We’ve been tracking the adventure travel world for more than three decades. Our latest discovery?

The planet is more wide open for exploration than ever. Whether you want to raft an unknown Himalayan river or link a few Colorado peaks in your own backyard, we have 30 adventures to stoke your wanderlust.

The New, New Places

Go here now—before the secret gets out

PANAMA
Azuero Peninsula
It seems everything is expanding in Panama. A $5.25 billion upgrade will more than double the Panama Canal’s capacity by 2014, tourism nationwide has nearly doubled in the past six years, and in 2005 alone more than one million visitors spent upwards of $1 billion in this tropical destination. The Azuero Peninsula, four hours southwest of Panama City, on the Pacific coast, is a direct beneficiary of the cash infusion. The still-uncrowded peninsula has been getting increasing attention, thanks to its surf-filled beaches and world-class tuna and marlin fishing. Popular digs for foreigners include Villa Camilla, a classy seven-room hotel built mostly from local materials (doubles from $300; meals, $50 per day; 011-507-232-6721, ).

BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
Tofino
Take a province with more than 16,700 miles of coastline and a few hundred thousand snowboarders itching to embrace the coming summer and you get the British Columbia surf scene. Tofino, a sleepy town of 1,711 on Vancouver Island’s Pacific side, explodes into a mini-metropolis every season as a horde of surfers descends in pursuit of consistent beginner and intermediate breaks. For the student who wants to mix surfing with celebrity, there’s Bruhwiler Surf School, owned by one of Canada’s renowned big-wave riders, Raf Bruhwiler (two-and-a-half-hour group lessons, $75; 250-726-5481, ). At the Wickaninnish Inn, every room has an ocean view (doubles, $208–$398; 800-333-4604, ).

CHINA
Yangshuo
Beijing may be the center of the 2008 Olympics universe, but the heart of China’s adventure-sport community sits more than 1,000 miles to the south, near Yangshuo (pop. 298,000). Climbers first began setting routes in the myriad karst peaks here in the 1990s; today there are about 300 established climbs. (Last fall, Briton Neil Gresham set the region’s first 5.14b.) After climbing, there’s caving, hiking, and mountain biking. And anglers can hire a guide—who’ll use a trained cormorant—to catch fish at night. Get on belay with China Climb ($40 per half-day with guide; 011-86-773-88-11-033, ), then crash at the peaceful Yangshuo Mountain Retreat (doubles from $40; 011-86-773-87-77-091, ).

BULGARIA
Bansko
Get a piece of the Pirin Mountains while you still can. Bulgaria’s January 2007 admission to the European Union will only bolster its booming vacation-home market. Towns like Bansko—where property values have more than doubled in recent years—are where everyone’s buying. It’s no wonder: One of the most modern ski resorts in Bulgaria is nestled below 9,000-foot peaks with Jackson Hole–style off-piste steeps. Even if you don’t have a couple hundred grand to snag a condo, the resort’s multi-million-dollarupgrades make it visit-worthy. The new Kempinski Hotel Grand Arena (doubles, $213; ) has a mod Swiss-chalet vibe and a primelocation at the base of the gondola.

INDIA
Madhya Pradesh
Last November, Taj Hotels and CC Africa generated big-time adventure travel buzz when they opened Mahua Kothi, the first of five upscale resorts in central India, marrying the African safari with Indian hospitality. Bandhavgarh National Park, abutting the Mahua Kothi, is one of the most famous tiger habitats on earth, with centuries-old man-made caves that now serve as big-cat dens. After a day exploring the sal forests and bamboo jungle, guests chill out in one of 12 suites on the 40-acre property, which offers all the best amenities of a conventional luxury safari—but with hookah pipes in the common area, private butlers in traditional costume, andin-room Ayurvedic massages ($600 per person, all-inclusive; 011-91-11-26-80-77-50, ).

The Classics

The definitive life list for intrepid travelers

TANZANIA

Kilimanjaro
One of the world’s tallest “walkable” mountains, this freestanding 19,340-foot massif draws some 30,000 wide-eyed—and often ill-prepared—hikers annually. Though technical climbing is not required, it’s no stroll: A number of those who attempt the five- to nine-day push through rainforest to wind-flayed icefields turn back before reaching the top; about five die en route every year (often from altitude sickness). The payoff for summiters? Views of Africa, in all its brawny magnificence, in every direction. Guides are mandatory; book one in advance through a reputable company, and avoid touts pushing cut-rate outings via the tourist-trampled Marangu Route (the Umbwe Route and others get less traffic). For group treks, seek out experienced companies like Thomson Safaris, which offers hikes on less-traveled trails, with summit-success rates near 95 percent (from $3,990; 800-235-0289, ).

ARIZONA


The Grand Canyon
Few paddling experiences come close to matching the epic 297-mile Colorado River run from Lees Ferry to Lake Mead. There’s the monster whitewater (including Lava Falls, called the fastest navigable rapid in North America), the mile-high bisque- and red-hued rock walls, the tent-perfect beaches, and the sheer, walloping Great American West feel of it all. About 22,000 people a year raft a portion of the Colorado’s 277 Grand Canyon miles; most travel with one of 16 outfitters licensed by the Park Service, but those with strong river-running skills can arrange a private outing. Good news on that front: As of 2006, noncommercial launch permits are being awarded by lottery (800-959-9164, grca), replacing the laughable 25-year waiting list. Motorized or oar-powered rafts are the most common way to go, but purists say nothing beats the grace and responsiveness of a wooden dory. Veteran outfitter OARS offers 15- to 19-day full-canyon dory trips (from $4,535;800-346-6277, ).

NEPAL


The Annapurna Circuit

After years of violent unrest, a 2006 peace agreement between the government and Maoist rebels promises to return the tourism spotlight to this Himalayan wonder—one of the original adventure travel meccas. No trekking route is more spectacular, or more accessible to reasonably fit hikers, than the three-week, roughly 200-mile inn-to-inn Annapurna Circuit. With a constant backdrop of 20,000-foot peaks, the trail loops from the semitropical city of Pokhara, over 17,769-foot Thorong La pass, on the edge of the arid Tibetan Plateau, and back to the terraced lowlands. Thanks to the détente, U.S.-based outfitters have noticed a surge in interest in Nepal. Wilderness Travel will return to Annapurna this fall after a four-year absence (from $2,795 per person;800-368-2794, ).

FRANCE & SWITZERLAND

The Haute Route
Linking the two most iconic peaks in the western Alps—Mont Blanc, in Chamonix, France, and the Matterhorn, in Zermatt, Switzerland—this famed seven- to ten-day, 70-mile high-country journey is best suited for advanced skiers who feel confident in dicey conditions. (If kick turns on icy steeps aren’t in your repertoire, consider waiting for summer and hike the route instead.) Nights are spent in small hotels and dorm-style alpine huts, where you’ll find goulash, beer, and the kind of conviviality that generally ends in off-key singing. Even if you’re an accomplishedski mountaineer who can parlais français (quick, what does “Danger de mort!” mean?), it’s wise to hire a guide (consult ) or hook up with an outfitter like Selkirk Mountain Experience ($3,225; 250-837-2381, ). Prime ski-touring season is mid-April to mid-May.

ECUADOR

The Galápagos Islands
Straddling the equator 600 miles off the west coast of Ecuador, these far-flung volcanic islands have been the focus of scientists and wildlife lovers since Charles Darwin first scratched his head here in 1835. Now that the Galápagos have become one of the most popular destinations on the planet—120,000 yearly visitors come to spy on the islands’ famous giant tortoises, fur seals, and blue-footed boobies—the Galápagos National Park Service keeps tight control on where boat passengers disembark and how long they spend at designated land and underwater visitor sites. The best way to avoid crowds? Charter a private yacht that’s stocked with dive gear and sea kayaks. Mountain Travel Sobek can arrange private one- to two-week yacht charters (from $3,795; 888-687-6235, ). Or join ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Life’s new nine-day hiking trip, with overnights in small inns (from $2,095; 800-344-6118, ).

Epic Journeys

Work off your wanderlust the hard way

Kenya

On most days, the closest you’d get to sharing the trail with a Kenyan is probably several miles behind. Not so on this new running safari, a 12-day pounding that places you on twice-a-day runs with some of Kenya’s most gifted athletes. You’ll start in Eldoret, a city about 200 miles northwest of Nairobi and the heart of the country’s long-distance scene. Next you’ll team up with 1997 and 1998 Los Angeles Marathon winner Lornah Kiplagat in her hometown of Iten for runs through the verdant hills. The group—not the champ—sets the distance and pace. Most nights you’ll sleep in basic accommodations in villages and get your carb-to-protein ratio right with meat pastries called samosas. Move on to Mombasa, where, on March 24, the World Cross Country Championships unfold—the first time Kenya will host the prestigious race. March 14–25; $3,900; Micato Safaris, 800-642-2861,

INDIA

The Tons River

The Tons River roars from 20,000 feet in the Indian Himalayas with such sustained intensity—think 55 miles of nearly continuous rapids—that the river hasn’t seen a single paddler since whitewater pioneer Jack Morison first rafted it in the 1980s. Now the whitewater gurus at New Delhi-based Aquaterra ºÚÁϳԹÏÍøs have reopened the river to expedition-style, 11-day rafting trips, using upgraded equipment like self-bailing boats that were unavailable in Morison’s day. Start at Camp Lunagad, about 270 miles north of New Delhi, and spend the next seven days floating through chilly glacial runoff that boils into Class IV–V rapids. Come evening, pitch tents in alpine meadows redolent of rhododendron and chir, and mingle with Gujar tribesmen. April 24–May 4; $1,250; info@treknraft.com

COLORADO

The Colorado Trail

Of all the big hikes that run across U.S. wilderness, few pack as much awe per step as the Colorado Trail. But tackling all 482 miles from Denver to Durango, through six wilderness areas and eight mountain ranges, would take you about a month. Instead, concentrate your efforts during a ten-day romp along a remote 95-mile ribbon that runs just east of San Luis Peak to Molas Pass, in the southwestern part of the state. Start at Spring Creek Pass, 33 miles northwest of Creede amid the 13,000-foot-plus San Juan Mountains. Plan on grinding up to 15 miles a day along airy ridges, down steep gorges, and up winding switchbacks. You’ll spend four days cruising above tree line, at nearly 12,000 feet, and the closest you’ll come to a town (Lake City) is about 17 miles, which means tackling thousands of vertical feet each day with a heavy pack. Take a break and frolic in Snow Mesa, a flat, grassy expanse so huge it takes a few hours to cross. 303-384-3729,

COSTA RICA

There may come a time—perhaps after your third endo over the handlebars—when pedaling 160 miles across Costa Rica by mountain bike makes an overcrowded bus tour look appealing. But keep riding—you won’t regret it. Head out from San José for about 20 miles a day and 14,000 feet of total climbing to eventually reach the town of Nosara, overlooking the Pacific. For eight days you’ll pedal Specialized hardtails (or your own bike) into villages where people still get around by oxcart, spending nights in hotels, research stations, and a private home tucked into a misty cloudforest. Get off the bike to bushwhack through monster ferns to reach the summitof Cerro Chato, a 3,937-foot sleeping volcano. When you slip into a hot spring near the 5,741-foot Arenal Volcano, your sore muscles will melt away. $2,596 per person with your own group of four; Serendipity ºÚÁϳԹÏÍøs, 877-507-1358,

GREENLAND

Arctic Circle

When Fridtjof Nansen became the first to schlep across the Greenland ice cap, in September 1888, he studied Inuit culture, weathered minus-50-degree storms, and spent a cold, dark winter waiting for a ship to take him home. Today, adventurers can follow his tracks along the Arctic Circle using kites to pull them on skis—at about 12 miles per hour—under the guidance of polar explorer Matty McNair. Never skied behind a kite? You’ll spend a few days on Frobisher Bay, on the southeast coast of Canada’s Baffin Island, learning techniques that advanced skiers can pick up quickly. Then hop a two-hour flight to Greenland for a 345-mile trek, where the kites will help you pull a 150-pound pulk (loaded with tents, stoves, and beef jerky) in 20-below temps. The adrenaline rush will diminish the hardships as you rip in 24-hour sunlight through a landscape of dizzying white. May 1–31; from $5,000; NorthWinds Polar Expeditions and Training, 867-979-0551,

Big Frontiers

Formerly off-limits, these territories are finally opening their doors

ALASKA

Adak Island

Shrouded in fog and mystery, most of this remote Aleutian isle went public in 2004, after its naval air station was closed and transferred—lock, housing stock, and runway—to the Department of the Interior and the native Aleut Corporation. Most of 280-square-mile Adak is now a federally designated wilderness and wildlife refuge. Bald eagles soar above dormant volcanoes, and 3,000 caribou (introduced during the Cold War as an emergency food supply) roam the moors. Roughly equidistant from Alaska and Russia, the “Birthplace of the Winds” is also a birdwatching hot spot—nearly one-fourth of the 200 species recorded here are migrants found nowhere else in the Americas. High Lonesome Bird Tours leads expeditions ($4,600 per person for eight nights, all-inclusive; 800-743-2668, ), or check out .

Kurdistan

The typical headline out of Iraq is about roadside IEDs, not roadside attractions. Yet last fall this long-suffering autonomous region bordering Syria, Turkey, and Iran launched an irony-free international marketing campaign, “The Other Iraq,” to showcase its superb scenery, ancient history, and relative security. Virgin snow blankets the mountains, while the plains hold Sumerian ruins and the hospitable capital, Erbil, one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities. In December, Austrian Airlines began twice-weekly flights from Vienna to Erbil. For information, go to .

PERU

Cordillera Azul National Park

Imagine a forest primeval, with uncontacted jungle tribes and animals with no fear of humans. That Lost World still exists in this national park in the eastern Andes, established in 2001 after biologists from Peru and Chicago’s Field Museum recorded 28 new plants and animals—including a bird species confined to the cloudforest atop a single mountain. Only three other scientific groups have since surveyed the 5,225-square-mile Cordillera Azul, which holds endangered jaguars and spectacled bears. In July, the Sierra Club will run a pioneering trip (non-members welcome) that includes an eight-day transect of the preserve by foot, bamboo raft, and dugout canoe ($3,395–$3,795; 415-977-5522, ).

LAOS

Houaphan Province

Sealed off by the daunting Annamite Range and shackled by its past (unexploded wartime ordnance, guerrillas, reeducation camps), Houaphan—in northeast Laos near the Vietnamese border—lies beyond the typical backpacker trail. But a trickle of DIY travelers now seek out this lush outpost for its unaffected hill tribes and vaulting karst mountains. In Vieng Xai district, about 20 miles east of Xam Nau, you can explore the cave-riddled peaks that served as rebel fortresses throughout the Vietnam War. While the U.S. unleashed its bombing campaign, 23,000 Pathet Lao hunkered down in limestone caverns equipped with electricity, dorms, and weapons depots. The Lao Association of Travel Agents () can provide a list of tour operators.

FINLAND

Kvarken Archipelago

The 5,600 islands in the Kvarken Archipelago are literally in flux; released by the diminished weight of melting Ice Age glaciers, the seabed is rebounding from the Gulf of Bothnia at the rate of a third of an inch annually. The astonishing amount of uplift—more than 900 feet over the last 10,000 years—prompted UNESCO last year to designate some 480,000 acres as Finland’s first natural World Heritage site. Paddle the ever-changing labyrinth of emerging islets and expanding peninsulas, washboard moraines and shallowing lakes, then bunk down in a former pilot station on Rönnskar. Björkö Wardshus () runs guided boat trips; offers travel info. But get there now: In a few millennia, the uplift will form a land bridge to Sweden.

Top Travel Innovations

Eight indispensable travel innovations

Solio Charger

Solio Universal Hybrid Charger

Singapore’s Changi Airport

With some 160 stores, 80 eateries (including a cigar lounge and live jazz bar), a Balinese-style swimming pool, leather “snooze chairs,” and massagesoffered 24/7 at the Rainforest Lounge, there’s no rush to claim your bags.

The MLC

Short for “maximum legal carry-on,” this handy bag holds up to a week’s worthof gear—just enough for hitchhiking through Belize. Tuck away the ergonomic shoulder strap for a presto backpack. Two large compartments separate the clean stuff from the sweaty climbing gear; the coated reflective fabric repels rain. $148;

Want your trip to be socially sound and eco-friendly? The Green Globe program, launched by the World Travel & Tourism Council, certifies hotels and tour companies that meet top standards for everything from water managementto noise control.

Founded by a frustrated frequent flier, this time-tested site allows users to share info on how to get the most out of their bonus miles, with discussion forums for every major airline, a live chat for last-minute queries, and an option that helps you create a mileage-maximizing itinerary.

Ex Officio Give-N-Go Skivvies

Breathable, lightweight, moisture-wicking, and bacteria-resistant, these boxers and women’s bikinis won’t let you down. Super comfortable (made of nylon and spandex), they air-dry in a snap. Boxers, $25; bikini briefs, $16;

Solio Universal Hybrid Charger

This groovy solar-power station—the size of a deck of cards, with interchangeable connector tips—offers a one-stop charge for your camera, cell phone, PDA, GPS, and digital audio player. (One hour of sun equals one hour of iPod use.) $100;

A juicy source of inside information and tips about the good, the bad, and the disgusting. Check out the Hotel Hell stories about not-so-hot spots (like Room 15 at Nevada’s Caliente Hot Springs Motel, home to polygamist ceremonies), or skip to the Hotel Heaven tales (which for one woman included sunglasses-cleaning pool boys at the Grand Rotana Resort & Spa in Egypt).

Canon CP730 Selphy Compact Photo Printer

Create personal postcards in 58 seconds with thispaperback-size portable printer. It hooks up to any laptop or Canon camera(and some cell phones), churning out 300-dpi, four-by-six color photos on address-ready cards. $150;

Notes from the Guru

Take it from adventure travel trailblazer Richard Bangs: Understanding the world requires immersing yourself in it

If you could trace the roots of adventure travel to one person, Richard Bangs, 56, might well be the man. In 1973, back when big chunks of the world, like Russia and Eastern Europe, were virtually closed to Americans, he and high school pal John Yost headed to Ethiopia to explore the Omo River (a trip featured on the first cover of this magazine). What began as a last hurrah of youth morphed into the founding of a travel company, which eventually became Mountain Travel Sobek, one of the largest, most respected outfitters in the industry. Although Bangs is still a co-owner, he left MTS in 1991 to bring travel to the Internet, launching Microsoft’s now-defunct online adventure ‘zine Mungo Park in 1996 and going on to produce travel features for Expedia, Yahoo, MSNBC, and . His latest film project, a documentary on the vanishing crocodiles of the Nile, airs on PBS this summer. Senior editor STEPHANIE PEARSON recently caught up with him in San Diego for this as-told-to about the past, present, and future of wild journeying.

I was 22 in 1973 and had this notion to head to Africa to see if I could explore some rivers that hadn’t been navigated. It turned out to be such a magnificent experience that I decided to organize a little company to take people on extraordinary adventures. It was patched together in my mother’s basement in Bethesda, Maryland. We began to offer trekking, climbing, ballooning, diving—at that time there was no adventure travel landscape. The concept of travel with a purpose, travel with meaning, travel that would bring you back fitter, with a clearer mind, with a better connection to the world, did not exist.

ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø travel is in a much better place than it was 30 years ago. We owe a lot of our global interconnectedness to adventure travelers. People who started to wander the earth and appreciate its beauty were people who became activists. Now everybody talks about ecotourism and green travel. It’s all the rage. There are downsides and abuses, but it’s a good attitude, and it comes from people who are willing to step off the beaten track.

