COVER STORY : What Price Beauty? : Upscale Spas Entice Weary Souls, Bodies
Three thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars can buy a bit of luxury in North County: a three-karat diamond tennis bracelet from Jessop’s, a hot pink jet ski from Encinitas Jet Ski, a silk and wool Bokara from Far Away Oriental Rugs.
It can also buy seven days of pummeling, polishing and pampering at one of three North County fitness spas.
Not your average gym-Jacuzzi-juice bars, mind you, but three of the top-rated spas in the world; where the rich, powerful and famous fine-tune their bodies and balance their psyches, and where many of the guests visit two or three times a year.
What motivates someone to spend up to $12,000 to shape up and stress down? Take a peek.
THE GOLDEN DOOR
Situated on a secluded 177 acres in northern Escondido, the Japanese-style complex is nestled in the shade of hills, orchards and oaks. Guests pass through a gilded portal over a wooden footbridge and enter a world of shoji screens, koi ponds and meditative peace.
Each of the 39 guests is housed in a spacious but almost Spartan room that has a private garden, moon-viewing deck and a closet filled with exercise attire and kimonos. Pools, tennis courts and various pavilions give the feeling of summer camp for the emperor’s children.
The day begins with a sunrise hike up the mountain or a more moderate garden walk, followed by breakfast in bed, served on a flower-bedecked tray. A fan-shaped card sits on the tray, detailing the day’s activities based on the guest’s fitness level.
There are no decisions to be made about what to wear, eat or do here. When you check-in, you can check your brain at the door. Although you won’t need much brain power, you’ll need all you have in brawn.
A typical day includes an hour of tai chi, followed by an hour of Da Vinci exercise (known outside Shangri-La as aerobics) followed by one-on-one weight training, jazz or tap dancing, yoga, and perhaps a game of water volleyball after lunch. To avoid aerobic overload, exercise is interspersed with more relaxing pursuits: facials, herbal wraps, body scrubs, massages, aromatherpay, make-up lessons, manicures and pedicures. Everything for the body-beautiful, short of plastic surgery.
There aren’t many sumo-sized bodies under those kimonos. Most guests are within 10 to 25 pounds of their ideal weight. “We try to discourage the truly obese,” director Judy Bird said. “Or at least encourage them to lose a few pounds before they arrive. We want everyone to feel successful. If someone cannot participate in at least half of the program, they are not going to enjoy that success.”
The daily caloric intake ranges from 900 and 1,300 calories for those who want to lose weight, and more for those who want to maintain and build muscle. While portions may vary, no one seems to covet their neighbor’s food.
“We’re sneaky about adding and subtracting calories,” said Bird. “The chef may vary the amount of dressing on the salads or sauce on the entrees, but each plate is so beautifully arranged, it’s hard to detect the difference.”
Meals are heavy in home-grown vegetables and fruits and light in fat, sugar, sodium and cholesterol. Eighty percent of the produce is grown chemical free on the property, the rest is supplemented by surrounding farms. Chef Tracy Ritter often can be found picking her way through the gardens and orchards, planning meals around fruits and vegetables at their peak.
On a mid-summer day, guests dined on a breakfast of fresh strawberries, an orange-oat-bran muffin and wheat germ. Lunch by the pool consisted of a vegetable roll with seven grains and sesame snow peas. Dinner in the dining room was a salad consisting of four kinds of lettuce with roasted beets, 10-flavor grilled chicken, lemon chive rice and mixed beans. For dessert, an apple-berry terrine.
Low-calorie hors d’oeuvres and fruit juice “cocktails” precede dinner. After dinner are self-improvement sessions on nutrition, mid-life crisis, career change and the like. Then, a dip in the hot tub. A massage sends you to sleep with dreams, perhaps, of Famous Amos or the Colonel.
Who frequents the Golden Door? When general manager Rachel Caldwell began working at the spa 30 years ago, the standard guest was a fiftyish overweight socialite, and often the wife of “somebody.”
