Saturday - January 10, 1998: Santa Fe, NM
Zen and the Art of Apres-Ski
Our first stop of the day, ended up taking the entire afternoon...but was well worth it. We stopped in at a store known as La Puerta that we'd spotted several days back when passing through Santa Fe on the way to Taos. Brad noticed all the old doors in the lot, the type that he'd been looking for for some time to possibly build a headboard from. (We'd give you a link to their WWW site to show some of their cool stuff, but they don't have one yet as Brad is negotiating perhaps building them one in exchange for what could be some costly purchases there!)

La Puerta means "the door" in Spanish and their specialty is "architectural antiques". That includes all manner of items salvaged from buildings all over the world, with a focus on colonial doors and reclaimed old wood from Mexico, India and Pakistan. The huge studio and the adjanent inventory yard is like walking through a Door Forest, with doors leaning up against each other, row upon row, each beautifully aged mesquite or pine door hiding a more interesting specimen beneath. The owner finds them from all over the world and can then turn them into anything. In his workshop, they were building a beautiful fifteen-foot tall entertainment center for a mansion somewhere, and leaning up against the wall were huge twenty-foot wooden gates from India which were to be the driveway entry to an estate in Brentwood, CA (The new owners at O.J's place?)

We spent a good deal of time communing with the proprietor, who sat down on the spot with us and designed two lovely, very different headboards to our specifications, from an intricately carved Pakistani dowry chest (selected by Desi out on the lot) and a set of doors from a Spanish colonial estate in Mexico (selected from same lot by Brad). We may end up buying one or both as we each need bedroom furniture back at home, but it all could depend on Brad's working out a clever trade. La Puerta's stuff is gorgeous, but it don't come cheap. Then again, neither does Brad.

Last night's sushi dinner was emotional centering then for today's main event: a visit to Santa Fe's Ten Thousand Waves, a Japanese-style spa on the outskirts of town, to indulge in their "body treat" package. In a serene location on top of the hills at the foot of the Santa Fe Ski Basin, Ten Thousand Waves is like dropping into a Buddhist retreat, very calming, with the sound of trickling water from a hidden fountain nearby intermingling with quiet Oriental music. It smells delicious, like pine or cedar, because aromatherapy is just the beginning of a visit there. We began with an hour-long Shiatsu Massage (a must after four days of skiing).

Then we move to the sauna to heat up in preparation for our Herbal Wraps where one lays on a table, wrapped liked a mummy for thirty minutes in a cocoon of warm, steaming linen that has been soaked in various herbs. The steam from the linen opens up the skin's pores, and the herbs extract the toxins and grime that reside there. A refreshingly cool shower follows to close those squeaky clean pores.

Then it's back to the table for a Salt Glow, a truly unusual body treatment that requires absolute trust in the massage therapist. First, the entire body is coated with warm sweet almond oil, and then sprinkled with sea salt. At the moment when you think they just might throw you on the griddle and fry you up for dinner (Brad was making himself hungry and thought how delicious he might taste if cooked), they begin to massage off all of the dead skin cells and any other toxins that might still be hanging around. It's the most complete, satisfying back-scratching you'll ever experience. After another quick shower, the skin is as soft and smooth as a baby's bum, and the body is SOOOOOO relaxed.

We had only enough energy then to wobble off to dinner at Santacafé, for a foodie's dream dinner with lots and lots of red meat. Toxins out, toxins back in...Oh, well.