Is the world a smaller place? Absolutely. Within 24 hours you can get to almost anywhere on the planet. But all of this is good. Dark political things would happen when doors were closed. It’s very easy to be judgmental and raise the fear index when you don’t really know who the other person is. Mark Twain said it best: “Travel is fatal toprejudice and bigotry.”

What will adventure travel be like 30 years from now? I was in Bosnia a few months ago, and they have all these outfitters in places where the Croats and Bosnians were once lobbing mortars at each other. This is much harder to do when people are roaring with laughter as they roll down a river… ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø travel is the fastest-growing segment of the travel industry. It’s increasingly impossible to find a country that does not have it. Places are opening up and landscapes are shifting all the time. I just received an invitation to Lebanon. We do a trip to the Galápagos almost every week of the year now. Lots of people are doing things that were unimaginable a few years ago.

I’m an advocate of traveling with technology. I have an Iridium sat phone I take with me everywhere. If you need a moment of Zen, it’s easy to take off all your clothes and be as natural as you want, but when it comes to survival, sat phones have saved a lot of lives. In Namibia, a doctor broke both ankles on a trek and was in danger of dying. I was able to call an evac and get him out. The less you have to worry about your own survival, the more you can assimilate the actual experience. Technology in the field can give you an assurance of survival so that you can be more in the moment, more in the experience—so you can contribute and extract more.

ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø is a very elastic concept, but it has to deal with stretching your consciousness and going beyond your comfort zone. The world, or you, will not change if you are static. If you are willing to stick your neck out, try untried things, have that moment of unknown discomfort and sharpness, then you’re fully alive. When I did the first descent of the Zambezi, nobody considered it. Now when I go back to the Zambezi, there are thousands of people tumbling down. Everybody who rafts it has an amazing experience, and it makes a difference. It becomes transformative when you go beyond the concrete and the familiar.

Travel rejuvenates. It’s new, it’s very childlike, it keeps things fresh. Anything is possible. There could be dinosaurs around the corner. If you don’t travel, you deaden yourself. I continue to look at maps and get very excited by the places I haven’t been. The more you see, the more you recognize what you have yet to see.I have a long list. It’s an endless quest.

2007 Trip of the Year Winners

The best of the best

Overall Winner


Trek to the Source of the Tsangpo, Tibet

The last time trekking guide Gary McCue set out to explore far-western Tibet, he happened upon an acre-size hot spring that tumbled from a mountainside near Lake Manasarovar. “I’d never seen a boiling creek just come crashing out of a hole in the ground,” he says. But it’s just the sort of surprise the Tasmania-based author of Trekking in Tibet: A Traveler’s Guide has come to expect from this part of the world. Tourism may be booming—the controversial new Qinghai-Tibet Railway helped bump up visitation to Tibet by 30 percent last year—but much of this mysterious land of Buddhist temples and mist-shrouded peaks remains blissfully unexplored by outsiders. This spring, McCue will return to the Himalayas on a quest to reach the source of the Tsangpo River, the mightiest of four rivers that flow from the sacred 22,028-foot peak of Kailas. The 42-day exploratory trek is the first commercial expedition to a pilgrimage site very few Westerners have seen since a Swedish explorer hiked nearby in the early 1900s. After driving across the plains from Lhasa to Darchen, you’ll trek the perimeter of Kailas before camping in the Lha Chu Valley during the annual Saga Dawa full-moon festival. Then you’ll start the weeklong journey through a glacial valley to Tamchok Khabab, the river’s source. The trip ends with a visit to the temple-strewn Limi Valley, a newly opened region of western Nepal. “It’s hard to find wilderness this wild and remote that doesn’t require Reinhold Messner-level skills to reach,” says McCue. “It’s the closest you can come to what the explorers experienced 150 years ago.” OUTFITTER: Wilderness Travel, 800-368-2794, ; PRICE: $10,560–$13,160; DIFFICULTY: Challenging; WHEN TO GO: May–June

North America


Cross The USA On Two Wheels

This epic, coast-to-coast challenge takes you from Santa Barbara, California, to Charleston, South Carolina—2,949 miles with 167,000 vertical feet of climbing—in 33 grueling days. You’ll pedal on two-lane blacktop across the Mojave Desert, over Rocky Mountain passes, and through southern prairies en route to the Atlantic seaboard, staying in roadside hotels along the way. You’ll earn a lifetime’s worth of bragging rights (you’re averaging a century ride per day) and get a two-wheeled take on the classic American landscapes that most travelers experience only as a blur through the car window. Just be sure to remember to dip a toe in both the Pacific and Atlantic or your efforts might be in vain. OUTFITTER: Trek Travel, 866-464-8735, ; PRICE: $10,000; DIFFICULTY: Challenging; WHEN TO GO: September–October

Polar Regions


Canoe With The Caribou In Alaska

The 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve, on Alaska’s north coast, holds the largest swath of unprotected wilderness in the U.S.—and you needn’t look beyond its name to guess its primary purpose. But the region harbors much more than black gold: Half a million western arctic caribou march across its sprawling plains each year, along with grizzlies and wolves. On this 11-day trip, you’ll follow the herd by foot and in two-person canoes on the untamed Kokolik River, hiking where woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers once roamed. OUTFITTER: Equinox Wilderness Expeditions, 604-222-1219, ;PRICE: $4,495; DIFFICULTY: Moderate; WHEN TO GO: June

South America


Three Jewels Of Aysén, Chile

This isolated piece of Patagonia, where the population density is just 1.2 people per square mile, is framed by vast icefields that feed blue-green rivers and streams so pure you can drink from them. The 27-day, 132-mile expedition combines three seldom-traveled routes: the Cerro Castillo hike, where you’ll camp amid the basalt spires and crags that gave Castle Hill its name; the Aysén Glacier Trail, a year-old hut-to-hut circuit through an unspoiled wilderness dotted with glacial lakes; and on to the icefields surrounding 11,073-foot FitzRoy, where iconic Andean peaks rise dramatically from the frozen lowlands. OUTFITTER: Patagonia ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Expeditions, 011-56-67-219894, ; PRICE: $4,850; DIFFICULTY: Challenging; WHEN TO GO: January

Eastern Europe & the Middle East


Journey Through Ancient Oman

Just east of Saudi Arabia, on the Arabian Sea, centuries-old shepherd trails crisscross the rocky ridges and deep wadis of the Al Hajar range, which rises 10,000 feet above Oman’s placid northern coastline. It’s the Middle East that doesn’t make the nightly news, and it’s virgin territory for most American travelers. On this ten-day trip, you’ll trek and camp in lush valleys filled with date palms, in ancient sand-colored villages that blend seamlessly with the surrounding hills, and on a sugary beach where you can snorkel in a sapphire bay. OUTFITTER: KE ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Travel, 800-497-9675, ; PRICE: $1,995; DIFFICULTY: Moderate; WHEN TO GO: March–April, November–January

Western Europe

Giro Del Gelato, Italy

Finally, a trip that acknowledges the number-one reason we cycle in Italy. Vacations don’t get much sweeter than this eight-day ride through southern Piedmont with gelato-making genius Danilo Zecchin, of Ciao Bella Gelato. Pedaling an average of 40 miles per day on paved roads that roll through vineyards and over patchworked hills, you’ll work up just enough hunger for the copious Italian dinners, private wine tastings, and all-you-can-eat frozen treats. Recharge at 500-year-old castles and 17th-century farmhouses as the chef spills the secrets behind his sinful concoctions. Then pedal, gorge, repeat. OUTFITTER: Ciclismo Classico, 800-866-7314, ; PRICE: $3,995; DIFFICULTY: Moderate; WHEN TO GO: May

Asia

Discover Rinjani, Indonesia

If trekking near active volcanoes isn’t daunting enough, how about climbing a few—including the 12,224-foot Gunung Rinjani, on the island of Lombok, east of Bali, via a scenic new route to its unexplored southern rim. On this ten-day trip, you’ll start in the village of Aibuka, scramble to the gorgeous Sengara Anak crater lake, then paddle inflatable rafts to the base of Gunung Baru (7,752 feet), an active young volcano in mid-lake. After topping that “warm-up” peak, you’ll soak in surrounding hot springs, then trek to Rinjani base camp. The push to the summit begins under a full moon at 2 a.m. and ends at about sunrise. OUTFITTER: No Roads Expeditions, 011-03-9502-3789, ; PRICE: $1,422; DIFFICULTY: Challenging; WHEN TO GO: May–June

Bahamas, Mexico & Central America

Island-Hop In Nicaragua

If the crater lakes and verdant slopes of Nicaragua’s volcanoes have hosted few adventurers, it’s not for lack of suitable terrain. The playground potential in the rumpled topography of this fun mecca rivals that of its neighbors. This nine-day trip takes you island-hopping by kayak in Lake Nicaragua, hiking through a rainforest, and wandering among the pre-Columbian artifacts, caves, and rock art of Zapatera National Park. You’ll spend most nights in wilderness lodges, where howler monkeys provide the morning wake-up call. OUTFITTER: Mountain Travel Sobek, 888-687-6235, ; PRICE: $2,690–$2,990 (plus $150 internal airfare); DIFFICULTY: Easy; WHEN TO GO: January–February, October–December

Oceania

Dive Into Palau’s Shark Week

Reef sharks in the midst of mating season are the headliners at Shark Week, the Micronesian Shark Foundation’s annual conservation-oriented celebration of these cartilaginous creatures. Expect cameos from silvertip, tiger, and hammerhead sharks, among others, as you explore the reefs and walls of underwater Palau on this ten-day, resort-based expedition. By day, a 28-foot boat will take you to dive sites, many of which are open only during this event; the nights are enhanced by lectures from experts on sharksand preservation. OUTFITTER: Oceanic Society Natural History Expeditions, 800-326-7491, ; PRICE: $2,990–$3,490; DIFFICULTY: Moderate; WHEN TO GO: March

Africa

Paddle Madagascar

Long isolated from the flora and fauna of the African mainland, the world’s fourth-largest island teems with evolutionary anomalies, such as the 30 lemur species and countless other miscellaneous critters that exist nowhere else on earth. You’ll hear a cacophony of grunts and wails as you kayak the aquamarine water of the Indian Ocean through the newly designated Masoala National Park. Inland you’ll paddle on calm rivers and lakes through forest reserves on this 18-day adventure. In the tropical home of indiris, sifakas, and octopus trees, you’ll sleep in wilderness lodges and camp on palm-shaded beaches where you can snorkel in secluded lagoons few outsiders have seen. OUTFITTER: Explorers Corner, 510-559-8099, ; PRICE:$4,553; DIFFICULTY: Moderate; WHEN TO GO: October–November

The post Spin the Globe appeared first on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online.

NAPA VALLEY: The Benchmark

Napa Valley, CA

Napa Valley Vineyards: Little rows of heaven

Taking stock of the classic wine-country getaway
IT’S A LATE-FALL AFTERNOON two weeks past the wine harvest, and I’m pedaling with a few local cyclists to the top of Mount Veeder, home of some of Napa Valley’s steepest cabernet vineyards. The turning grape leaves are a kaleidoscope of color—gold, mustard, red, and rust, with a hint of leftover green. From the summit, we roll along the ridgeline, then dip down through valleys of oak and olive groves, breathing in air ripe with crushed grapes, wild sage, and smoke from wood fires. That’s when the sensation hits me: I feel like I’m in Italy—in Umbria, to be exact, on the back side of Mount Subasio. I became enamored with the forest-covered hills laced with ribbons of quiet asphalt in that corner of central Italy while leading bike tours there in the late 1990s for a Berkeley-based adventure travel company. Now, I feel like I’m tracing those same roads again.

Napa Valley, which stretches 30 miles from Carneros in the south to Calistoga in the north, is the closest Americans will come to a European wine region without crossing the Atlantic. Although only 4 percent of California’s wines come from the estimated 600 vineyards in Napa, the region is home to most of the country’s ultra-premium labels—a fact that has transformed the valley into one of the nation’s best-known and poshest wine destinations. Accordingly, traffic is often heavy on Highway 29, the major artery through the area, and the sipping occasionally comes with some attitude. But for most, these are slight inconveniences compared with the breadth of wines on offer. The valley’s startling range of Mediterranean-like microclimates is ideal for growing several varieties of grapes: Napa’s cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay are legendary, and the region has been producing pinot noir since the 1870s. As winemakers better understand the nuances of grape growing on each hillside, additional varietals—like sangiovese and malbec—are taking root.

I’m quite particular about chardonnay—the rich, buttery varietals are definitely not my thing. With that in mind, I head up to Stony Hill Vineyard, on the flanks of Spring Mountain, where owner Peter McCrea shows me to the tasting room, a terrace overlooking a garden brimming with zinnias. McCrea pours me a glass of his straw-colored chardonnay, which his father began producing in the 1950s. I stick my nose in the glass and am pleasantly surprised to breathe in a burst of ripe pear fragrance: This is a chardonnay I could learn to love. I take a swallow, savoring the mineral and citrus flavors that linger on my tongue.

Napa winemakers are rightfully proud of their creations. Robert Sinskey, whose three-decades-old vineyard bears his name, was once a guest on a walking trip I led in Liguria, a region in Italy known for its wine, especially the whites. Sinskey showed up with his suitcase stuffed full of his own wines, which we drank before dinner each night. By trip’s end, everyone on the tour agreed: Sinskey’s jammy pinot noir was as good as any Italian bottle we’d uncorked. Likewise, Pat Kuleto’s Napa winery, spread across 97 hilly acres above Lake Hennessey, squeezes out a coral-colored sangiovese that screams fresh strawberries, and a syrah with a blueberry aroma and peppery taste—a glass of each in the tasting room brought all good intentions of an afternoon hike to a premature end. And PlumpJack, a 50-acre estate growing grapes since the 1880s, produced a black, inky, fruit-forward ’02 cab that sold out in less than four months.

But Napa serves up its indulgence in more than just liquid form. Over the years, the valley has continued to refine itself with decadent dining, lodging, and spa treatments. The best spot for dinner in Napa is ZuZu, a tiny Spanish tapas joint, or Terra (in nearby St. Helena), where the setting feels Tuscan villa (a fieldstone building with arched windows), while the dishes stick to California cuisine (grilled quail on caramelized endive). Afterwards, head down the street to the Bounty Hunter wine bar for a slice of persimmon pie with pomegranate molasses and a nightcap. After a moonlit swim in the lap pool at the new Calistoga Ranch, I return to my creekside cedar-and-stone abode to find the fireplace aflame, a bottle of champagne on ice, jazz on the stereo, and a tiny chocolate wine bottle on my pillow. A few weeks later, when I make reservations at the recently opened Poetry Inn, a three-room California Craftsman enclave perched high on a hill in the Stags Leap district, the innkeeper phones back to ask my music preferences and preferred pillow type, then greets me in person at check-in with a flute of sparkling wine.

The best part about Napa, however, is the way sophistication and the natural environment merge—there’s a hint of romance and a heady mix of elegance and rustic mystery. During an afternoon mountain-bike ride on the forested flanks of the Howell Mountains, 1,400 feet above the valley, I come face to face with this bucolic side of Napa. I’ve been riding singletrack for about two hours without seeing a soul, and the sun is sinking fast. Just when I think I might be lost, I hear branches crackling and my mind skips ahead: Rattlesnake? Black bear? Mountain lion?! Instead, a local mushroom collector appears out of the woods, finishing up an afternoon out rustling for chanterelles. Dressed in a fleece against the gathering evening chill and carrying a large wicker basket, he reminds me of a mushroom gatherer I bumped into in the forested hills of Italy’s northwestern Piedmont region. After a quick chat, he tells me the fastest way back to the trailhead—but he won’t divulge where to find the best mushrooms. Known and overblown as it is, even Napa still guards a few secrets.

Sonoma County, CA

SONOMA COUNTY: Vintage Chill


Savoring seclusion around Napa’s offbeat sibling
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? I’m lounging on my back in a hot tub, my fiancé, Steve, reclining next to me. Every so often our personal bath attendant arrives to blot our steamy foreheads with cool washcloths and offer us ice water through a straw.

What’s so wrong? Let me tell you. We are entombed in two tons of soggy, steamy sawdust. And we are naked.

We’ve come to Osmosis, a homey little day spa in rural western Sonoma County, to sample their cedar-enzyme bath, an ancient Japanese healing treatment. The premise: Submerge yourself in cedar and fir pulp, and the wood will beautify your skin, reduce tension, and infuse you with feelings of “elation.”

Right now, immobilized by 120-degree sawdust, I’m fixated on these thoughts, in this order: Did they make us sign a waiver? No. Then surely it can’t be dangerous. How often do they change the chips? And, with regret: I should have worn my bathing suit. Once I work through this panic loop, I find myself oddly, calmly accepting: This is the Zen moment I’ve been waiting for. But when the attendant informs us, “The heat of the bath comes from fermentation” (yup, we’re sprawled out in rotting wood), I can’t get out fast enough.

Later, after we’ve scrubbed off every last wood chip, we’re tucked into narrow cots upstairs, with herbal pillows placed over our eyes and Meta music piped in through headphones. I trance out for the best spa treatment of my life. When the crashing of ocean waves stops and I open my eyes, Steve is gone. I find him in the meditation garden out back, contemplating a bed of gravel raked into perfect, impermanent swirls.

Such are the unexpected pleasures of Sonoma, a laid-back valley just over the gnarled Mayacamas Mountains from Napa’s glossy wine empire. With more than 70 wineries in the 22-mile-long Valley of the Moon and another 180 in the surrounding county, Sonoma is consistently among the top five wine-grape-producing regions in North America and second only to Napa in wine-tourism revenue. But where Napa is sleek and chic, Sonoma is farmy and friendly; ask a local for a recommendation in the wine aisle at the market and he’ll chat you up about the valley’s renowned cabs and the Russian River’s rich pinot noirs.

For a week over Thanksgiving, we went in search of the wilder side of Sonoma. Our first stop was Healdsburg, a stylish town of about 11,000 in northern Sonoma County. The place to stay is the Hotel Healdsburg, a stately three-story inn on the plaza. Inside, blocky concrete columns, sea-green glass tiles, and bare pecan floors are warmed by leather couches, double-wide slipcovered chairs, and king-size beds.

Biking may not be the most original way to tour wine country, but thanks to an abundance of quiet farm roads looping past picturesque vineyards, it’s arguably the best. So we embraced cliché and set out late in the day on a 25-mile loop through Dry Creek Valley, just north of Healdsburg. Leaving town, we raced daylight up West Dry Creek Road, past rust-red vines, small bungalows, old wooden barns, and a 1950s Mercedes with a bumper sticker that read I VEG TO DIFFER. With ten minutes until sunset and 12 miles still to ride, we debated whether there was time for a detour to the boutique Bella winery, then wheeled up to its tasting cave for a flight of fruity zinfandels. On the fast, wine-fueled ride home, we zinged past the darkening blur of a rowdy Mexican fiesta and a self-serve stand selling $1 persimmons.

Speed workouts are best followed by giddy self-indulgence: Ours entailed an hourlong massage in the spa, dinner next door at the popular, if a little stuffy, Dry Creek Kitchen, and finally the soundest sleep I can remember. We hadn’t exactly found the untamed heart of Sonoma, but we weren’t complaining.

The next morning we redoubled our efforts with a ten-mile canoe trip on the Russian River, a tranquil run through redwoods that gave us a glimpse of a woodsier, wilder Sonoma. Manager Ted Schroeder and co-owner Linda Burke of Burke’s Canoe Trips, a second-generation outfit that’s been renting canoes on this flatwater stretch from Forestville to Guerneville for more than 50 years, accompanied us downstream. The river was shady and cool and, except for the odd heron, utterly still.

