 11,000 feet. Suddenly I felt fearless joy-not joyless fear-in anticipation of the double black on deck.

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