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Wellness Three WaysFrom St. Barts to New Zealand to Mexico, we explore three variations on the ultimate spa getaway.

NOV 29, 2012 · PHOTOS BY JEAN PHILIPPE PITER, JIMMY COHRSSEN PHOTOGRAPHY, 2012 HILTON HOTELS AND RESORTS, AJ HACKETT BUNGY NZ, CAPELLA PEDREGAL/ROBERT RECK

The sound of the Auriga spa cascading pools blends with that of the waves from the ocean beyond.

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Wellness Three Ways | Air Canada enRoute

http://enroute.aircanada.com/en/articles/wellness-three-ways/page:2[6/17/2015 1:01:17 PM]

The King of Queenstown

by Philippe Gohier

If everyone were to jump off a cliff, I would too. I know this because I’ve just watched the woman who was sitting next to me at dinner last night take a running leap off a platform and dive headfirst into the void. I’m up next.

We’re in a mid-air shack 400 metres above Queenstown, with 50 Cent thumping from the speakers on either side of me. My weight is scrawled in red marker on the back of my left hand, and a harness is strapped tightly around my shoulders and crotch. This is the Ledge, one of three – yes, three – bungee- jumping stations run by AJ Hackett Bungy in the New Zealand resort town that doubles as a paradise for adrenalin junkies.

The Ledge is one of three bungee jumping stations catering to Queenstown’s population of thrill-seekers and adrenaline junkies.

The city of 17,000 in the South Island’s Otago region is home to a ragtag collection of skiers, snowboarders, mountain bikers, skydivers and many who are all of the above. Not coincidentally, the main commercial strip is a collection of low-rise buildings housing more outdoor gear shops, bars and liquor stores than the local economy should, by rights, be able to sustain. Which isn’t to say Queenstown doesn’t have a more restful side to it. You just have to cross a lake to get there.

From the Queenstown business district, it’s a 10-minute water taxi ride across Lake Wakatipu to the Hilton Queenstown . That’s where I’d taken the unusual step of booking a 90-minute slot at the hotel’s Eforea spa. I

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say unusual because I’m not the kind of guy who goes to spas – the New Age music, the incense, the Zen decor. My idea of personal grooming is limited to showering every day and cutting my hair when it starts to look like I’m wearing a helmet. Enya and seaweed are rarely (read: never) involved.

I’d confessed as much to Tyra Lowman, Hilton Worldwide’s senior director of spa brands. Lowman explained that the treatment I had booked – the Men’s Journey – had been explicitly crafted for people like myself, which is to say people who’ve never thought of exfoliating anything. “This is a no-nonsense experience,” she said, adding that, even though the treatments were conceived for men – hence the name – they’re proving popular on both sides of the aisle. “Even women want to cut out the fluffiness.”

The hotel’s pool area features a Jacuzzi to soothe aching muscles.

I get to my early-morning appointment at Eforea bleary-eyed and jet-lagged. It’s my third day in Queenstown. By now, I’ve discovered that (a), I may be the only person here who hasn’t owned snow pants since grade school; and (b), pub crawls are still a thing. I change into a robe and dutifully fill out the form about my health and grooming habits. (I admit I don’t use a face cleanser or moisturizer, but I lie about using sunscreen. I don’t want to seem like a total oaf.) With smoked oak floors and toffee-coloured wallpaper, the spa’s design touches lend it a distinctly sober atmosphere – not clinical but not pretentious either. After a brief chat with my attendant, Catherine, I follow her down a hallway and into a dimly lit room.

Catherine immediately rolls warm bamboo across my back, shoulders and

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legs. A quarter-century’s worth of hockey injuries, not to mention the rigours of keeping up with a toddler, melt like clocks in a Dalí painting. I’m just barely on this side of consciousness after the scalp massage that follows, hardly noticing when Catherine got around to cleansing and scrubbing my face before applying some sort of moisturizer. When my 90 minutes are up, I stumble as I get to my feet and amble back to the lounge for a light lunch. Lowman isn’t there, but had she been, I’d have told her she was right: The whole thing was remarkably straightforward, with none of the hokiness I’d been fearing.

Three days later, I find myself at the opposite end of the Queenstown experience: after extreme relaxation, outright exhilaration. “Only about 1 percent of people back out once they’ve made it to the platform,” Henry van Asch, the co-founder of AJ Hackett Bungy, told me at the previous night’s dinner. (Incidentally, van Asch is one of the people responsible for convincing me this was a great idea.) Of course, Van Asch’s customers are hardly ordinary; they’re plucked from a basin of highly motivated daredevils and thrill-seekers. Bungee jumpers are naturally at home in Queenstown, where fitting in is a lot like surviving a brush with a bear: You can’t show fear.

My turn has come, and one of the attendants – not the one calling me Frenchy because I’m from Montreal, but the other one – urges me up off the black, synthetic leather couch where I’ve been quietly panicking for the past 10 minutes and clips a bungee cord to my harness. “I’m going to count to three,” he says, as if what follows will be perfectly rational, “and I want you to take a big, headfirst dive off the platform. One, two, three...”

It’d be a stretch to say the massage and the facial played much of a role in getting me off the ledge. But I sure look good in the pictures, if I do say so myself.

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