Back in the Valley of the Moon, we chanced upon Kaz, one of the smallest tasting rooms in the valley. Rick “Kaz” Kasmier produces 1,000 cases of organic wine a year inside a clapboard barn. He welcomed us with tastings of tawny port, and his wife invited us to help her cut wine labels. We left with a signed bottle of 2003 Sangiofranc.

Which brings us back to the cedar-enzyme bath. Well wined and dined, a little bit achy from our exploits, we found this sawdusty haven and, at least for a little while, true elation.

Applegate Valley, OR

APPLEGATE VALLEY: Wineward Ho!


Searching out the wild heart of Oregon
MICHAEL GIUDICI DOESN’T EXACTLY exactly extend a pinkie finger when he sips his wine. He doesn’t dress up, either—at least not today, in his sweatpants as he shouts at his dogs barking at strangers in the driveway. I double-check my brochure on southern Oregon wineries. Sure enough, we’re at the right spot. For the next 45 minutes we sit with Giudici, owner of John Michael Champagne Cellars, and sample shots of his estate-bottled bubbly, a sparkling sake, and a 2001 blanc de blancs that took best of class at the 2005 Los Angeles County Fair. I have no idea whether that award would impress a wine connoisseur, but I do know that Giudici’s boutique concoctions are tasty and as full of “intense character” as the man who makes them.

My girlfriend, Heidi, and I are weekending in the Applegate Valley, near Grants Pass, Oregon, looking to blend an earthy cuvée of Siskiyou Mountain hikes with stops for chardonnays and syrahs at the up-and-coming vineyards sprouting across this part of the state. While the land in this region, 4.5 hours south of Portland, is rugged—steep hills falling into angry whitewater—it’s the wine part that intimidates me. As a red-blooded dude with a beater truck, I turn hangover-green at the snootiness that sometimes pairs so well with pinot.

The Applegate Valley, I’m learning, is my kind of wine country: small, a little bit wild, and unpretentious. The $1.4 billion Oregon wine industry is small in the first place, compared with California’s $45 billion juggernaut, but most of the Oregon action takes place in the verdant fields of the Willamette Valley—a 147-mile-long yawn farther north that’s famous for velvety pinot noirs. The Applegate is a drip on the wine taster’s map; masters here cork less than 1 percent of the 1.2 million cases produced in Oregon. But size can be deceiving.

Though people in the area first began crushing grapes and topping casks in the mid-1800s, the Applegate wasn’t recognized as an American Viticulture Area until 2001. Today, only about a dozen wineries pepper this 30-mile-long valley of rolling dairy farms pinched by hills of madrone, oak, and cedar. But those wineries serve scores of micro-wines—often cabernet sauvignons and syrahs poured by the owners’ own purple hands. Giudici’s operation might be an extreme case—as suave as David Beckham in a coonskin cap—but who cares about highbrow tasting airs when there are 200-plus miles of raftable rivers, 1.8 million acres of national forest, mossy granite canyons, and lonely, serpentine roads out the tasting-room door?

As our base for a late-fall weekend, Heidi and I pick the woodsy Weasku Inn, a log-cabin lodge in Grants Pass, a small town at the northwestern corner of the Applegate Valley. The inn was built in 1924 and was once frequented by Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, and Walt Disney. We dump our bags in a cabin and ease our car out on Route 238, looking for our first taste.

First stop: Troon Vineyard. We pull on the door and walk into an airy space of Brunello Italian granite and hand-scraped hickory floors. Inside, the mood is lively, with tasters sampling Troon’s 14 wines, some with whimsical names like Druid’s Fluid or Jeanie in the Bottle. Chris Martin, a techie who traded software for stemware, opened this Tuscan-style tasting room last summer—one of four new ones in the valley last year, with at least two more on the way in 2006. “We’re the redheaded stepchild of the wine industry,” Martin jokes, adding that all of the grapes for his 5,000 cases come from vineyards within two miles of his casks. “This is what Napa was maybe 20 years ago, but without so many people.”

We roll onward past pastures out to Valley View Winery. At 34 years old, Valley View is the oldest continually operating winery in the area, though it shares its name with the long-since-closed winery that in 1854 started it all. Between checking scores on the football game, Michael Wisnovsky pours us a buttery chardonnay followed by a 2000 meritage, in glasses set on his circular copper bar. After tasting a late-harvest dessert wine that lingers so miraculously thick and sweet on the tongue you’d think Willy Wonka had made it, we buy a bottle and head for our drizzle-splashed cabin to uncork it.

The next morning we set out on a three-mile hike to Rainie Falls, near Galice, northwest of Grants Pass, to look for migrating steelhead fighting up the currents. The trail is spectacular, a thin ribbon of rock and dirt gouged into the side of a steep canyon. One hundred feet below, the Rogue River coaxes black boils of water through hissing rapids that you can raft, inn to inn, during the summer. Waterfalls braid down the mountainside and collect on mossy ledges. This is the kind of Oregon I imagined as a kid.

The rain starts to pad across the forest floor again, so we hike back to the car and drive to the Blue Giraffe Spa, in Ashland. I get an hourlong rubdown that leaves me drooling through the headrest. I’d be embarrassed, but any thoughts I can muster keep coming back to the wineries we missed. I’ll return next year with a mountain bike and plenty of room for cases of Troon’s Ltd. Reserve II. I can already smell the blackberry air whipping through the holes in my truck.

Walla Walla, WA

Walla Walla, WA

LITTLE RED: Label from a 2003 bottle of L'Ecole No 41 Cabernet Sauvignon

WALLA WALLA: Nouveau Red

Uncorking the chic side of rural Washington

MY AUNT PAM, A POLISHED, Gucci-wearing, Met-season-ticket-holding, 31-year-old financial headhunter, lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She’s one of those New Yorkers who would never consider living in a borough as remote as Brooklyn or Queens. So when she broke the news that she was moving cross-country to Walla Walla, Washington, to help her husband open their own winery, I laughed—long and hard. Sonoma, maybe, but backwoods Walla Walla?

It turns out, the joke’s on me. Walla Walla is emerging onto American oenophiles’ radar screen as fast as the bottles of its award-winning L’Ecole No. 41 and Woodward Canyon Winery reds are being uncorked around the world. Although the area’s oldest winery, Leonetti Cellar, opened in 1977, the rise of Walla Walla—from sleepy college town to an oasis of hip in a decidedly rural part of the state—has taken place primarily over the past five years. Since roughly 2000, denizens of cosmopolitan cool—young professionals in their mid-thirties, like Pam and her husband, Greg Harrington, a veteran sommelier of both Emeril Lagasse’s and Wolfgang Puck’s cellars—have moved here for the emerald-green rolling hills dotted with Wyeth-style farmhouses and a drier climate that’s well suited to cultivating merlot, syrah, and cabernet sauvignon grapes. Along with urban sophistication, this influx has brought the talent and funding to open 70 wineries and counting. The new wave includes wine entrepreneurs of all kinds, from Pepper Bridge’s Jean-François Pellet, a third-generation vintner from Switzerland, to Chuck Reininger, a former Rainier climbing guide. Considering that Walla Walla is a rising superstar in the firmament of American winemaking, I’ve decided to join the line of the young and urbane checking it out—in the name of family, of course.

After a quick breakfast in my palatial two-story “cottage” at Basel Cellars, Greg picks me up to begin my tour of Walla Walla wine country. We bounce along the rural JB George Road on our way to Va Piano Vineyards, where Greg is making his first barrels of syrah. As he points out Saviah Cellars and Waters Winery, off in the distance, Greg explains what possessed him to start his winemaking career in the isolated southeastern corner of Washington, three hours from Spokane.

“I was impressed with the region,” Greg explains. “Some of the syrahs they’re making here are as good as in France.” And he should know—ten years ago, at age 26, he was awarded a diploma from London’s Court of Master Sommeliers. It also doesn’t hurt that the land here is more affordable than in California’s classic wine regions. Greg recently closed on his ten acres on JB George Road, which will eventually be the home of Gramercy Cellars, named for the lush park in Manhattan; the first vintage will be uncorked in the spring of 2007.

In the morning, I learn the finer points of winemaking, including “punch-down,” in which Greg jabs a huge vat of his blueberry-looking grapes with a metal pole, which releases the tannins to give the wine more flavor and color. Then I spend the afternoon strolling historic Main Street with 35-year-old mixed-media artist Squire Broel, a Walla Walla native who moved back to his hometown from Hong Kong and Seattle. Squire seems to know every one of the 30,000 residents. As we walk out the door at Starbucks, we run into Sarah, a friend of Squire’s, who also happened to be my waitress at the CreekTown Café the night before. I’ve been in Walla Walla for less than 24 hours, and even I am running into familiar faces.

From friendly locals like Squire and fly-fisherman Skip Pritchard (the guide who helped me perfect my loop right before I fell into Mill Creek) to athletes like freeskier Ingrid Backstrom and Cowboys quarterback Drew Bledsoe, the mix of folks who have savored the smart-country vibe is eclectic. Add to this the big-time chefs opening upscale restaurants—26 Brix and Whitehouse-Crawford, to name a few—in a town that’s full of public sculpture by such artists as Deborah Butterfield and local Jim Dine, and suddenly the idea of moving to the middle of nowhere to fulfill your dreams doesn’t seem so crazy after all.

Paso Robles, CA

PASO ROBLES: Good Libations


Sipping on the success of a Sideways glow
IT WAS FOOLISH TO THINK that one case of zinfandel could sustain five couples through the long weekend. I realize this now, sifting through the empties the morning after our arrival, and I very briefly regret the error in planning. But not for long. Thankfully, we’re in the Paso Robles wine country, a 24-square-mile patchwork of 100-plus wineries in central California, three hours from both San Francisco and L.A. Running out of wine here is like running out of gas in the middle of a Saudi oilfield—except here, refilling the tank is a lot more fun.

Wine consumption is not our only objective, however; we’ve come sufficiently stocked for more robust activities than sipping. In addition to the liquid cargo that we picked up on the way into town, our weekend caravan from the L.A. area carried seven bikes, ten pairs of hiking shoes, and two fishing poles to our plush base camp at Cottontail Creek, a guest ranch on 850 oak-studded acres in Cayucos, at the southwest corner of the wine zone. Our second day’s mission is now apparent: Explore the ranch’s ten-mile network of trails, then replenish the wine supply so as to enjoy depleting it once again.

We chose Paso Robles because it’s nothing like California’s other wine country. Vintners here are more likely to wear overalls than neckties, less likely to shun tasting-room visitors caked in bike grease and sweat. The roads are car-free, and the resident wine aficionados are a hodgepodge of aging cowboys, escaped professionals, and urban renegades—a lot like us.

Paso is the precocious teenager of the California wine family. It may not have Napa’s history or polished presentation—in fact, it flat-out refuses to fancy itself up—but it has worked hard to create its own distinct identity, with the buzz of a place on the verge of transition. This is the fastest-growing wine region in California, with ranchland quickly giving way to fields of grapes. In the past decade, the total number of wineries has more than doubled, and what was once the secret domain of a few connoisseurs is becoming de rigueur on the California wine circuit.

Credit the 2004 sleeper Sideways, filmed 90 miles south in the Santa Ynez Valley, for much of this newfound notoriety. After the movie exploded, so did wine tourism along this stretch of the Central Coast, and some of the wineries featured in the film suffered unexpected growing pains. At Foxen Winery, in Santa Barbara County, pinot noir sales more than doubled, and the owners had to start hiding the tasting bottles behind the counter to prevent inebriated film fans from following protagonist Miles’s lead in helping themselves to seconds.

Though Paso’s wineries have thus far been spared weekend parades of stretch Hummers and tour buses, the movie boosted sales significantly, especially among producers like Wild Horse and Windward Vineyard that make pinot noir (Miles’s varietal of choice). The former saw pinot sales jump 135 percent from the previous year, during the movie’s Oscar run, while the latter, which produces only pinot noir, saw total annual sales increase by 25 percent.

The grape that first put Paso on the American wine map is zinfandel, which came to California from Croatia in the 1850s. French Rhône varietals like grenache and syrah have also done well; each spring, international experts flock to Paso Robles for Hospice du Rhône, the world’s largest festival of Rhône varietals, which attracts around 3,500 people.

That’s precisely the sort of glitz we’re hoping to escape, so we lose ourselves in Cottontail Creek’s web of trails. We spend the morning pedaling past orange and avocado groves to an oak-shaded back road that skirts a deep-blue reservoir, then hike amid grazing cows to a ridgeline with panoramic ocean views. Soon enough it’s time to replenish the stores, so we drive to Justin and L’Aventure, two of the few local wineries that have garnered international attention and 90-plus-point ratings from critics. Justin is the local celebrity, whose success with a rich, earthy Bordeaux blend called Isosceles has elicited some sour-grapes sentiments from less celebrated neighbors who snub the winery’s frescoed ceilings and posh decor. For us, though, the opulence is a welcome break from cattle country, and everyone agrees that the wines stand up to the ambience.

At the much homier Opolo Vineyards, whose peppery zinfandels and rich syrahs have come into prominence in the past few years and whose Rhapsody blend is my favorite find of the trip, we are the only tasters. Likewise at Dark Star Cellars, Linne Calodo Cellars, and Fratelli Perata, a family-run vineyard planted in 1980, one of the oldest in the region. As general manager Carol Perata pours a Bordeaux blend called Tre Sorelle (Italian for Three Sisters), she tells us how her husband, Gino, and his brother, Joe, the sons of an immigrant Italian winemaker, still insist on doing everything from picking grapes to labeling bottles by hand. We’re sold, and leave with a case, one of only 2,000 produced each year.

That night after dinner we sit around the lodge’s outdoor fire pit, sipping a beefy zinfandel blend we picked up at Linne Calodo. The wine, called Problem Child, is in some ways Paso’s kindred spirit—robust, irreverent, and underappreciated. We raise a glass to Problem Child and to Paso Robles itself: May they never grow up.

Access and Resources

california

Napa Valley



ROOM & BOARD:
Expect stunning settings and lavish attention to detail at Napa’s trio of new retreats: Calistoga Ranch (doubles from $475; 707-254-2800, ); the Carneros Inn (doubles from $435; 707-299-4900, ); and the Poetry Inn (doubles from $475, including a three-course breakfast; 707-944-0646, ). The all-new Redd, in Yountville, serves up staggeringly modern creations—like peeky-toe crab salad with a citrus vinaigrette or fresh cod with a chorizo-studded curry sauce (707-944-2222). Everything at Rutherford’s Auberge du Soleil is good—including the view from the terrace—but don’t miss the chocolate dumplings with tarragon ice cream (707-963-1211).


THE VINTAGE:
With so many premium wineries, it’s difficult to know where to begin. Start here: Stony Hill Vineyard (by appointment only; 707-963-2636, ); Kuleto Estate (by appointment only; 707-963-9750, ); Cliff Lede Vineyards (private tours by appointment; 707-944-8642, ); Robert Sinskey Vineyards (800-869-2030, ); PlumpJack (707-945-1220, ).


BETWEEN TASTINGS:
Calistoga Bikeshop rents Santa Cruz Blurs and Bianchi road bikes ($60 and $40, respectively; 866-942-2453, ). Or splash out in a kayak or canoe at Napa River ºÚÁϳԹÏÍøs (from $50 per day; 707-224-9080, ). Afterwards, Lavender HillSpa specializes in couple’s treatments that will leave you bleary-eyed and wobbly (800-528-4772, ).—A.M.

Sonoma Valley



ROOM & BOARD:
Hole up at the Hotel Healdsburg, where doubles start at $385 (800-889-7188, ). For high-end comfort food—pork chops, grilled cheese—without the attitude, try the Fig Café & Winebar, in Glen Ellen (707-938-2130, ).

THE VINTAGE:
In the townof Sonoma, Gundlach Bundschu’s popular cave tour and picnic grounds are open daily (707-938-5277, ). Seven-year-old Bella Vineyards and Wine Cave,in Dry Creek Valley, boasts 100-year-old vines (866-572-3552, ). Kaz is one of only a handful of organic wineries in Sonoma Valley (877-833-2536, ).

BETWEEN TASTINGS:
At the Osmosis day spa, in tiny Freestone, the 90-minute cedar-enzyme treatment (about 20 minutes of actual bath time) starts at $140 per couple (707-823-8231, ). Wine Country Bikes rents road bikes, hybrids, and tandems starting at $30 per day and $140 per week. Owner John Mastrianni will also customize two- to seven-day supported, self-guided tours to the coast or northern Sonoma County (prices from $395 to $2,500 depending on lodging; 866-922-4537, ). For DIY paddling on the Russian River, Burke’s Canoe Trips rents boats for $55, including shuttle transport back to your car (707-887-1222, ).—K.A.

Applegate Valley



ROOM & BOARD:
The Weasku Inn’s five main lodge rooms—all rustic, with creaky wooden floors and antiques—sit over a country-style dining room with a panoramic view of the Rogue River (doubles from $195; 800-493-2758, ). To find out what pairs well with hericium mushrooms (a fat steak anda big red), make a reservation at Summer Jo’s Farm, Garden, and Restaurant, in Grants Pass (541-476-6882, ). Most everything is grown on-site.


THE VINTAGE:
Contact the Southern Oregon Winery Association (800-781-9463, ) for maps of tasting rooms in the region.


BETWEEN TASTINGS:
The Blue Giraffe Spa, in Ashland, about 45 minutes south, serves up a six-hour pamperfest: steam rooms, body polish, massage, facial. Not your scene? Get the two-hour Manly Things treatment, which includes a massage and a detoxifying steam shower (541-488-3335, ).—T.N.

Walla Walla



ROOM & BOARD:
Only two Walla Walla wineries offer accommodation. Abeja has restored the old farmhouses sitting on its property into three charming cottages and two suites (from $235, including breakfast and tasting; 509-522-1234, ). Basel Cellars, “the castle on the hill,” rents out the entire eight-bedroom estate house and a smaller cottage (estate for $2,400, cottage for $350; 509-522-0200, ).


THE VINTAGE:
In Lowden, 14 miles from downtown Walla Walla, L’Ecole No. 41 offers daily tastings in its restored 1915 schoolhouse (509-525-0904, ). Let Chuck Reininger tell you how he went from home winemaking to owning his own boutique winery over a tasting at Reininger Winery (509-522-1994, ). This year’s Spring Release Weekend will be May 6–7 (Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance; 509-526-3117, ), followed by the Balloon Stampede Weekend, featuring more than 35 hot-air balloons, May 12–14 (509-525-0850, ).


BETWEEN TASTINGS:
Practice your fly-fishing cast on a fully equipped two-hour to full-day trip with guide Skip Pritchard (509-522-4717, ). Nothing goes better with wine than cheese, so don’t miss the Monteillet Fromagerie’s artisanal goat and sheep cheeses, in Dayton, 40 minutes away (509-382-1917, ).—M.M.

Paso Robles



ROOM & BOARD:
The five-bedroom, 4,200-square-foot luxury lodge at Cottontail Creek sleeps up to 20 and offers massage services, gourmet catering, and yoga instruction ($995 per night for up to 10 guests; 805-995-1787, ).


THE VINTAGE:
Free tasting is an endangered tradition that’s still honored at most Paso wineries. Opolo Vineyards (805-238-9593, ; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily) serves a complimentary six-flavor fleet and will even tap a barrel on request. The Perata family asks that you call before stopping by (805-238-2809, ), but there’s no charge to try their wines, which are usually served with snacks. Hospice du Rhône 2006, Paso’s largest annual winefest, takes place May 11–13 ().


