by jwooldridge@MiamiHerald.com
XTAPAN DE LA SAL, Mexico — I’ve been oiled, salted, kneaded, toned, perfumed, prodded in the intimate reaches of my metatarsal pressure points. My thighs have jounced and bounced; my Third Eye and First Chakra have been pried apart.
In this land of exquisite torture, I’ve even been denied chocolate. And I’m feeling pretty great about it all.
For a child of Depression Era parents — Calvinists to boot — the idea of tossing hundreds of dollars on a day at a spa is an all-too-fleeting extravagance that never seemed worth it. Springing for the occasional massage at the end of a particularly wretched week was pricy enough.
But when my Miamian-turned-New Yorker friend, Phyllis Stoller, suggested meeting at a spa in Mexico, I plunked down the credit card. Between a dying parent, fast-paced workplace, one of those ”zero” birthdays and The Husband’s midnight emergency appendectomy, I needed a break. And the price was oh-so-right: $830 for a four-night package including single room, all meals, workout classes and multiple spa treatments — about the price of a ”day” at a top spa here in Miami.
The added benefit: Girlfriending, that peculiar female ritual in which you never run out of things to say, and what you do say never comes back to haunt you.
Read the rest of this great article
Eleanor Meecham cycled alone around South America, and lived to tell the tale. And what a tale it is. Camping in a salt desert, getting altitude sickness, rough roads… this is definately an intrepid tale.
The book is Llamas and Empanadas, published by Penguin books.
Reviewed here
