Portillo Is on Every Serious Skier’s Bucket List, but This Resort in the Middle of the Chilean Andes Is More Like Sleepaway Camp for Adults Who Also Love Pisco Sours, Teatime, and Staying Put.
ON A BLUEBIRD day at Portillo, when the sun’s warmth is inescapable and the snow is soft and light underfoot, you look out at Laguna del Inca, a celestial indigo lake reflecting the sharp peaked mountains without a ripple, and you think, This is one of the most gorgeous natural bodies of water I will ever lay my eyes on. Of course, it would be hidden in the middle of the Chilean Andes, requiring a two-hour drive from Santiago up a series of winding switchbacks. But when you’re staring at it from the top of the Lake Run on a grim overcast day, gripping your edges on an impossibly steep face, you think, This lake, which has turned a dark blue I can only describe as genuinely malignant, may be the end of me.
“We pulled out five vicuñas from there yesterday,” says Portillo’s operations manager, Mike Rogan, who offered to take me, my husband, and a few others here, including a Slovenian astrophysicist and a software engineer from San Francisco, despite less-than-stellar snow conditions that day. “Were they alive?” asked someone who had drunk one too many glasses of vino tinto at lunch. “Nope,” Rogan said. “Okay, now we have to take off our skis and very carefully walk across this shale in our boots.” I’ve skied most of my life, on varied backcountry terrain, in blizzards, and in freezing temperatures. But this was a first for me.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 2017-Ausgabe von Condé Nast Traveler.
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Sands of Time - Sculpted by millennia, Chad is a place of ancient geology and epic grandeur. Aminatta Forna finds her place in it all
The 15,000-square-mile Ennedi Massif, in north-eastern Chad, is a plateau the size of Switzerland. Between 350 million and 500 million years ago, this part of the globe was an ocean. Then the ocean disappeared, leaving the sandstone floor exposed. The climate shifted from rain-soaked to arid. Sun, wind, and water sculpted the sandstone into a dramatic, desolate, unearthly landscape of gorges and valleys, inselbergs and stacks, towering tassili and natural arches. In the desert the delicate threads of life become apparent in trails of tiny footprints scattered across the sands: here, the tear-shaped tracks of a lizard; there, the dimpled prints of a gerbil.
Antiques Road Show - After buying a second home, in France, the designer Claire Vivier called up fellow designer Kate Berry to go on the ultimate shopping spree
When Los Angeles-based designer Clare Vivier began decorating the 19th-century house she'd bought in her husband's hometown of Saint-Calais, in France's Loire Valley, she had a particular aesthetic in mind. I love color and patterns but wanted something peaceful, so the intention was to create a dialogue between those two things, she says. She wanted the house to have a blend of contemporary pieces, antiques, and textiles from heritage maisons to create a space that, much like her namesake handbag and fashion label, channeled both California fun and French sophistication. She also knew that she wanted her longtime friend Kate Berry, a designer and creative director, to help her make it happen.
The Slow Road - Rather than rush from Tokyo to Kyoto by train, as most visitors to Japan do, Tom Vanderbilt chose to bike - coasting down country roads, spying snow monkeys, and refueling with hearty bowls of soba
Rather than rush from Tokyo to Kyoto by train, as most visitors to Japan do, Tom Vanderbilt chose to bike - coasting down country roads, spying snow monkeys, and refueling with hearty bowls of soba. At the peak of the day's heat, I pulled into the tiny hamlet of Hirase, in Japan's Gifu Prefecture. I'd just climbed a twisting, waterfall-lined road several thousand feet through Hakusan National Park before descending into the shimmering fantasy landscape of Shirakawa-go, an almost Tolkien-esque village (and UNESCO World Heritage Site) comprising centuries-old farmhouses with peaked thatch roofs.
SHAILENE WOODLEY on FIJI
I was in Suva, the capital of Fiji, making a film, and our crew took over half of the Grand Pacific Hotel.
easy does it
Beyond the bubble of Queenstown, New Zealand's majestic Otago region offers the kinds of adventures you can truly appreciate only by slowing down
gather round
The secret ingredient in Philadelphia's lauded food scene? The empathy of the locals behind it
THE PAST IS PRESENT
Beguilingly complex Istanbul has done a lot of soul-searching in recent years. Lale Arikoglu digs into the city's modern identity - while tracing the roots of her own
Creation Story
Modern-day craftspeople are bringing back traditional Arabian arts in Jeddah's Old Town of Al-Balad
Continental Drift
For her first trip to Africa, aboard an HX Hurtigruten cruise ship, Sarah Greaves Gabbadon confronts her assumptions about what a homeland means
On the Rise
With new hotels, climbing routes, and biking trails, Colorado's low-key, high-elevation Western Slope is ripe for adventure