BETWEEN TASTINGS:
Central Coast Outdoors runs guided bicycle trips around Paso Robles from $119 per person per day (bikes $25 extra; 888-873-5610, ). They also lead kayaking trips in nearby Morro Bay, one of the state’s top stops for migratory waterfowl. —K.L.

The post How the West Was Wined appeared first on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online.

2)
Ouray, Colorado
Nestled beneath Rocky Mountain peaks, cheery little Ouray welcomes the season with a yule weekend parade and door-to-door visits from Santa. Guests at the Beaumont Hotel & Spa can enjoy a traditional Christmas dinner—think roast goose, chestnut stuffing, and chocolate mousse—after a trip to the Ouray Ice Park, where climbers scale the frozen walls. Doubles, $180–$350; 888-447-3255,

3)
Zermatt, Switzerland
From this snow-globe-perfect village—where horse-drawn carriages roll through car-free cobbled streets—you can take Europe’s highest cable car 7,421 feet up to Klein Matterhorn, then ski eight miles back to town in plenty of time to hang your stocking. But book early: The architecturally renowned Coeur des Alpes fills up months in advance. Doubles from $208; 011-41-27-966-40-80,

Holiday Aversion

Holiday Aversion

1)
Christmas Island, Australia
Though named by a British sea captain on December 25, 1643, this Indian Ocean isle is populated with Buddhists and Muslims—no nativity scenes here. Spend the holiday exploring Christmas Island National Park, which makes up nearly two-thirds of the island, then hunker down on Dolly Beach, an isolated, palm-fringed strip of sand where you can watch for the millions of endemic red crabs that migrate from the forest to the sea at this time of year. For information, contact the tourism association at 011-61-8-9164-8382;

2)
Erg Chebbi, Morocco
You won’t find any Christmas trees atop Morocco’s largest sand dunes. Mountain Travel Sobek departs for the desert from Marrakesh on a two-week trip that starts Christmas Day. After visiting casbahs in the town of Ouarzazate (a major international filming locale), as well as Berber villages in the scenic Dadès Valley, you’ll board a camel for a four-day trek across the Sahara. $3,390–$3,790 per person; 888-687-6235,

3)
The South Pole
For those trying to get as far from Santa as possible, The Northwest Passage offers an eight-day expedition to Antarctica, culminating in a round-trip champagne flight to the South Pole. First you’ll fly across the Drake Passage from Punta Arenas, Chile, to the Patriot Hills base camp, to explore the white-on-white landscape on nordic-ski and snowmobile tours. Then hop aboard a twin-engine Otter for the six-hour flight south, pop open some bubbly, and call home from the bottom of the world. $33,500 per person; 800-732-7328,

The post Noel—or Not! appeared first on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online.

(1) The lava-lamp decor and 360-degree views at LAX’s Encounter (), the restaurant/martini bar that’s become a movie-industry favorite, are worth braving the Los Angeles freeways for, even when we’re not flying.

(2) At the Paradies Shops (), now in 62 North American airports, travelers can buy new books and return them within six months for a 50 percent refund.

(3) A smart alternative to handing over our precious multitools to airport security: the ReturnKey kiosks that are now in nine U.S. airports and let you mail items home for $6.95 plus postage.

(4) A necessary indulgence: the one-hour “flight delay” package at Vancouver International’s Absolute Spa (), which includes a citrus-scented oxygen treatment, chair massage, and manicure for US$60.

(5) The portable DVD player rentals from InMotion Pictures () keep us entertained while we’re at the gate or in transit (rates start at $12 per day at 26 airports in the U.S. and Canada). At Singapore’s Changi Airport, free films play on a 100-inch movie screen 24 hours a day.

(6) Watery rejuvenation awaits at the Kempinski Hotel Airport Munich’s lap pool, between Terminals 1 and 2. The $18 day rate includes lockers and towels.

(7) Every airport should have a supermarket like the one at Amsterdam’s Schiphol, open 6 a.m. to midnight, with fresh produce, a deli, and a wine shop.

(8) We love the rainforest arboretum inside Kuala Lumpur International Airport and the Japanese, Chinese, and Hawaiian culture gardens at Honolulu International.

(9) Carolina Porch Rockers, made locally in North Carolina by the Portico Chair Company, line the tree-filled atrium at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport.

(10) A partly wooded 12-mile biking/hiking trail circles Baltimore-Washington International airport, connecting to the East Coast Greenway.

(11) At the Shipyard Brewing Company’s Brew Port in Maine’s Portland International Jetport, a Shipyard Sampler of four five-ounce tasters costs $6.19.

(12) The complimentary quiet lounges at Dubai International Airport have fully reclining chairs that give coach travelers the rare luxury of a horizontal nap.

(13) Soon you’ll be able to play nine holes at a golf course planned for Hong Kong’s 2006 SkyCity addition.

(14) Turn a layover at Reykjavík’s Keflavík International Airport into an hourlong soak in the Blue Lagoon, one of Iceland’s famed geothermal hot springs, 20 minutes from the terminal, with Reykjavík Excursions (); $58 includes round-trip transportation.

(15) Catch a PiYo class (a fusion of Pilates and yoga) at Las Vegas McCarran’s 14,000-square-foot 24 Hour Fitness (the day-use fee is $10; luggage storage is available).

(16) Amy’s Ice Creams (), in Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, sells nine flavors in “ice cream on the fly” packages that stay frozen for up to eight hours (a two-pint travel pack costs $25).

The post Terminal Bliss appeared first on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online.

An Om For All Seasons

SUMMER : FEATHERED PIPE RANCH, HELENA, Montana
Morning sunlight illuminating the walls of your yurt is the signature wake-up call at this 100-acre ranch in the mountains of western Montana. Roll out of your platform bed for a guided walk amid the evergreens, then practice your asanas under the tutelage of experienced Ashtanga, Hatha, Iyengar, and Svaroopa instructors. The ranch has hosted yoga seminars since 1975, the same year its owners cofounded Yoga Journal, and its much-lauded cookbook is the source for ranch dishes ranging from roast chicken and apple pie to Indian curries and African yam balls. Weeklong sessions on everything from astrology to shamanism run throughout the summer, culminating in the Celebration of Yoga retreat in August: $1,350 per person for yoga instruction, meals, and accommodations in a yurt, tent, or tepee. 406-442-8196,

Pura Vida USA Wellness and Yoga Retreat in Dahlonega, Georgia

FALL

FALL : PURA VIDA USA WELLNESS AND YOGA RETREAT,DAHLONEGA, Georgia
In September, blueberries line the wooded trails of this 72-acre mountain hideaway, where yoga students sip tea on the wraparound porch of a 1920s-style farmhouse. Pura Vida USA—a recent offshoot of the popular Pura Vida Spa, in Costa Rica, and Maya Tulum, in Mexico—is part yoga retreat, part day spa, and part classic southern country inn. Rooms in the house and barn offer wildflower-garden views; “bear den” cabins sit amid sycamores, poplars, and pines. The daily Hatha yoga classes complement the spa’s more passive treats, including aromatherapy steams and half a dozen flavors of massage. Round out your stay with some canoeing, mountain biking, horseback riding, and hiking in the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains. The Wellness Getaway Package for two people includes two nights’ lodging, yoga, breakfast, three spa treatments, and unlimited access to the outdoor Jacuzzi for $440–$536. 866-345-4900,

La Rinconada in Cholila, Argentina

WINTER

WINTER : LA RINCONADA, CHOLILA, Argentina
Escape the chillier latitudes by migrating to an 880-acre retreat in Argentina’s lake district, 130 miles south of Bariloche, where a new yoga studio with a red-eucalyptus floor overlooks the glacial peaks of the Patagonian Andes. Home is a simple four-bedroom farmhouse, and you’ll dine on organic homegrown vegetables, fresh rainbow trout, and Argentinian beef prepared by local and American chefs, and venture out for horseback riding on the property, fly-fishing in the Río Rivadavia, and hiking in nearby Los Alerces National Park. A weeklong retreat led by a Vinyasa or Anusara instructor costs $1,750, including lodging, meals, yoga, and transport from Bariloche. , kcanepa@aol.com

Harmony Ranch in Glen Ellen, California

SPRING

SPRING : HARMONY RANCH, GLEN ELLEN, California
Start some internal spring cleaning at a Harmony Ranch purification retreat, where four days of Raja yoga, meditation, and light hiking in the Sonoma wine country accompany “gourmet detox” cuisine. Fueled by carrot-ginger soup and grilled marinated zucchini, glide through gentle poses, meditation, and focused breathing with acclaimed instructors Michele Hebért and Mehrad Nazari. Then walk the Jack London Trail, which runs through hills and redwood forests to its namesake author’s private lake. Guest rooms in the mountaintop ranch house and a 1,000-square-foot cottage overlook the surrounding vineyards. Four-day retreats in March and April cost $685–$785, including instruction, lodging, and meals. Single-night stays (with yoga) cost $250 per couple year-round, including breakfast. 707-939-8887,

The post An Om For All Seasons appeared first on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online.

In the old days, trying to live with an environmental conscience could be tricky, if not downright unpleasant—filled with hard-to-find organic bulgur salads, tiresome carpools, and scratchy hemp ponchos. But there’s good news for greenies everywhere: You no longer have to live like John the Baptist to contribute to a healthier planet. Being kind to the earth has never been more hip, luxe, delicious, and deprivation-free. Simply put, a growing commitment to do no harm is transforming culture and commerce, making it possible to play hard and live well while living responsibly.


“It’s a lot easier being green now than it was ten years ago,” says David Gottfried, author of Greed to Green—a 2004 memoir about his transformation from grasping real estate developer to green do-gooder—and founder of the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit that certifies and promotes eco-friendly design. Today, green cred is a status symbol being sought by builders worldwide, including architects of such landmarks as the Freedom Tower, at the World Trade Center site, where wind turbines will help power the building. In fact, green is so red-hot that corporate America is getting the picture, creating nontoxic, recycled, and energy-efficient products, from skateboards to motherboards. “Being green spurs corporate innovation,” says Michael Porter, the pioneering professor who heads Harvard University’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness.


The result? Today you can choose green when you ski, drive, buy a dishwasher, or drink a beer. You can savor transcendent, sustainably produced chocolate, swig organic coffee, and heft a solar-paneled backpack on your way to hanging ten on a green surfboard (but first use natural sunscreen). The fashionista in you can enjoy eco-jeans or plush socks made from recycled polyester. And in 34 states, select utility companies will let you check a box on your electric bill and buy renewable energy, like wind power.


“When we look at nature, we do not see a glass half empty,” says renowned architect William McDonough, a guru of the green-design movement, whose buildings are famed for their “ecological intelligence.” “We don’t even see a glass half full,” says McDonough. “We see a world postively brimming with abundance.”


Take off that hair shirt, read our 13 hot trends—and let your glass runneth over.

Harmony House

Architecture

“The term ‘ecological building’ is sort of an oxymoron,” says David Hertz, a leading green architect who designs spectacularly sustainable eco-manors (and mere houses) for everyone from Hollywood stars like Julia Louis-Dreyfus to, well, his own family. The irony, he says, is that the greenest structures are no structures at all—or tiny, movable ones. Still, this 44-year-old surfer and father of three constructed a beautiful 2,700-square-foot family residence near the ocean in Venice, California, using the latest planet-friendly technologies and materials, including one he invented himself. Syndecrete—a smooth concrete made from recycled fly ash (the byproduct of incinerated coal) and post-consumer industrial products like electronics, glass, and carpet fibers—graces his floors, counters, sinks, tubs, and planters. Sliding doors open to three inner courtyards, including one with a solar-heated, chlorine-free lap pool. Après surfing or beachgoing, the family can wash sand off in a solar-heated outdoor shower, then dry wet stuff on their bathroom’s solar-heated radiant floor. “For L.A., this place is modest in scale and large in inventiveness,” says Hertz of his multi-pavilioned home, which is sited to catch prevailing sea breezes and cloud views. “I can tell which way the wind is blowing from inside.”


1. For ventilation and natural indoor temperature control, the windows and skylights are “climate responsive”—programmed to open and close automatically by sensing atmospheric temperature and moisture.


2. Outfitted with photovoltaic panels, the rooftop maximizes solar gain via parabolic oxygen-free glass tubes that concentrate the energy from rays. The solar power runs the water heater.


3. Inside the upstairs master bedroom, and in bathrooms throughout the house, bidet-like paperless toilets offer a rear and front wash-and-dry option, with a push button that blows water and then warm air.


4. Beds and chairs on sleeping porches are made from sustainable teak and organic cotton batting and fabric.


5. Embedded with radiant tubes for circulating solar-heated hot water, the carpet-less floors offer a clean and efficient closed-loop heating system—and provide thermal mass to warm the house.


6. On most days, Hertz’s house creates “nega-watts”: It makes enough solar-powered electricity to sell some back to the utility company. On foggy days and at night, it draws from the grid.


7. Made of stucco, concrete, glass, and remilled timber such as Douglas fir, the house’s exterior echoes its interior, adding to the flow of indoor-outdoor living space. The stucco is pigment-integrated—free of paint and volatile organic compounds.


8. Made of rammed earth—the soil excavated from the site—the wall alleviated the need to buy soil or use wood to fence the property.


9. Hardy, drought-tolerant plants thrive in the open areas, keeping the foliage as eco-positive as possible.

Low-Carb Living

Greenhouse Gases

Modern life—from driving to jetting—has unavoidable enviro costs. How high are yours? Go online and check out your “carbon-dioxide footprint,” a calculation of the amount of greenhouse gases that your existence generates. Then shrink your footprint with simple lifestyle tweaks (see the “Green Light On” boxes on these pages). Or, for as little as $15, let groups like Future Forests (), Climate Care (), or Trees for the Future () offset your CO2 by planting trees or supporting clean-energy projects. Read up—and erase your trace.

Eco-Chic

Gear

Board Certified
Making surfboards is so toxic that glassers don respirators to protect themselves from pollutants. But Patagonia Surfboards—started by Fletcher Chouinard, son of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard—aims to change all that. The company has switched to low-polluting foam, chromium-free fiberglass treatments, and epoxy resin, which is lighter and more ding-resistant than the widely used noxious polyester resin. $495; 805-641-9428

Soul Boots
Jade Planet’s casual hiking boots for urbanites have evolved from the company’s first recycled-material shoe—developed by founder Julie Lewis with input from Bill Bowerman, of Nike fame—to the Pachira, a durable stomper with artificial leather derived from plastic soda bottles, a hemp-and-cotton-blend upper, and a sole made from 40 percent tire rubber. When you’ve worn them down, simply return the boots to Jade Planet and they’ll turn them into stuffing for dog beds. $75; 503-297-2093,
/gt_gui_include
Recyclable Razors
Who knew the green bug could find space in your dopp kit? It will if you use Recycline’s toothbrushes and razors, which are made from 100 percent recycled plastic, chiefly from discarded Stonyfield Farm yogurt cups. When you’re finished with a brush or razor, mail it back to Recycline in the included postage-paid envelope. It’ll be turned into plastic lumber. $7, four razors; $4, toothbrush; 888-354-7296,

Sustainable Socks
Sure, Teko’s line of toe cozies may be knitted for competitive sports, but its earth-friendly fabrics belie a softer edge: nontoxic dyes, Swiss-grown organic cotton, chlorine-free merino wool, and recycled polyester (a process that turns No. 2 plastics into fiber). Wear ’em once and you’ll be soled. $10–$23, depending on fabric; 800-450-5784,

Barrier Chief
Sensitive-skin types can try Jason Natural’s 30+ SPF, a chemical-free sunscreen that uses zinc oxide and titanium dioxide instead of petroleum-based protection. $19; 877-527-6601,

Green Jeans
New York fashion company Rogan has collaborated with U2 frontman Bono and his wife, Ali Hewson, to create Edun (read it backwards), a rock-star-worthy full-fashion collection made in eco-friendly, sweatshop-free factories in Africa and South America. Available at Saks Fifth Avenue, from $163;

Rocky Mountain Maestro

Ski Resorts

Auden Schendler

SKIING’S LEADING EDGE: Auden Schendler and recycables at Aspen

After decades of wiping trees off mountains, plunking down swanky high-rise condos in alpine paradises, and spewing diesel fumes into the air, the ski industry is finally starting to wake up and smell the CO2 . Surprisingly, they’re being led by one of the ritziest players out there: Aspen Skiing Company. In 1997, prompted by growing concerns about climate change, ASC president and CEO Pat O’Donnell, 66, created the resort’s Environmental Affairs Department, the American ski industry’s first. Two years later, Aspen hired superstar enviro Auden Schendler, 34, a former corporate-sustainability researcher at energy-conservation nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, as its environmental-affairs director. Under Schendler’s guidance, ASC (which operates Ajax, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk, and Snowmass) started recycling everything from bottles to building materials, and implemented guidelines that call for all new construction to incorporate improved insulation, sustainably harvested wood, recycled carpeting, and more efficient cooling and heating systems. Aspen now has an on-slope, no-impact microhydroelectric plant, which uses snowmaking runoff to power a turbine, and an employee foundation that in seven years has raised nearly $700,000 for conservation projects. Need more? Ajax’s Cirque chairlift runs on wind power, and 5 percent of Ajax’s energy purchase comes from renewable sources—more than any other ski resort in the country. Even the snowcats and snowmobiles at all four ASC mountains run on biodiesel. Schendler’s efforts have garnered the resort numerous awards—including certification from Switzerland’s International Organization for Standardization, which evaluates operating standards of everything from shoe manufacturers to ski areas. It was the first of its kind awarded to a U.S. ski resort. “In the green-business world, that designation is the Nobel prize of environmental responsibility,” says Schendler. “We’re in the big leagues now.”

The Wheel Deal

Automobiles

Smart Car

Smart Car

Revolutions have a way of mixing things up, as the auto world surely knows. Veggie oil is the new diesel. Green is the new black. What’s a driver to believe? Well, here’s one turn signal you can trust: In 2004, sales of hybrid vehicles, featuring gas-and-electric engines, shot up 80 percent over 2003, to more than 85,000. And hefty haulers like the 2004 Ford Escape—the world’s first hybrid SUV—are selling faster than dealers can say “great gas mileage.” But small is also the new green, especially when it comes to a hyperefficient gas-only import that’s so puny it’ll fit in an SUV. Here’s what’s under the hood in 2005:

Smart Car
This two-seat Euro buggy (pictured above) looks like a Little Tykes Cozy Coupe—and gets a whopping 60 mpg. While DaimlerChrysler, Smart’s corporate parent, weighs whether to make the metallic pod in the U.S. or not, Zap ()—a California-based electric-car-and-scooter manufacturer—has been buying Smart Cars in Europe, floating them across the pond, reengineering them to meet U.S. standards, and selling them for a base price of $19,800. “They’re four feet shorter in length than the Mini Cooper,” says Zap CEO Steve Schneider, “and just as fun.”

Mercury Mariner
To help meet demand, Ford plans to launch this hybrid SUV in late 2005—a year early. A cousin to the Ford Escape, the Mariner will offer up to 33 mpg in a new body surrounding Ford’s 155-horsepower drivetrain, with luxury trim and a smoother ride.

Toyota Highlander
Due to debut in June, the Highlander will be the first seven-passenger, four-wheel-drive hybrid. Its V6 gas engine and 50-watt electric motors (one in front, one in back) create 270 hp and zero-to-60 acceleration in less than eight seconds—while getting 28 mpg.

That’s Eco-tainment!

Hollywood

Before Gary Pearl, executive producer of the 2004 NBC miniseries 10.5, set out to cinematically destroy the environment with a massive earthquake, he wanted to make sure the set didn’t contribute to, um, destroying the environment. To that end, his production company, Pearl Pictures, used only sustainably harvested wood, ditched Styrofoam for reusable dishes, and required workers to refill their water bottles, among other major changes.

By the looks of it, filming on environmentally friendly sets seems to be a growing Hollywood trend. Once known for its apathetic attitude, the industry is now doing everything from printing scripts on recycled paper to leasing hybrid cars. Last fall, the Environmental Media Association (EMA) awarded its first-ever Green Seal Awards, honoring productions that take initiatives such as using nontoxic building materials, clean diesel fuel, and low-emissions transportation. In addition to 10.5, winners included the feature films A Cinderella Story and Garden State and the sitcom According to Jim, which goes so far as to use tablet PCs instead of paper scripts. “In the third season of According to Jim,” says Jeffrey Hodes, an executive producer, “we used nearly 300,000 sheets of paper. We’ve easily cut that in half.”

Still, making a film set green can come with a price. For his 2004 adventure thriller The Day After Tomorrow, director Roland Emmerich shelled out $200,000 of his own money to ensure that the set would live up to his environmental standards. Pearl, who is sticking to his eco-friendly ways with the sequel to 10.5, currently in production, believes the practice will continue. “It’s not hard to do this at all,” he says. “Nobody is going to say, ‘I want to pollute more.’ “

“We’re on a mission to make all of Hollywood green,” says Debbie Levin, president of the EMA, which teams producers with groups like Future Forests that help companies reduce or “neutralize” CO2 emissions and take other environmental steps. Next year, Baldwin Entertainment Group is expected to release a film based on tree squatter Julia Butterfly Hill’s best-selling book The Legacy of Luna, which co-producer Paul Bassis predicts will be shot on “the greenest set ever.” One thing he’s planning on: complete carbon neutrality. Stay tuned.

Switch Stance

Skateboarding

It’s no surprise that skateboarding—which is responsible for the existence of several hundred wooden-ramp-filled skate parks in America and the production of more than 200,000 wooden decks every month—is tough on forests. Enter Bob Burnquist, 28, a Brazilian-born, California-based pro skateboarder who cofounded the Action Sports Environmental Coalition (ASEC) in 2002. The nonprofit uses its street cred to convince board and park builders to choose sustainably grown materials surfaced with eco-friendly composites of water, recycled paper, and cashew oil.


In August 2002, Burnquist raised his effort to the international level with a Greenpeace benefit and skating competition in Manaus, Brazil. (Burnquist, who grew up in São Paulo, is one of Brazil’s top skaters.) The event featured a ramp endorsed by the Bonn, Germany–based Forest Stewardship Council, an international agency that certifies sustainable forestry. This year, ASEC hopes to green up the Gravity Games and NBC’s Action Sports Tour. It also plans to construct 20 new eco-friendly skate parks and adjacent organic gardens in at-risk communities. ASEC executive director Frank Scura says a key to continued success is leveraging its athletes’ grom appeal. With 82 percent of America’s nearly 12 million skaters 17 years old or younger, in an industry generating $5.2 billion annually, that could mean big bucks for the ASEC cause. “Everyone votes every day with their dollars, and we have a lot of influence on the youth,” says Burnquist. “It’s hard to change older people set in their ways, but these kids are going to be the leaders and CEOs of the future.”

Inn Sync

Lodging

Lodging

REST ASSURED: Suite living at El Monte Sagrado

Hotel Triton
San Francisco, CA
From biodegradable cleaning products to office documents printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink, earth-saving attention to detail is high at this downtown boutique hotel. Rooms on the Eco Floor have organic linens and towels, energy-efficient light bulbs, and water-saving fixtures. Or book one of the Celebrity Suites, designed by the likes of Woody Harrelson and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Doubles, $149–$219; 800-800-1299,

El Monte Sagrado Living Resort and Spa
Taos, NM
The designers of this two-year-old high-desert sanctuary seamlessly wove conservation elements into a luxurious environment. As you soak in the private hot tub outside your Morocco-themed suite, you may not notice that it’s chlorine-free, or that the tropical gardens are living on recycled water, or that the wrought-iron tree sculptures actually integrate solar panels. Doubles, $255–$1,095; 800-828-8267,

The Lenox Hotel
Boston, MA
When the first guests at this posh 1900 hotel rolled up in their horse-drawn buggies, saving the planet was not yet in vogue. Now there’s at least one environmental upgrade in place for each year of its existence. Highlights include infrared motion sensors that help cut energy consumption, double-paned windows, and compact fluorescent light bulbs. Doubles from $189; 800-225-7676,

Basic Green

FAQ

FAQ

I have a “friend” who swears it’s better to drive his ’78 Gremlin than to buy new wheels, since manufacturing cars is so toxic. Is he wack?

The next time you pass your pal’s heap, feel free to chuck your mochaccino at it. The increased fuel efficiency and decreased emissions of a new (post-1996) car more than compensate for the energy used to produce all of its steel, aluminum, and rich Corinthian leather. On average, driving a car consumes ten times more energy over its lifetime than building one.



Is there any defense for a lush lawn?

Sorry, Mr. Cleaver, but a typical lawn is the environmental equivalent of fertilized asphalt—or worse, if you use phenoxy herbicides and other weed killers and pesticides, 102 million pounds of which are dumped on 17 million acres of residential turf each year. On average, 30 to 60 percent of city water goes to lawn care, and more than half of it evaporates or pours down storm drains, toxic chemicals and all—polluting creeks, rivers, and water everywhere. The only way to redeem your soul is to use drought-resistant, slow-growing turf varieties, like zoysia grass, which need less H2O. Better yet, try native prairie grasses, wildflowers, or whatever grows naturally in your eco-zone. And, please, forgo the Roundup.


Paper or plastic?

Ah, a question for the ages. The answer? Neither. The real solution is to use that cloth tote bag the Sierra Club sent with your last renewal. Barring that, you should opt for (drumroll, please) plastic—which wins by a narrow, subjective margin. Plastic is more energy-efficient to produce than paper and takes a bit less juice to recycle. Then again, thanks to double-bagging, the average shopper uses more plastic bags than paper, negating plastic’s advantages. So ask yourself this: Would you rather waste oil or trees? Plastic comes from unrenewable petroleum. Paper sacks involve mowing down millions of trees a year—although, theoretically, they’ll grow back by the time your great-grandchildren visit Last Living Trees National Park. Mr. Green votes for the tote.



Do green household cleansers actually do the job?

It’s impossible to vouch for every phosphate-free soy-‘n’-aardvark-saliva product, since consumer eco-cleansers (unlike commercial ones) aren’t subject to standardized tests. But thanks to naturally derived (non-petroleum-based) cleaning agents and nonchlorine bleach, major brands like Seventh Generation and Simple Green are dandy sanitizers. Plus they come in recyclable packaging.



I’m on the fence: What’s better—electric or gas?
Electricity (usually produced from coal or by Homer Simpson) is so inefficient, 80 percent of it is lost to the ether during production, transport, and usage. Gas is 90 percent energy-efficient. So the gas is greener, no matter what side of the fence you’re on.

Revel Without a Pause

Vices

vices

Gorge without guilt on Ithaca Fine Chocolates’ Art Bars (named for the recycled-paper “art cards” inside, featuring works by American artists and children from around the world). They’re processed in an energy-efficient plant in Switzerland, and with every bite you’re helping support Bolivia’s organic-cocoa farmers. 607-257-7954,

Grounds for Change, based near Seattle, uses only organic, shade-grown, and Fair Trade– certified beans, then ships them in recycled-content boxes—letting you be a java snob without promoting pesticides, clear-cutting, paper waste, or low wages for coffee workers. 800-796-6820,

Fort Collins, Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing Company, which puts out the cult Fat Tire brew, employs a full-time sustainability coordinator, recaptures and reuses water, relies on wind power, and turns old keg caps into tabletops. 888-622-4044,

If the roads in Salem, Oregon, smell like French fries, thank Kettle Foods—a snack-food biz whose company cars run on biodiesel made from safflower and sunflower cooking oils. The potato-chip maker uses only solar power and donates nearly 90 tons of potatoes each year to local food banks. 503-364-0399,

Lest you think Ben & Jerry’s has cornered the market, meet Northern California’s Straus Family Creamery, whose organic ice creams are just as tasty and eco-friendly. The dairy is powered by a methane digester that converts cow poop into electricity, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and creating enough energy to keep it mostly off the public power teat. 415-663-5464,

The E-viator

Celebrities

His year kicked off with a Golden Globe for best actor, he’s made nearly 20 films (for which he now rakes in a rumored $20 million a pop), and he’s only 30 years old. Could life get any better for Leonardo DiCaprio? Yeah, he’ll tell you: The world could be a lot cleaner. Few stars push the green message as hard as DiCaprio—and he doesn’t just roll up to the red carpet in a Prius (the only kind of car he owns) to do it.

DiCaprio didn’t always live the life of e‘s. In 1998, a gorgeous beach on Thailand’s Phi Phi Leh Island got bulldozed during the making of his movie The Beach. But that year he also launched an enviro foundation in his name. Its Web site () is a cyber-bullhorn, packed with news and “take action” tips about global warming, biodiversity, and sustainability. He supports groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and Global Green USA. And, along with Global Green and Tree Media Group, he’s also writing and narrating movie shorts about conservation. Leila Corners-Peterson—Tree Media’s president and one of DiCaprio’s co-writers for the films—says the star never lets his green work slip. “Even in the midst of the Golden Globes,” she told ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø, “he e-mailed me and asked me where we were with everything. I think that speaks a lot to who he is.”

Get a Load of This

Appliances

Appliances

From your HDTV monitor to that other reigning rectangle, the fridge, it’s now possible to buy nature-nurturing appliances everywhere. To find great green goods—like those below—look for the Energy Star (), the government-backed energy-efficiency label.

Fisher & Paykel DD603 Dishwasher
F&P knows your dirty secret: You run the dishwasher half empty. No problem. The DD603 (pictured above) uses 57 percent less electricity than standard models and has two independent washing drawers. Half a load uses just 2.4 gallons of water, six less than old-school units. $1,419; 888-936-7872,
/gt_gui_include
Sun Frost RF-16 Refrigerator
The way-cool RF-16 runs up to five times more efficiently than a standard fridge, one of your home’s biggest energy hogs. $2,497; 707-822-9095,

Bosch Nexxt Premium WFMC 6400 Washing Machine
The 6400 uses 76 percent less electricity and 72 percent less H2O than traditional washers—and can save more than 70 gallons of water a week. From $1,199; 800-921-9622,

Panasonic
From a 50-inch HDTV monitor ($3,300) to a progressive-scan DVD/VCR combo ($170), Panasonic, an eco-innovator, sells 400-plus energy-efficient items. 800-211-7262,

Out of the Box

Mobile Homes

Jennifer Siegal

METAL WINNER: Architect Jennifer Siegal puts the fab in prefab.

Living in a heap of metal is suddenly ultrahip, thanks to a new breed of talented prefab designers. Take 39-year-old Jennifer Siegal: The founder and principal of the Venice, California–based Office of Mobile Design (), she builds kinetic, affordable, wheelless homes that tread lightly and travel well—so you can take them with you when you move.

A hot-dog-cart operator while in graduate school, Siegal—whose own home in Los Angeles is part bungalow, part shipping container—admires all things easily disassembled. “Portable structures,” she says, “are dynamic, accessible, and sustainable.” Her Portable House—which starts at $79,000 for 480 square feet—is fully constructed, then trucked to your site. Her modular, endlessly reconfigurable Swell House gets assembled like Legos at your dream spot and features Biofiber (a recycled cabinet composite made from sunflower seeds), finishing material made from recycled newspapers, and “ply-boo” (renewable bamboo) flooring—for $200 per square foot. And if you’re picturing your uncle’s cheap vinyl double-wide—with its propensity to blow across the plains in tornado season—think again. Siegal’s sleek, modern models sit on solid foundations, with optional multistories and annexes. The dwellings in EcoVille, her 40-unit live-work development for artists, in downtown Los Angeles, are 60-by-12-foot boxes, stacked two high. She’s even designed a (not-yet-built) pod of neoprene-skinned, solar-powered, floating Hydra Houses, for a future of rising oceans. Homes, as she sees it, should be more like computer chips and less like immutable castles. “We have our iPods, our cell phones, our laptops. Mobility is integrated seamlessly into our lives, yet our residences are stale,” she says. “If we want to be lighter and more compact, why shouldn’t our buildings be, too?”

The post The Axis of Eco appeared first on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online.

HARDY IF NOT HEFTY, the 125cc, two-stroke, Soviet-era Minsk motorcycle is the vehicle of choice on the intermittently paved roads between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). Put one to the test on this 18-day Easy Rider–m±ð±ð³Ù²õ–The Motorcycle Diaries tour, which parallels the route of the historic 1,500-mile Ho Chi Minh Trail, the covert supply line used by communist forces that ran along the mountainous border of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. A North Vietnamese war veteran, Cuong, will be your guide, offering his unique perspective on historic landmarks like the birthplace of the trail's namesake revolutionary; the hand-dug underground Cu Chi Tunnels, safe havens for Viet Cong fighters and villagers; the embattled Marine bastion of Khe Sahn; and Buon Me Thuot, site of a major communist victory in 1975. The trip, which is offered March 21–April 7, costs $2,495–$2,895. For more info, contact Myths & Mountains (800-670-6984, ).

motorcycle ho chi minh trail

Ìý

The post Vietnam’s Magical Motorcycle Tour appeared first on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online.

Silver City, New Mexico

Bear Mountain Lodge
Back in the early 1930s, Silver City residents would ride horseback three miles to this hacienda to dance the night away in the Great Room. Today, guests arrive in SUVs and are more low-key, cozying up on leather love seats in front of one of two grand stone fireplaces and perusing field guides and natural history books in the library. Owned by The Nature Conservancy since 1999 and renamed Bear Mountain Lodge, the inn sits at 6,250 feet on 178 acres of southwestern New Mexico high desert. And with nearby Gila National Forest, almost the size of Connecticut, the possibilities for hiking, biking, horseback riding, and birding are seemingly endless.
ROOM & BOARD: The 11 rooms, accented with hand-hewn oak beams, contain beds draped with denim comforters, and handcrafted Mission-style furniture. Amble to the dining room to fuel up with a breakfast tortilla española—a sliced baked potato with sautéed onions and eggs, topped with a red-pepper almond sauce—while a pack of drooling javelinas lurks beyond the eastern porch.
OUT THE BACK DOOR: Take a left out of the driveway, bike 3.5 miles on a dirt road to the Continental Divide Trail in the Gila, and from there you can conceivably ride all the way to Canada. If you prefer skinny tires, follow a leg of the difficult Tour of the Gila—a winding, steep 45 miles from Silver City’s Gough Park to the prehistoric cliff dwellings once occupied by Mogollon Indians.

Bob Marshall Wilderness Range, MT

adventure lodges

Casting into the wilderness surrounding the Bob Marshall Ranch

Seeley Lake, Montana
Bob Marshall Wilderness Ranch
This northwest Montana ranch borrowed its moniker from a famous neighbor: the one- million-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness, which honors the man who created the Wilderness Society. Larger than Rhode Island, “The Bob” is embroidered with blue-ribbon rivers of wild cutthroat and rainbow trout, jam-packed with rugged 7,000-foot mountains, and populated by more than 350 wildlife species, including grizzly bears, wolves, elk, and bighorn sheep.
ROOM & BOARD: Masculine icons—elk trophies, a huge bearskin hanging on the living room wall, and a coatrack made of horseshoes where guests leave their city duds for the week—fill the simple three-story log lodge with four cathedral-windowed bedrooms. Sip a hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps on the deck overlooking the Swan Valley, or elbow up to a polished Douglas fir table for family-style meals of grilled steaks and handpicked-huckleberry pie.
OUT THE BACK DOOR: The best excursion here goes beyond a day trip. For the past 30 years, owners Virgil and Barbara Burns have arranged five- and ten-day deluxe horsepacking trips into The Bob, part of the 2.5-million-acre Flathead National Forest, where you’ll get 360-degree wilderness views that make Albert Bierstadt look like a realist. Even the remotest campsite feels plush, with heated wall tents, padded cots, and homemade fare including roast turkey and sourdough rolls.

Moose Mountain Lodge, NH

Etna, New Hampshire
Moose Mountain Lodge
Though students from neighboring Dartmouth College don’t careen down the meadows of Moose Mountain on rickety wooden skis like they used to, Moose Mountain Lodge—with its corduroy-cushioned sofas, stone fireplaces, and spruce-log beds—still retains the flavor of a 1930s ski cabin. The rope tow has been dismantled, but trails threading through 350 acres of mixed hardwood-and-pine forest are paradise for hikers, mountain bikers, and cross-country skiers. After a daylong excursion, veteran innkeepers Kay and Peter Shumway welcome tuckered guests to their cabin on the hill, where sunsets flood the hundred-mile view of the Upper Connecticut River Valley and Vermont’s Green Mountains beyond.
ROOM & BOARD: The lodge has a comfortable, family feel: Bathrooms are shared, and guests in the 12 rustic rooms sit down to Kay’s robust meals—handmade spinach pasta with straight-from-the-garden pesto sauce, fresh-baked bread, and organic salad greens—at a 22-foot red oak table in the dining room.
OUT THE BACK DOOR: Hop on your road bike for a 25-mile loop along the lush and meandering Connecticut River, north to Lyme and back. Or hike south 6.5 miles along Moose Mountain’s Ridge Trail to rocky overlooks where you might see all the way to 6,288-foot Mount Washington. For water play, drive eight miles down the mountain to the river and rent a canoe or kayak from Dartmouth’s Ledyard Canoe Club.

Retreads with Cred

The North Face Mantel & Reebok Vanta Stripe

From left to right

THE NORTH FACE’s MANTEL combines a climbing shoe with an old-school runner. $70; 800-447-2333,

REEBOK returns to its white-leather roots with the VANTA STRIPE. $80; 800-843-4444,

Hotel de Larache, Chile

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
Explora in Atacama—Hotel de Larache
Wealthy South American businessman Pedro Ibañez built this lodge in 1998, offering guests refined luxury in the middle of the rugged-adventure land the Inca once called home. Set in a 700-mile-long desert amid six soaring volcanoes, the mile-and-a-half-high town of San Pedro de Atacama is close to the driest place on earth—in some parts of the Atacama Desert, it hasn’t rained in more than a century. But there are oases: Guests can take guided excursions to hot springs and boiling geysers, or to the buoyant turquoise waters found at the nearby salt flats.
ROOM & BOARD: The sleek white lines of the hotel blend well with the local adobe architecture. The 50 guest rooms are brightly decorated with yellow, blue, and green wicker furniture, alpaca blankets, and fine linens imported from Spain. Four lap pools and four saunas await you, as does a new relaxation center, Casa del Agua, offering herbal oil massage and herbal baths. In the minimalist dining room, sample French chef Lorenzo Pascualetto’s fire-roasted Patagonian lamb and to-die-for Chilean wines.
OUT THE BACK DOOR: Explora’s bilingual guides offer guests five to seven excursion options per day, including hiking, horseback riding, mountain biking, and visits to archaeological sites. To watch the world’s best sunset, catch a 15-minute ride to Valle de la Luna, then hike an hour and a half through miniature sand mountains. Or if you really want to earn your pisco sour (a favorite Chilean cocktail), top 19,455-foot Volcán Licancábur. Rumor has it, there’s a magical surprise in the crater lake at the summit.

Casa Cerro Sagrado, Mexico

Teotitlán del Valle Oaxaca, Mexico
Casa Cerro Sagrado
Perched on a five-acre hillside above Teotitlán del Valle—a Zapotec Indian village 16 miles east of the city of Oaxaca that’s world-famous for its weavers—this recently opened guest house sits in the striking shadow of conical Guia Betz, a sacred 6,900-foot mountain. The tremendous views from your room’s terrace are especially enjoyable at sunset, with a clay tasting cup of locally produced Del Maguey mescal in hand. If you time it right, you’ll catch one of the village’s frequent fiestas erupting with fireworks.
ROOM & BOARD: Started in 2002 by artist Arnulfo Mendoza and his wife, gallery owner Mary Jane Mendoza, Casa Cerro Sagrado (House on the Sacred Hill) celebrates Oaxacan art, culture, and cuisine in the best possible way—the 12 handsome guest rooms are accented with hand-loomed rugs and rich, intricate wall tapestries. Reyna Mendoza, Arnulfo’s cousin and the resident chef, produces regional specialties like tamales stuffed with wild mushrooms, and teaches cooking classes on-site throughout the year.
OUT THE BACK DOOR: After limbering up in a private hatha yoga class with Mary Jane, head downhill toward the village, link up with ancient cattle paths along El Río Grande, and head either to the top of Guia Betz or southeast 15 miles to 2,600-year-old Zapotec and Mixtec ruins. End the day with a purifying and relaxing herbal steam bath in the property’s adobe temescal (a native sweat lodge).

Rifugio Tissi, Italy

Alleghe, Italy
Rifugio Tissi

Forget sipping overpriced cappuccinos in Venice’s Piazza San Marco. The real dolce vita is watching the sun set on the longest rock face in the Dolomites from the balcony of Rifugio Tissi, about a four-hour hike from the village of Alleghe. As day turns to dusk, 10,712-foot Monte Civetta—known as “the climbers’ university”—glows a rosy hue. With its cut-above-the-usual-hut amenities, Rifugio Tissi is the perfect base camp for both rock climbers and hikers.
ROOM & BOARD: The above-treeline chalet, built in 1963, sleeps 64, with bunks for four to eight guests per room. Head to the bar in the main dining room for a frosty pint of Löwenbräu or a German chocolate bar. Dinner—classic Italian fare like pasta al ragu and polenta with wild mushroom sauce—is served on wooden tables in front of a picture window facing Civetta.
OUT THE BACK DOOR: Moderate three- to six-hour hikes, falling and rising 2,000 feet through lunar landscapes and alpine meadows, lead to the villages of Listolade and Agordo, and to other huts. If hiking seems too sedate, climbing in the backyard of renowned alpinist Reinhold Messner won’t. Scale Civetta’s northwest face—Messner made the first ascent in 1967—or explore routes on nearby 7,667-foot Torre Venezia and 8,064-foot Torre Trieste.

The Kuna Lodge, Panama

Sapibenega, Panama
The Kuna Lodge
From 5,000 feet, the 360-plus islands of Panama’s Archipiélago San Blas glint like diamonds scattered over the deep-blue Caribbean. Operated by the native Kuna Indians, the lodge and 13 bamboo huts dot the perimeter of Sapibenega, a private island no bigger than a soccer field. The Kuna Lodge is a hideaway camp where extranjeros can indulge their castaway fantasies and still have a thatch roof over their heads and three Kuna-inspired meals a day.
ROOM & BOARD: From any vantage point on Sapibenega, there are surreal 360-degree views of more than a dozen neighboring coconut-choked islands. The Kuna huts sleep up to four and, though sandswept and remote, are relatively luxurious, with solar electricity, composting toilets, and showers. In the main lodge, head chef Onesimo prepares grilled lobster, crab, and tulemasi, a coconut-broth soup with local fish and plantains, and lets the local rum, known as inna in the Kuna language, flow freely.
OUT THE BACK DOOR: From the lodge’s beach, catch a cayuco (a motorized dugout) to nearby uninhabited islands or to snorkeler-friendly coral reefs teeming with aquarium fish—and even toothier specimens, such as great barracuda and dolphin fish. Or head to the mainland for a guided trek to the 15-foot-high Diwar Dumad waterfall and a swim in its freshwater lagoon.

Spring House Farm, NC

Marion, North Carolina
The Cottages at Spring House Farm
When Arthur and Zee Anne Campbell and their 13-year-old son, Cailein, restored the historic Albertus Ledbetter House and built cottages nearby in 1999, their top priority was to preserve the 180-year-old pre–Civil War farmhouse and the 92 acres of surrounding hardwood forest. The five secluded guest cottages share the quiet solitude of these hemlock woods with only the resident turkeys and deer. Explore the mountainous hiking trails of western North Carolina, borrow a canoe and paddle two ponds, and end with a soak in a private hot tub, studying the starry night sky.
ROOM & BOARD: Each of the two-person cottages has a wood-burning fireplace, hot tub, private deck, queen- or king-size bed with a down comforter, gas grill, and kitchen stocked with eggs, bread, jams, and other necessities for a country breakfast. For dinner, cook from your own stash or buy what the lodge keeps in stock, including chicken, pork chops, pizza, baked potatoes, and salad fixings. Flying Bridge cottage has a four-person hot tub overlooking the trout pond. The best cottage for wildlife watching is the Bimini Twist, totally surrounded by forest.
OUT THE BACK DOOR: Hit the farm’s five-mile trail system, kept a comfortable temperature by the canopy overhead, or drive 20 minutes southeast to the 1,000-plus acres of Chimney Rock Park and hike the Skyline-Cliff Trail to the top of 404-foot Hickory Nut Falls, a mile and a half round-trip. If you want to paddle something bigger than the farm’s ponds, go to Lake Lure, near the park, and rent a kayak, canoe, or paddleboat.

Ultima Thule Lodge, AK

Chitina, Alaska
Ultima Thule Lodge
The moment the bush plane brushes the gravel runway at Ultima Thule Lodge, you are officially 100 miles from nowhere. Bounded to the north by the salmon-thick Chitina River and backed by the turquoise glaciers of the Wrangell Mountains, which top out at 16,000 feet, the family-run lodge is all-inclusive in a uniquely Alaskan way. At your disposal: planes, whitewater rafts, kayaks, hearty meals, warm beds, and the 13 million acres of Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve that surround the lodge.
ROOM & BOARD: The dozen log cabins and lodge, furnished with downy beds and glass-front wood stoves, are clustered along the riverbank. Paths lead to a bathhouse with a wood-fired wet sauna and the dining hall, where a 20-foot pine table showcases steaming plates of local salmon, organic greens harvested from the garden, and microbrews flown in from Anchorage.
OUT THE BACK DOOR: With Alaskan summer days as long as 20 hours, an Ultima Thule “day” trip could mean an expedition to 16,390-foot Mount Blackburn, a walk along the iceberg-calving Gulf of Alaska, or a dogsled ride across the glaciers that embellish the national park—all with the assistance of the lodge’s guides and experienced bush pilot.

The post Top 10 Hideaways appeared first on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online.

To zero in on the most idyllic resorts this side of paradise, we dispatched a crack squad of writers to the Caribbean. They came back with a hit list of places where creature comforts and adventure are not mutually exclusive. Now it’s your turn.

By Katie Arnold

By Janine Sieja

By Randy Wayne White

By Hampton Sides

By Bonnie Tsui

By Grant Davis

By Sally Schumaier

By Mike Grudowski

By Karen Karbo

By Lisa Anne Auerbach

PLUS:
Swimming in Mosquito Bay, sailing the Grenadines, climbing 10,000-foot Pico Duarte, and five other don’t-miss dream outings.

Laluna

A minimalist’s idea of maximum bliss

Caribbean Resort, Grenada

Caribe, anyone? Laluna’s mod seaside lounge overlooking Portici Bay.

ON OUR THIRD MORNING IN GRENADA, we roasted the Chicken. Then we did what any sensible traveler in the Caribbean would do: We beelined it back to Laluna, a sublime refuge tucked into a hidden bay on the island’s southwest coast, and made straight for the sea. We were ridiculously filthy, splattered with mud from a three-hour mountain-bike ride with Chicken—a wiry, calf-strong Grenadian guide who’s such a fanatic cyclist, he’d already pedaled 25 miles before breakfast. (No wonder we beat him up the hills.) Salty but clean, we retired to the private plunge pool on our cottage’s wide wooden deck, taking in the uninterrupted view of Portici Bay. Time to debate the next move: Grab a book and sprawl across the teak settee on the veranda, wander down to the open-air lounge for a cold Caribe and a game of backgammon, loll poolside on a chaise, or have a massage? There’s only one house rule at this tiny, tony anti-resort: Make yourself at home. After three days, we felt so at home, we thought we were home—that is, if home were a stylish, thatch-roofed cabana notched into a hillside above an empty crescent of Caribbean beach. In our dreams.

The Good Life // Designed in 2001 by Gabriella Giuntoli, the Italian architect for Giorgio Armani’s villa on an island off Sicily, Laluna has a pared-down, natural aesthetic: Indonesian teak-chic meets spare Italian elegance. All 16 one- and two-bedroom concrete cottages—painted in cheerful shades of pumpkin, lapis, teal, and plum—are well-appointed but unfussy: Balinese four-poster beds draped with sheer muslin panels, earth-colored floors covered with sea-grass rugs, open-air bathrooms with mod metal fixtures. The same soothing mix of wood, cane, cotton, and thatch prevails in the resort’s beachfront courtyard. On one end is the breezy restaurant, where Italian chef Benedetto La Fiura cooks up Carib-Continental dishes like callaloo soup (an island specialty made from dasheen, a tuber with spinachlike leaves, and nutmeg) and mushroom risotto. On the other is the open-air lounge, with a fully stocked bar and comfy Indonesian daybeds with plump throw pillows, and low tables that double as footrests. Between the two is pure R&R: a sleek square pool with a perfect curve of beach beyond.

Jaw Dropper // Swinging the cottage’s mahogany-and-glass doors wide open at night and being lulled to sleep by the wind in the bougainvillea and the gentle rolling of waves below.

Sports on-Site // There’s no set agenda at Laluna, but there’s plenty to do. Guests with sailing experience can take out one of two Hobie Cats, as well as single and double sea kayaks, for the easy cruise to Morne Rouge Bay, the next cove over. There’s a small stash of snorkeling equipment available (keep an eye out for yellow-and-black-striped sergeant majors near the rocky points at either end of the beach) and Specialized mountain bikes for tooling around.

Beyond the Sand // Fight the urge to cocoon at Laluna and head inland and upward to Grand Étang Forest Reserve, a 3,800-acre tract of rainforest at 2,350 feet, along the island’s jungly spine. We spent a day in the charming company of 64-year-old Telfor Bedeau, known to all as the father of Grenada hiking. He led us on a four-hour ramble around Lake Grand ƒtang, a rogue crater left over from the island’s volcanic past, and along an overgrown tunnel of a trail to a series of five waterfalls (popularly, if erroneously, dubbed the Seven Sisters) and up a hidden path to a bonus cascade called Honeymoon Falls (half-day hikes, $20 per person; 473-442-6200). At A&E Tours, Chicken guides half-day, full-day, and multi-day mountain-bike rides along the coast or through the reserve (our three-hour pedal from the harbor capital of St. George’s over the serpentine, near-vertical Grenville Vale Road cost $25 per person, including bike rental; 473-435-1444, ).

The Fine Print // American Eagle (800-433-7300; ) flies the two and a half hours to Grenada daily from San Juan, Puerto Rico (round-trip from Chicago, about $785); Air Jamaica (800-523-5585; ) flies nonstop from New York’s JFK four days a week (about $400). From December 20 to April 13, rates at Laluna (473-439-0001, ) start at $530 per night, double occupancy, including water activities and bikes (the price drops to $290 in summer). A modified meal plan (breakfast and dinner) is $65 per person per day. Henry’s Safari Tours can take care of your on-island transportation and guiding needs (473-444-5313, ).

The Hermitage

Frangipani breezes, volcano view

THE SOUNDTRACK TO NEVIS, a volcanic bit of emerald-green pointing skyward in the West Indies, lacks a badass steel-drum reggae riff. Nevis, blessedly, is not that Caribbean. Its rhythms require closer attention: nocturnal, chirping bell frogs and murmuring trade winds that rustle the coconut palms and spread the sweetness of frangipani across 50 square miles of overgrown hills and dignified former sugarcane plantations. The most charming of these mansions, the Hermitage, is perched 800 feet above sea level on the southern flanks of dormant-for-now 3,232-foot Nevis Peak. The 15 gingerbread cottages and 340-year-old British colonial lodge are embellished with pastel-shuttered windows and four-poster canopy beds. Despite this dollhouse decor, you won’t feel embarrassed to take your lunch of grilled-flying-fish salad on the veranda after a muddy five-hour hike up the volcano. Just hose yourself off in the front yard first. The Good Life // Amiable American transplants Richard and Maureen Lupinacci bought the Hermitage 33 years ago. Its Great House, reputed to be the oldest wooden building in the Caribbean, is where guests dine by candlelight or sidle over to the bar for rum punch at cocktail hour. (The free-flowing mixture of dark Cavalier rum, syrup, lemon juice, and a dash of cinnamon is part of why the refined Hermitage vibe never crosses over into stuffiness.) Most of the cottages are restored originals—whitewashed, light-filled retreats furnished with regional antiques. All have hammock-equipped balconies for horizontal views of Nevis Peak and the white clouds that usually shroud its summit. The three-acre grounds are dotted with citrus, mango, and cashew trees, and have two pools and a tennis court.

Jaw Dropper // Roam trails crisscrossing the Gingerland District on one of the lodge’s 16 thoroughbreds, or charge up Saddle Hill to an old lookout used by British admiral Horatio Nelson in the 1780s.

Sports on-Site // Explore the terraced gardens of lilies, ginger, and hibiscus or take the ten-minute shuttle to four-mile Pinney’s Beach, the loveliest of Nevis’s sandy stretches. Just a quarter-mile from the inn is the trailhead for the mile-long climb to the summit of Nevis Peak (contact Top to Bottom; $35 per person; 869-469-9080).

Beyond the Sand // A wild donkey—an odd trail obstacle—brayed his displeasure as I pedaled the sea-grape-lined singletrack of Tower Hill. Windsurf ‘n’ Mountain Bike Nevis (869-469-9682, , ) offers half-day rides from $40, including use of a Trek front-suspension bike. At Oualie Beach, on the island’s northwestern coast, let marine biologist Barbara Whitman introduce you to four-eyed butterfly fish, goat fish, flame coral, and pink sea anemones. Under the Sea (869-469-1291, ) charges $40 for a three-hour snorkel, including gear.

The Fine Print // American Airlines (800-433-7300, ) is the only major U.S. carrier serving Nevis. The daily flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, takes an hour and 15 minutes (round-trip airfare from New York City costs about $725; from Denver, about $980). From December 15 to April 15, rates at the Hermitage (800-682-4025, ) start at $325 for a double, including a full breakfast (low-season rates from $170).

Anse Chastanet

This is jungle luxe

Caribbean Resort, St. Lucia

Petit Piton looms as Anse Chastanet’s yacht heads out for a day at sea.

Caribbean Resort, St. Lucia

Walls optional: a hillside villa at Anse Chastanet

MY FIRST DAWN on St. Lucia, a big teardrop of an island wedged between Martinique and St. Vincent in the Lesser Antilles, was disappointing. I’d flown in on the dark of the moon and arrived at Anse Chastanet, a 600-acre resort perched on the rugged southwestern shore, too late to see anything but a macrodome of stars. The next morning, I awoke to warblers singing in the cedars and the scent of begonia shifting in the trade wind. My villa-size room, I realized, barely had walls. Wait, it gets worse. Below was a bay so clear, the coral shimmered like a field of wildflowers. Twin peaks spired out of the forest. The rockier one, 2,461-foot Petit Piton, was unavoidably phallic. Gros Piton, at 2,619 feet, was more rounded and feminine. I looked from the Pitons to the beach, then at my empty bed. What a blunder! Here I was in the most achingly romantic setting in all my years … and I was alone.

The Good Life // I didn’t feel weepy for long. The resort has a five-star list of activities to match the cuisine (spiced-carrot-and-coconut soup, grilled dorado, mango trifle), an attentive 250-person staff (serving no more than 100 guests), and pleasantly esoteric options at the Kai Belté spa. (Try a wosh cho hot-stone massage.) Trou au Diable, a thatch-roofed bistro, sits on a half-mile of secluded beach, while the Piton Restaurant is set among the 49 villas up the hill. My Hillside Deluxe room, with its louvered doors and green heartwood furniture, was like a tree house built by Swiss castaways. Very rich Swiss castaways. But considering the absence of phones or TVs, they didn’t seem to mind being stranded on St. Lucia.

Jaw Dropper // Tucking into a plate of locally raised lamb and fresh snapper cooked under the stars by chef Jon Bentham on an antique cane-sugar pot the size of a kettledrum.

Sports on-Site // Anse Chastanet is famous for spectacular diving; there’s a Platinum/PADI Scuba and Water Sports Center, and boats ferry you out to several world-class dive sites along the Pinnacles reef. But I chose to explore a lesser-known offering: 12 miles of mountain-bike trails winding through the ruins of a 19th-century French sugarcane-and-cocoa plantation next door. Full disclosure: I expected crappy equipment but a fun ride. What I got was a first-class trail system partially designed by NORBA phenom Tinker Juarez and my choice of 50 Cannondale F800s, all fitted with hydraulic shocks and brakes. The ride, over rolling jungle paths, was excellent—I broke a sweat but still had time to stop and pick wild avocados, bananas, and guavas.

Beyond the Sand // Ever bagged a Piton? Me neither. The climbs are notoriously steep and muddy, but if you’re game, the front desk recommends a guide named Meneau Herman ($50 a person for the day). For the rest of us, there are ample opportunities to explore St. Lucia via horse or sea kayak. On my last day, I hit the water with Xavier Vernantius, the head kayak guide. Born on St. Lucia, Xavier, 33, knew all the secret caves to explore. As we paddled around a rocky outcropping called Fairyland, the view of the Pitons in the distance left me speechless. “I grew up here, and I still find them beautiful,” Xavier said.

The Fine Print // US Airways (800-622-1015, ) flies to St. Lucia from New York City for about $700, from Chicago for $760. From December 20 to April 7, a double at Anse Chastanet (758-459-7000, ) costs $455 per night, including breakfast and dinner ($220 per night in the off-season, not including meals). The spa and scuba diving are extra.

Tiamo Resorts

Check your Blackberry at the door and get way, way offline

THE MOST IMPRESSIVE thing about Tiamo is how unimpressive it is. Even as my sea taxi pulled up to the unassuming scallop of beach on the southern half of Andros, I still couldn’t see the resort that was right in front of me. Once ashore, I had to wade through thickets of sea grapes and gumbo-limbo trees to find the central lodge—an unpretentious wooden structure with screened porches and a corrugated metal roof. Was this the place? The sleepy Brazilian jazz seeping out the front door said yes. Hacked out of the Bahamian bush and opened in 2001 by Mike and Petagay Hartman, Tiamo is a fascinating—and so far successful—experiment to test whether assiduous eco-consciousness can coexist with rustic luxury. The ethos here is part Gilligan’s Island, part Buckminster Fuller. With only 11 open-air bungalows, powered by the sun and outfitted with compost toilets, everything is small-scale, low-impact, phosphate-free, and relentlessly off the grid. Accessible only by boat or seaplane, the resort sits on 12 acres of pristine beach along an inland waterway, surrounded by 125 acres of preserved wilderness. There are no air conditioners, no TVs, none of the whirs and bleeps of the digital age. Nope, at Tiamo, messages are delivered strictly by iguanagram. The Good Life // By day, watch a heron or one of the resident iguanas trundle by your screened porch. At night, the hemp curtains billow in the breeze. The bright-green-and-yellow louvered shutters, exposed copper pipes, and bare-metal faucet levers are sleekly utilitarian. My solar-heated beach-rock shower looked out on a mighty specimen of local cactus known as—I kid you not—the Bahamian dildo. The lodge has the same casual vibe. Browse for dog-eared paperbacks and board games in the library; dine on sesame seared tuna and mahi-mahi with mango beurre blanc at the large communal table; or simply fritter the evening away at the rattan bar, clutching a mind-warming Petagay Punch as a local “rake-and-scrape” band sings you back to bed.




Jaw Dropper // A spectacular network of “blue holes” riddle the limestone bedrock all over southern Andros. Kayak out to the Crack, a fabulously deep gash in the seafloor where two temperature zones collide in a thermocline, and snorkel or dive the nutrient-rich broth alongside hosts of wrasse, lobster, sea cucumbers, and freakishly large angelfish.

Sports on-Site // Tiamo is not a destination for hyperactive folks who expect a brisk regimen of “activities.” Basically, Mike shows up at breakfast and says, “What do you want to do today?” Choose between swimming, bonefishing, kayaking, snorkeling, scuba diving, bushwhacking, or my new favorite sport, extreme hammocking. Hikes (led by Shona Paterson, the on-staff marine biologist) are free, as are snorkel trips to the blue holes. There’s a modest fleet of trimarans and sea kayaks at the ready. But the most elaborate activity is … horseshoes. Somehow, that says it all.

Beyond the Sand // Andros boasts some of the finest bonefishing in the world, and Mike can easily hook you up with a guide ($350 per boat for a full day; each boat holds two anglers). Ask for Captain Jolly Boy, a corpulent former bar owner turned Baptist preacher who stalks “the gray ghost” with all the biblical fervor of Ahab. “I feel you, Mr. Bones!” Jolly Boy whispers as he poles the flats. For divers, the Andros Barrier Reef, one of the world’s largest contiguous reefs, lies less than a mile offshore; its sheer wall, home to thousands of species of fish, drops nearly 6,000 feet into the Tongue of the Ocean. Scuba excursions motor out daily, but you must be PADI-certified ($100 for a one-tank dive, $145 for two tanks).

The Fine Print // Delta (800-241-4141, ) and American Airlines (800-433-7300, ) fly to Nassau from L.A. and New York for $600 or less. From there, make the 20-minute hop with Western Air (242-377-2222, ) to Andros; flights are about $100 round-trip. The bungalows at Tiamo (242-357-2489, ) cost $275 per person, double occupancy ($360 per person, single occupancy) year-round; rates include everything but your bar tab, bonefishing, and scuba diving. The resort is closed August 1 through September 30.

Punta Caracol Acqua Lodge

The lullaby of lapping waves

Caribbean Resort, Isla Colon, Panama

The H20 cure: cabanas on stilts at Punta Caracol

TRANQUILO IS THE OPERATIVE WORD at Punta Caracol, located just off the serenely beautiful island of Isla Colón, an hour’s flight by puddle jumper from Panama City and a 15-minute boat ride from the small town of Bocas del Toro. Sheltered by the surrounding archipelago and, about three miles away, mainland Panama, the resort’s six two-story thatch-roofed cabanas are suspended over the water on wooden stilts, spiraling out from a long central walkway to face Almirante Bay. Each solar-powered duplex has its own private terrace and deck, and the sound of lapping water lulls you to sleep. This vision of calm luxury perched at the edge of the world is just what founder and Barcelona native José-Luís Bordas had in mind when he designed Punta Caracol in 1997 as his final project for business school. At dusk on my first evening, I’d already showered and dressed for dinner, yet I couldn’t help heeding the call of bath-temperature, cerulean water. In record time, I changed back into my swimsuit and threw myself—with a war whoop—off the back deck. It’s the kind of place where glittering-green tropical fish jump up to meet you in rapid-fire succession and bioluminescent plankton are the only lights shimmering offshore after sunset. Every detail of the resort, from hand-woven hanging textiles to fresh papaya and pineapple-covered panqueques at breakfast, is well executed by Bordas’s competent local staff. At the end of my four-day idyll, I could tell him honestly, “Es mi idea del paraíso, también.” The Good Life // Each bungalow has native-hardwood floors and French doors that open to the bay, as well as wooden lounge chairs and woven floor mats. Bathrooms are lined with clay tiles with a lime-green-and-plátano-yellow trim—brightly Caribbean without being gaudy. Upstairs, the open-air bedroom has a canopied king-size bed with natural-cotton drapes that double as mosquito nets, but you won’t need them; the cool breezes off the water at night are enough to blow pesky insects away. As for eats, you won’t find fresher seafood: The open-air restaurant-cum-lounge—also on stilts over the water— gets regular deliveries from local fishermen cruising by with just-caught lobster and red snapper, weighed with a portable scale brought out from behind the bar. A must-have: grilled lobster with tomatoes stuffed with rice, fish, and vegetables. (Chase it down with a warm, sweet pineapple slice glazed with caramelized sugar.)

Jaw Dropper // While you’re dining alfresco on flame-grilled shrimp, you can watch dolphins, pelicans, and parrot fish trolling for dinner on the reef below.

Sports on-Site // Swim, snorkel, or paddle in clear, calm Caribbean water along a mile of coral-reef coastline; there’s no beach at Punta Caracol, but your cabana’s private dock is just as enticing. It’s an easy paddle inland, via cayuco (traditional wooden canoe), to Isla Colón’s mangrove swamps—home to howler and white-face monkeys and the unbelievably slow-moving two-toed sloth, or oso perezoso (“lazy bear”).

Beyond the Sand // Pilar Bordas, the miracle-working sister of José-Luís, can arrange outdoor activities on demand: surfing at Bluff Beach, on the far side of Isla Colón; mountain-biking across the center of the island; scuba-diving with queen angelfish near San Cr’stobal Island, four miles away (two-tank dives with Starfleet Scuba, $50; 011-507-757-9630, ). Hire a guide for the 40-minute boat ride to Bastimentos Island National Marine Park, where you can hike through sugarcane to Red Frog Beach ($30 per person).

The Fine Print // American Airlines (800-433-7300, ) flies direct from Miami to Panama City for about $300 round-trip. From there, Aeroperlas (011-507-315-7500, ) has two flights daily to Bocas del Toro for $116 round-trip. The Centers for Disease Control recommends a yellow-fever vaccination and the antimalarial drug chloroquine for travel to the Bocos del Toro region. Double-occupancy rates at Punta Caracol in high season (December 16 to May 15) start at $265, including breakfast, dinner, airport transfers, and use of cayucos and snorkel equipment (from $215, off-season; 011-507-612-1088, ).

Bitter End Yacht Club

Fat sails in the sunset

Caribbean Resort, Virgin Gorda, BVI

Even type A’s need some downtime: the Bitter End

Caribbean Resort, Virgin Gorda, BVI

The North Pier deck at Virgin Gorda’s Bitter End Yacht Club

THE BITTER END, ON THE REMOTE NORTHEASTERN TIP of Virgin Gorda, is a sprawling community of people with one thing on their minds: boating. In addition to the club’s 78 rooms, freshwater swimming pool, and teakwood Clubhouse restaurant, there’s a marina with charter-boat service, a dive shop, a market, a pub, and 70 boat moorings. All the action takes place offshore, specifically in the protected waters of three-square-mile North Sound, with the club’s flotilla of 100-plus vessels, ranging from sea kayaks and windsurfers to Hobie Cats and 30-foot oceangoing yachts. This is no mellow-rum-drinks-on-your-private-beach kind of resort: It’s a playground for Type A’s in topsiders.

The Good Life // The best rooms are the 48 cottages set on a steep hillside, with wraparound decks and views of Eustacia Reef (30 air-conditioned suites climb the sunset side of the hill). Meals (think surf-and-turf) are served under the blue canopies of the Clubhouse.

Jaw Dropper // The staff at the BEYC remembers everyone. It had been two years since my last visit, yet when I walked to breakfast, watersports staffers greeted me by my first name.

Sports on-Site // Thanks to warm water and 15- to 20-knot winds, North Sound is the perfect place to hone your tacks and jibes. Private sailing lessons for beginners cost $25 per hour, and advanced sailing sessions run $50 per class. Use of all the small boats is included in your stay, as are snorkeling trips to nearby reefs. Two-tank dives cost $85, all equipment except wetsuit included, and deep-sea fishing for blue marlin runs $275 a day.

Beyond the Sand // The 30-minute hike to the top of 1,359-foot Gorda Peak offers a commanding view of the entire Virgin Islands region. Don’t miss a trip to the famous Baths, a jumbled collection of giant boulders and knee-deep tide pools.

The Fine Print // Round-trip airfare on American Airlines (800-433-7300, ) from New York to Tortola’s Beef Island Airport is $525. From January 5 to April 30, the five-night Admiral’s Package at the BEYC ($2,925 to $3,850; 800-872-2392, ) includes three meals a day for two (low season, $2,150 to $2,625). The annual Pro-Am Regatta ($2,940) takes place the first week of November.

Maroma Resort & Spa

A mystical hideaway on the Mayan Riviera

Caribbean Resort, Yucatan, Mexico

Your palapa or mine? Get a massage or just toll in the sun on Playa Maroma.

EVER SINCE ARCHITECT José Luis Moreno followed a machete-beaten path through 200 acres of tropical jungle, in 1976, to build this exclusive beachfront resort, Maroma has been deliberately hard to find—tucked off an unmarked gravel road, 20 miles south of Cancún. On my first evening, I followed the flickering lights of a thousand candles along a maze of stone walkways, wandering through gardens of orchids and palm trees until I found myself on a narrow crescent of fine white sand: a heavenly border between jungle and sea.

The Good Life // Designed simply, the 64 rooms in ten low-lying, white-stucco buildings are an elegant mix of saltillo tile, handwoven rugs and bedspreads, mahogany beams, and bamboo shutters. Dine on fresh grilled snapper at the cavernous El Sol restaurant or on the beach-view terrace. Jaw Dropper // The world’s second-longest barrier reef, which runs 450 miles from Cancún to Honduras and teems with coral and fish, is just 200 yards offshore.

Sports on-Site // At the beach kiosk, set up snorkeling and reef-diving trips, sea-kayaking excursions, and day sailing on a 27-foot catamaran ($15 to $120 per person). On land, mountain-bike through 250 acres of protected jungle. Spa offerings include a two-hour Maya steam bath and cleansing ceremony ($90), yoga classes, and nine types of massage ($50 to $120).

Beyond the Sand // The Yucatán is cratered with more than 700 cenotes—limestone sinkholes that offer otherworldly snorkeling, diving, and rappelling opportunities. The resort can arrange a trip 40 miles south to Dos Ojos cenote for $90.

The Fine Print // Continental Airlines (800-523-3273, ) flies from Houston to Cancún for $400 round-trip; American Airlines (800-433-7300, ) flies nonstop from New York for about $700. Double-occupancy rates at Maroma (866-454-9351, ) start at $400 in high season (November 14 to December 18 and January 4 to May 15) and $340 in low season.

Caneel Bay

The true-blue classic

WITHOUT A DOUBT, ST. JOHN’S alluring natural charms get star billing at Caneel Bay. Frigate birds, as angular as pterodactyls, soar over no fewer than seven stunningly pristine on-site strands, from vest-pocket hideaways like Paradise Beach, which you can have all to yourself, to Caneel Beach, shaded by coconut palms and sea grapes and sprawled out in front of the resort’s main lobby. Some 170 manicured acres are cordoned off from the rest of the island—and the rest of the world, it seems—by a trio of 800-foot-high forested ridges. Philanthropist and conservationist Laurance Rockefeller founded Caneel Bay in the fifties, and the place still feels like a summer camp for blue bloods. There’s no shortage of diversions—day trips to the British Virgins, guided shoreline hikes, couples yoga at the resort’s Self Centre. But most of the clientele seem to be seeking stillness and seclusion rather than pampering. Rooms contain no phones, TVs, radios, or even alarm clocks. Management, for its part, tries mightily to preserve an old-money sense of decorum: Collars for gents, please, even on the tennis courts, and evening resort wear for ladies. Expect to see plenty of newlyweds, espadrille-shod martini sippers, and the occasional jackass: Wild donkeys sometimes roam past just in time for cocktails.

The Good Life // Architecture keeps a low profile here. Low-slung rows of 166 guest rooms—done up in dark wood, Indonesian wicker, and botanical prints—are scattered around the property in clusters of a dozen or so and linked by winding footpaths. As a rule, the food in the four dining rooms is tasty if not particularly innovative; standouts include the steaks, aged and tender, the breakfast buffet served on an open-air terrace overlooking Caneel Beach, and the 265-bottle wine list at the Turtle Bay Estate House.

Jaw Dropper // Request one of 20 rooms along Scott Beach. After you’ve spent hours snorkeling with hubcap-size hawksbill turtles, your private deck offers a front-row seat for virtuoso sunsets that give way to the lights of St. Thomas, four miles across the sound.

Sports on-Site // Aside from the 11 tennis courts, built into a terraced hillside, a compact fitness center, and a small pool near the courts, most action takes place on the coral formations a hundred yards from the waterline. Use of snorkel gear—plus a generous selection of sailboards, kayaks, and small sailboats—is complimentary.

Beyond the Sand // Two-thirds of St. John’s 20 square miles fall within Virgin Islands National Park. Sample them by renting a jeep (from $65 a day at Sun-n-Sand Car Rentals, available at Caneel Bay from 9 to 10 a.m. daily) and heading for the Reef Bay Trail, at 2.4 miles the longest of the park’s 20 hikes. Other options include half- and full-day sails to some of St. John’s excellent anchorages, and sea-kayak excursions to offshore cays ($60 to $70 per person through Caneel Bay).

The Fine Print // Most major U.S. airlines fly direct to St. Thomas from various East Coast cities (about $550 round-trip from New York); Caneel Bay guests go by ferry to the resort. From December 17 to March 15, rates at Caneel Bay (340-776-6111, ) start at $450, double occupancy ($300 in low season).

Turtle Inn

The Godfather’s eco-resort

I SIT AT THE DESK OF TURTLE INN’S VILLA ONE, staring through wooden shutters at the Caribbean, hoping for some Maya magic. Turtle Inn is owned by Francis Ford Coppola, and he was here, on the southern coast of Belize, working at this very desk, only a few weeks ago. I’m a huge fan of Mr. Francis (as he’s called by the people who work here). I love the Godfather trilogy, but what I really love is Villa One’s outdoor garden shower, designed by the auteur himself, surrounded by a high wall built by Maya stonemasons and illuminated with Balinese lanterns. I also love the Italian-for-the-tropics cuisine—white pizza topped with garlic and arugula grown from Sicilian seeds in Turtle Inn’s garden, soup made from local lobster—served in the snazzy open-air restaurant. A few nights at the inn, I thought, and maybe I’d absorb some of the creative mojo.

The Good Life // The 18 bungalows, all steps from the beach, are built in the style of traditional Balinese thatched huts, with large screened decks, ample living spaces, and ornate carved doors imported from Bali. The lovely Belizean wait staff (one soft-spoken boy responds to requests with “Don’t worry; I gotcha”) wear white linen shirts and sarongs. Marie Sharp’s Belizean Heat Habanero Pepper Sauce is on every table, the perfect addition to the spaghetti carbonara. All proof that here at the Turtle Inn, the weird fusion of Balinese- Belizean-Coppola culture actually works. Jaw Dropper // The inn is located near the end of Placencia Peninsula—a 16-mile noodle of land with the Placencia Lagoon on one side and the sea on the other. At the Turtle Inn dive shop, on the lagoon, an American crocodile named Jeff has taken up residency near the boat dock. He’s not housebroken, but he’ll pose for pictures.

Sports on-Site // The thatch-roofed bar is about 20 yards from every bungalow, on the ocean’s edge, which allows for a pleasant daily routine: Snorkel a bit, collapse on your chaise, order Turtle Juice (a house specialty made with coconut rum), kayak a mile or so up to Rum Point and back, collapse on your chaise, snorkel, Turtle Juice, rinse, repeat. Some of Belize’s finest beaches—narrow, sandy, palm-fringed—grace the peninsula. When you feel in need of an outing, beach-cruiser bikes are available for riding into the tiny Creole village of Placencia, a mile down the road. Or, from the inn’s dive shop, head out to Belize’s barrier reef—prime location for diving or saltwater fly-fishing. The rub is that it’s an hourlong speedboat ride on sometimes choppy waters. But once out there, it’s not unusual to see spotted rays or even nurse sharks cruising along a 2,000-foot wall, or for anglers to hook bonefish, tarpon, or snook.

Beyond the Sand // Turtle Inn is a great base for venturing into the jungle. The front desk can arrange day trips to Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary (the world’s first jaguar reserve) and a number of large Maya ruins. Monkey River is 45 minutes to the south by boat, through mangrove estuaries that are home to manatees. While cruising upriver, you’ll encounter tiger herons, gargantuan butterflies, six-foot iguanas, and howler monkeys.

The Fine Print // American Airlines (800-433-7300, ) flies to Belize City for about $500 round-trip from both Miami and Dallas. From there, it’s a 35-minute flight on Maya Island Air ($140 round-trip; 800-225-6732, ) to the Placencia airstrip. From January 4 to April 30 (excluding the week of Easter), seafront cottages at Turtle Inn (800-746-3743, ) are $300 per night, double occupancy, including Continental breakfast and use of bikes and sea kayaks (from $200 per night in low season).

Jake’s

How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?

Caribbean Resort, Jamaica

You can almost see the Pelican Bar from here: a cottage at Jake’s

“IF WE DON’T ENCOURAGE GUESTS to leave the property, they wouldn’t,” says owner Jason Henzell. He ought to know. Ten years ago, Henzell, 34, and his mother, Sally, opened a small restaurant on six acres overlooking Calabash Bay and named it after a local parrot. A small guest house followed, and each year, as the Henzells’ gospel of sophisticated laziness spreads beyond the fishing village of Treasure Beach (pop. 600), on Jamaica’s southwestern shore, more rooms are added. Which only makes it easier to give in to inertia. Lounging under the acacia trees next to the tiled saltwater pool, a pair of still-pale English thirty-somethings allow that they’ve been devouring books from the well-stocked library for four days. They reel with shock when my boyfriend and I start naming off the places we’ve been (Great Pedro Bluff! Black River fruit market!) and the things we’ve seen (dolphins! crocodiles!) and eaten (grilled conch! jerk crab!) in just two days. Soon, they wobble off on mountain bikes, determined to find out what they’ve been missing.

The Good Life // From modest wooden cabins with funky mosaic bathtubs to bright adobe bungalows topped with open-air rooftop chill zones, the 15 cottages at Jake’s are a mélange of Moroccan style and iconoclastic tiling—all sans TVs or phones but avec CD players. (The bar has a stellar music collection for your listening pleasure.) Lucky us, our pink palace came with a wooden porch overlooking the surf and an outdoor shower with claw-foot tub, plus swanky Aveda potions. There are two chow houses: Jake’s, the poolside bistro, where the coffee’s delivered fresh daily by a woman who roasts it over a wood fire; and Jack Sprat’s, a beachfront joint where Fabulous (yep, that’s his name) serves up jerk crab and coconut ice cream, and a DJ spins dance-hall reggae into the wee hours.

Jaw Dropper // A pilgrimage to Shirley Genus’s wooden zareba—basically a hut with a sauna—is required. Strip down next to a steaming terra-cotta pot filled with a healing soup of organically grown lemongrass and other herbs, then sweat like the dickens. Afterward, let Shirley hit all the pressure points ($30 for steam bath, $60 for massage; book through Jake’s).

Sports on-Site // Sea-kayak or snorkel through the rocky maze that hugs the beach. (Kayaks are free; snorkel gear can be rented at the bar for $10 a day.) Or hire a local to take you out fishing for snapper, jack, kingfish, and grouper; trips can be arranged at the front desk ($35 an hour per person).

Beyond the Sand // One day, on our way to ogle crocodiles along the Black River, 16 miles northwest, our boat chugged past the Pelican Bar, a tiny shack on a lick of sand. Our captain shouted out a lunch order to Floyd, the owner, and on the way back we parked, waded ashore, and dug into $6 plates of steamed fish, grilled onions, doughy white bread, and bottles of Red Stripe ($35 per person for Black River boat tours; book through Jake’s).

The Fine Print // Air Jamaica (800-523-5585; ) flies round-trip to Montego Bay from New York for about $600, from L.A. for $800. From December 19 to April 20, a double-occupancy room at Jake’s (877-526-2428, ) costs $95 to $395, meals not included ($75 to $325 in low season).

The Essential Eight

Had enough paradise? Add some intensity to your Caribbean life list.

Kayak the Exuma Cays Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, in the Bahamas, spans 176 square miles of reeftop emerald water that laps the marine caves and white-sand beaches of hundreds of undeveloped limestone islands. Shallow, calm seas are perfect for paddling, snorkeling, and swimming. Do all three on a nine-day trip with Ecosummer Expeditions. ($1,695; 800-465-8884, )

Climb Pico Duarte More travelers each year are tackling the Caribbean’s tallest peak. At 10,414 feet, the rocky summit of Pico Duarte rises up from the tropical lowlands of Armando Bermudez National Park, along the Dominican Republic’s Cordillera Central. Iguana Mama runs a three-day, 29-mile mule trek to the top. ($450; 800-849-4720, )

Hike to Boiling Lake Deep in the heart of Dominica, hot magma warms the rocks and pushes volcanic gas through vents to keep one of the world’s largest boiling lakes at an eerie, gray simmer. Getting there requires a muddy three-hour rainforest slog on seldom-signed paths. Reserve a guide through Ken’s Hinterland ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Tours. ($40; 767-448-4850, ) Swim in Mosquito Bay Every night, a bright concentration of bioluminescent organisms lights up Mosquito Bay, on the south side of Vieques, just east of Puerto Rico. Paddle 15 minutes from shore with Blue Caribe Kayaks, then jump overboard for a glow-in-the-dark swim. ($23; 787-741-2522, )

Sail the Grenadines The unspoiled Grenadines—30 small islands, 24 of them uninhabited, from St. Vincent to Union Island—have long been favorite waters of the yachting elite. Now you can sail them without chartering an entire boat: Reserve one of five cabins aboard Setanta Travel’s 56-foot luxury catamarans for a seven-day cruise. ($3,990 per week per cabin, double occupancy; 784-528-6022, )

Dive the Bloody Bay Wall Just off Little Cayman’s north shore, the seafloor takes a half-mile-deep plunge along Bloody Bay Wall, where you’re sure to spy huge eagle rays and hawksbill turtles. Paradise Divers offers two-tank boat dives. ($80; 877-322-9626, )

Kitesurf Aruba Plan a pilgrimage to Aruba’s arid eastern shore, where 80-degree water and consistent winds make Boca Grandi the ultimate surf zone for seasoned kiters. Vela’s Dare2Fly offers a three-day introductory course in calmer waters ($350; 800-223-5443, ).

Fish the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve In the protected white-sand flats on the south side of 90-square-mile Ascensi—n Bay, in the Yucatán, bonefish run wild. Sign on for a week of guided fishing, eating, and lodging at the funky, thatched cabanas of Cuzan Bonefish Flats. ($1,999 per person, double occupancy; 011-52-983-83-403-58, )

The post License to Chill appeared first on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online.

Bellota, Arizona
The best adventure lodges are those where you show up a stranger and leave as family. So it is at Bellota Ranch, a homey, horsey oasis in the wild chaparral country above Tucson, where the small staff (ranch manager, wrangler, and a cook) takes the saying “make yourself comfortable” to pleasing extremes.

Room & Board: Surrounded by 60,000 acres of working cattle land and wedged between the Santa Catalina and Rincon mountains, Bellota manages to be sprawling and intimate. The 1930s hacienda, plastered in white stucco, surrounds a sunny courtyard. The eight guest rooms have cozy ranch touches like brick floors, patchwork quilts, Mexican-tiled bathrooms, and kiva fireplaces. Guests and staff eat together in the country kitchen, and no one ever goes hungry with stick-to-your-ribs cowboy fare like buffalo burgers; between meals, you’re urged to graze from the bottomless jar of chocolate-chip cookies.

Out the Back Door: With its surefooted quarter horses and vast Coronado National Forest acreage, Bellota has a stellar riding program. Kean Brown, the laconic, perpetually sunburned wrangler, leads morning and afternoon range rides. Once you’ve demonstrated that you can control your horse, you’re free to find your own way into the creosote- and sage-studded hills. There’s a handful of mountain bikes for spinning out your horse legs along miles of empty roads, and the 790-mile-long Arizona Trail traverses the property, but—in laid-back Bellota fashion—the only mandatory post-ride activity is soaking in the outdoor hot tub.

India

SAGA ECO CAMP
Chilika Lake, India
Established in 2002, the Saga Eco Camp is still so new that even most locals don’t know where it is. That’s what happens when you build your tiny beach resort among a handful of fishing families on a tropical island in India’s largest lagoon—425-square-mile Chilika Lake, tucked beneath the 1,500-foot Eastern Ghats hills of Orissa and draining into the Bay of Bengal.

Room & Board: Lodging matches the Robinson Crusoe vibe, as guests stay in 11 spacious and breezy wall tents (with finished floors and flush toilets) that sleep four, scattered among palms and cashew trees. In an open-air, thatch-roofed dining hall, chef Raju serves up fresh seafood dishes, including crab masala and local prawns, as well as island-grown organic veggies. Purists may complain about the diesel generator, which runs for three hours each evening, but hey, it keeps the beer cold.

Out the Back Door: Take a motorboat 20 minutes to the mainland town of Barakul and rent a sea kayak from Orissa Tourism’s Water Sports Complex ($5 an hour) to explore Nalaban Island, a bird sanctuary. Paddle alongside rare Irrawaddy dolphins while keeping an eye out for Siberian cranes. Or head for the narrow spit of land that divides the lagoon from the ocean, park your kayak, then hike a half-mile through the jungle, until you arrive at an empty white-sand beach that stretches a dozen miles in both directions. What next? Bodysurf endless breakers, then lie in the sand and play dead.

Tennessee

CHARIT CREEK LODGE
Jamestown, Tennessee
A true wilderness retreat takes pride in what it doesn’t have. At Charit Creek Lodge, there’s no electricity (kerosene lanterns are everywhere), no phones (the only thing ringing at mealtime is the dinner bell), and most notably, no traffic (access is by foot, bike, or horseback).

Room & Board: This cluster of two log cabins and a rustic main lodge is set in a gorge at the convergence of two creeks and is surrounded by the 125,000-acre Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. Each of the buildings began as part of a 19th- or early 20th-century homestead. In the main lodge, built around an 1819 hunting cabin, two dorm-style rooms sleep up to 12 each in double-size bunks. The cabins, which also sleep 12 each, have screened porches with rockers and share a separate bath house. Classic country meals—baked beef with gravy, chicken and dumplings, biscuits and grits for breakfast—are served family style.

Out the Back Door: Charit Creek Hiking Trail, the most direct of four hiking paths to the lodge, is a 0.8-mile descent that takes you from a Fork Ridge Road parking lot to the base of a bluff, past a waterfall (in wet weather), and across a wooden bridge. Once you’re at the lodge, the day-hike opportunities include 130 miles of trails lined with mountain laurel and wildflowers. Hike four miles to access 80 miles of the Big South Fork River for fly-fishing. (Bring your own gear; the catch is bass and trout.) Or tackle the river’s Class III-IV whitewater on a full-day raft trip through the 11-mile Gorge section with Sheltowee Trace Outfitters.

Tanzania

LAKE MANYARA TREE LODGE
Lake Manyara, Tanzania
By the time you arrive at Tanzania’s Lake Manyara Tree Lodge, in Lake Manyara National Park, jostling in a truck for two hours after the 40-minute flight west from Arusha, you’re likely to have encountered elephants, Cape buffalo, and the legendary climbing lions that ascend umbrella acacias to escape rapacious tsetse flies. So when lodge manager Frances Majambele announces visitor rule number one—”No one walks alone after dark without an askari,” an armed guard—you’ll pay attention. Hyenas frequent camp almost every night, and elephants, leopards, and lions are common—but then again, that’s why you’re here.

Room & Board: Ten cottages on stilts sit at eye level with resident giraffes, safely above the toothy riffraff. Cradled in the boughs of old-growth mahogany trees, these very private wood-and-thatch cottages—each with a canopied bed and bleached hardwood furnishings—have private treetop showers with views of the lake, the tropical forest, and the 1,500-foot cliffs of the Great Rift Valley escarpment. Hit the viewing deck for the lodge specialty, a frozen gin and tonic, before sampling exotic dishes like wildebeest marinated in local red wine and plantains baked in a tandoor.

Out the Back Door: Both at dawn and in late afternoon, guests jump into an open-top Toyota Land Cruiser and head for the acacia woodlands and Maji Moto Hot Springs on 125-square-mile Lake Manyara’s western shore. You’re on the lookout for elephants, leopards, lions, and buffalo, but the show-stealers are the immense flocks of flamingos that paint the water and sky pink.

California

BOONVILLE HOTEL
Boonville, California
Drive two hours north of San Francisco, past Napa and Sonoma, and you’ll encounter Boonville, a former logging town in the Anderson Valley founded in the 1850s. The region’s rolling hills and redwood forests blend with orchards and vineyards, home to a mix of country folk and well-heeled sophisticates. Funky Boonville, a town of less than a thousand, and the instantly likable Boonville Hotel are decidedly low-key counterpoints to the stuffier wine country down south.

Room & Board: Once a roadhouse, the 139-year-old, two-story, salmon-colored hotel still beckons passersby with its spacious verandas, wooden rockers, and inviting hammocks. Everything about this place exudes comfort, from the ten rooms (including a studio and a bungalow) with downy duvets and Shaker-style furnishings to the homespun restaurant serving local pinot noir and rib-eye steak with polenta. Alongside the airy dining room and bar, the yard overflows with roses, sunflowers, and a cook’s garden of berries, herbs, and rhubarb.

Out the Back Door: Grab a kayak and a guide in the coastal town of Elk, 16 miles away, and follow a five-mile out-and-back route: Paddle beneath Wharf Rock arch, heading north past coves, caves, and a bird and seal rookery, and riding open-ocean swells on the way back to Greenwood State Beach. Closer to Boonville, hike two miles through virgin redwood groves in Hendy Woods State Park and swim in the Navarro River where it flows beneath a white wooden bridge just outside the park.

Malta

COMINO HOTEL AND BUNGALOWS
Comino Island, Malta
The minute you step off the ferry from the northwestern edge of Malta and onto Comino Island, you’ll feel that shipwrecked sense of isolation. This craggy, two-square-mile member of the Maltese archipelago might be home to four farmers and a lodge, the Comino Hotel and Bungalows, but the sea reigns here. A swirl of turquoise and sapphire Mediterranean wraps around the island, luring you back offshore to explore the coastline’s hidden caves.

Room & Board: The 95-room limestone hotel features an expansive terrace, a seaside pool, and two small sandy beaches. The 45 bungalows, each with a balcony overlooking the sea and some large enough to sleep five people, are perched atop an adjacent bay just beyond the hotel, with their own pool and restaurant. The menu changes daily and includes fish—like baked acciola (a Mediterranean version of amberjack) and the steak-like grilled dentici—as well as Maltese rabbit stew.

Out the Back Door: Scuba-dive in the underwater caves of Santa Maria Bay or check out the coral reef off Cominotto, an even smaller neighboring island, with certified instructors from the hotel’s PADI Dive Center. Sea-kayak less than a mile to Rabbit’s Nest, a protected bay with 100-foot limestone cliffs; a secret staircase set into the cliffs takes you to a 17th-century watchtower constructed by the Knights of St. John to monitor seafaring invaders.

U.S. Virgin Islands

MOUNT VICTORY CAMP
St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
Brand-new Mount Victory Camp presents guests with a pleasant Caribbean quandary: what to do first? Just beyond your tent flap are the mountains and valleys of St. Croix’s wild northwest corner, crisscrossed with hiking and biking trails and garnished with mango trees. A 20-minute walk away is a sugary white-sand beach, with a coral reef a few flipper kicks offshore and calypso beach bars for post-swim.

Room & Board: Co-owner Bruce Wilson, a transplanted New Englander who’s lived on the island for 40 years, has turned this onetime Danish estate into a 15-acre back-to-the-earth outpost, complete with chickens, horses, and 300 fruit trees. The three platform tents and two bungalows are positioned for ocean and hillside views and built of hurricane-felled teak and mahogany. Each has a kitchenette, and guests share a central pavilion for lounging and a bathhouse with hot running water. Swigs of Mount Victory’s infamous Mama Juana herbal rum tonic, purported to improve health, come with the deal.

Out the Back Door: Hop aboard the 42-foot glass-bottom Renegade, run by Big Beard’s ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Tours (340-773-4482, ), for a sailing excursion to Buck Island Reef National Monument, where you’ll snorkel through underwater grottoes. Or kayak the craggy north shore with Virgin Kayak Tours (340-778-0071) launching in the very bay where Christopher Columbus moored his ships more than 500 years ago.

Utah

BOULDER MOUNTAIN LODGE
Boulder, Utah
If public lands were appraised like prime real estate, you wouldn’t find a swankier address than Boulder Mountain Lodge’s. It neighbors the vast 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument, and Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Zion national parks are practically down the street, with Glen Canyon and Lake Powell as nearby attractions. You won’t encounter an adventure base camp that better hews to the rule of location, location, location.

Room & Board: Frolic in the ocher-and-ecru desert like a Monkey Wrench Gangster by day and retire to sweet comforts like sleigh beds topped with hefty down comforters in the 20 guest rooms by night. The lodge’s three wood-and-stucco metal-roofed buildings adjoin a bird sanctuary in a grassy oasis along Utah 12, the most remote thoroughfare in the continental United States. (The town of Boulder, population 180, was still receiving mail by mule train in 1941, the last spot in America to do so.) Mealtimes are savored at the lodge’s Zagat-endorsed Hell’s Backbone Grill, with clever offerings like Southwestern-French chocolate-chile cream pots for dessert.

Out the Back Door: Hike to Calf Creek Falls, a 126-foot waterfall that blasts into a perfect swimming hole (the trailhead for the five-mile round-trip is a 20-minute drive from the lodge). The cliff-hugging trail follows a clear stream full of brook trout and passes Fremont Indian pictographs wallpapered onto red sandstone. Road riders, however, will prefer the vigorous climb up the eastern shoulder of 11,124-foot Boulder Mountain or the 31-mile paved portion of the Burr Trail, a rolling, mind-bending route leading south from the lodge’s doorstep to Capitol Reef National Park.

Ontario

Killarney Lodge

Cabin Fever: Grab your paddle and go!

KILLARNEY LODGE
Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario
Killarney Lodge sits beside the Lake of Two Rivers on the quiet southern edge of Algonquin Provincial Park, prime timber-wolf territory. You’re more likely to see a moose than to spot a single tail hair from the elusive carnivore. But if you’re struck with the impulse, you wouldn’t be the first guest to paddle out onto the lake and bay at the moon.

Room & Board: Prime spots to idle include the vicinity of the woodstove in the guest lounge of the lodge, which was built in 1985 of dark-stained logs and trimmed in red to mimic the surrounding 1930s cabins spread around a 12-acre peninsula that juts out into the three-mile-long lake. The 30 pine-paneled cabins each have one or two bedrooms with lakefront decks and a private bathroom. The lodge’s menu changes every day, but you can always count on a fish option—like the pan-fried pickerel, an Ontario staple—at dinner.

Out the Back Door: Each cabin comes with a 15-foot Kevlar canoe, which you can paddle two-thirds of a mile across the Lake of Two Rivers and portage a thousand yards to the seldom-paddled Provoking Lake, accessible only on foot. Serious paddlers with plenty of training can attempt a one-day circuit that covers 25 of the park’s 930 miles of canoe routes. There are also two mountain-bike trails near the lodge, an easy six-miler and a more technical 16-mile ride.

Top 10 Hideaways

Tu Tu’ Tun Lodge, OR

Gold Beach, Oregon
Tu Tu’ Tun Lodge
The Tu Tu’ Tun Lodge (pronounced too-TOOT-in) borrows its name from the Tututui, a band of Indians on the Lower Rogue whose name means “people by the water.” It’s a fitting title for this elegant Rogue River hideaway, seven miles inland from southern Oregon’s craggy coast on a grassy knoll just above the river.
ROOM & BOARD: Each evening, a school bell summons guests to gather around the giant river-rock fireplace in the main lodge and nibble on hors d’oeuvres such as shrimp kebabs and home-smoked salmon and cheeses. What follows is a four-course, apple-and-mesquite-grilled feast—including chinook salmon and bread baskets brimming with hot lemon-cranberry popovers—prepared by longtime chef Margaret Pohl. The 16 guest rooms and two suites come with river views and beds piled with pillows.
OUT THE BACK DOOR: The Rogue River, famous for its fly-fishing, sees consistent runs of Chinook and steelhead salmon. Local guides take guests upriver to the Wild and Scenic section that’s accessible by permit only. You can also borrow one of the lodge’s six sea kayaks to paddle the river among otters and beavers, or explore the rugged, mostly undeveloped coastline that stretches about 20 miles in either direction from the town of Gold Beach.

Argentina

CABAÑAS ANDINA
San Martín de los Andes, Argentina
Cabañas Andina sits in the heavily forested mountains above the hip Patagonia ski town of San Martín de los Andes, in the lake country—and piscine paradise—800 miles southwest of Buenos Aires. A skilled angler with a little luck could cast from his bed and hook a brown trout in the Quilquihue River, which flows just yards from the cabins and dining hall.

Room & Board: Guests stay in one of 17 simple, roomy log cabins set among groves of cypress and beech overlooking Lake Lolog. The stylish red-brick main lodge provides plenty of lounging space, and the kitchen cranks out an elaborate offering of smoked venison, lamb barbecue, and a free-flowing array of Argentine wines.

Out the Back Door: Once you’ve fished the home waters of Lake Lolog from the lodge’s boat and waded into the Quilquihue, your guide will take you on day trips to fish the nearby Malleo and Chimehuin rivers, famous for trout. Or go trekking in neighboring Parque Nacional Lanín, which encompasses the spine of the towering 12,000-foot Andes along Argentina’s border with Chile. Day hikes in the park around Lake Huechulafquen will take you past 150-foot-tall monkey puzzle trees and lead to lookouts from the shoulder of Volcán Lanín, a 12,389-foot, snow-capped cone that dominates the Andean skyline.

The post The Perfect 10: ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Lodges We Love appeared first on ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online.