Today, she said, the typical female guest is forty-something, slimmer and very up-to-date on health and fitness. “She keeps us on our toes,” said Caldwell. “We have to stay one step ahead of her.” The ‘90s guest is also apt to be an entrepreneur or a professional woman, someone who tries to do it all, balancing family and career.
While women make up the majority of the guests, men also visit the spa. Five weeks out of the year are given over to couples, and eight exclusively to men.
During men’s week, guests become part of what is loosely referred to as the “Billionaire Boy’s Club,” where moguls work off their corporate buns, network with other big-wigs, and give into the pleasures of facials and deep-tissue massage.
“Some of the first-timers are a little hesitant to try the treatments, especially the massages,” said Bird. “But by mid-week, they respond with as much, if not more, enthusiasm as the women.”
“Both sexes come from high-powered, stress-filled jobs and have found that putting everything on hold for a week and being totally taken care of gives them the energy and renewal to face the real world,” said Caldwell. “They tell us a week here makes a big difference in their productivity once they are back on the job.”
Part of the philosophy is to teach guests how to deal with stress and creative problem solving. An almost mystical course on the mind-body connection, called “The Inner Door,” explores meditation, communication, biofeedback and behavioral change.
While such luminaries as Lee Iococa and Ann Getty frequent the spa, Caldwell said surprisingly few locals are aware of its existence. “We purposely keep a low profile,” she said. “Our guests’ privacy is paramount.”
CAL-A-VIE
While the Golden Door resembles ancient Kyoto, Cal-a-Vie in Vista looks like the south of France. Shuttered stucco villas overlook gardens, bubbling brooks and 124 acres of rolling hills ribboned with hiking trails.
Each of the 24 guests--even if accompanied by a spouse--is housed in his or her own villa. “It’s important to have your own space when you’re here,” says Marlene Power, who so-owns the facility with her husband, Bill. “We encourage rest and meditation. We do put the couples in villas next to each other, however, so there’s a lot of tip-toeing around here at night.”
Each one-story villa is different. Some have towers, others have window boxes cascading with color and scent. Interiors also vary, but each is decorated in Country French, with hand-carved furnishings, pastel chintz fabrics and down-filled pillows and comforters. A large oak armoire is stocked with shorts, tops, warm-up clothes, sandals, rain gear and a thick terry robe.
While the 4 1/2-year-old spa offers a program similar to the Golden Door, it seems to attract a slightly younger and perhaps more varied clientele. In addition to entertainers like Lesley Ann Warren, Gary Busey and ballet dancer Alexander Godonuv, it also hosts corporate-types and many in the medical profession.
Bill Power may have something to do with the health-care connection. He has built, owned and operated various medical facilities--including Encinitas Hospital, before it was sold to Scripps.
As a developer of health plans, he’s a strong believer in preventative medicine. “I opened Cal-a-Vie to keep people out of hospitals,” he says. “Stress is the No. 1 health problem in this country, and I believe we have an antidote for it here.”
Minneapolis nurse practitioner Susan Le Roy agrees. A twice-a-year-visitor to Cal-a-Vie, she believes the hefty tab is well worth the investment in her own mental and physical well-being.
“I work with high-risk moms and babies, putting in six- to seven-day workweeks,” she said. “It’s a demanding job where I can get pretty high-strung, but after a week here, I feel like my head is on straight again.”
Early in the week, guests receive a computerized fitness evaluation that measures endurance, flexibility, strength and body fat for a personalized daily schedule. At the end of the week, a sheet is sent home with each guest detailing a realistic dietary and exercise program.
Guests work out about six hours a day, doing everything from water sports to weight training.
Two of the most popular exercises are the step class and aerobic circuit training. During circuit training, guests move from one piece of equipment to the next, changing stations at a whistle blow while accompanied by music. The 12 stations keep heart rates high and the pace interesting.
In the step class, guests step up and down to music on various-sized benches, with or without hand weights.
“It’s a good workout,” said director Kent Maurer. “The men particularly like it since it doesn’t require a lot of fancy footwork.”
But six hours of exercise and a diet devoid of junk can be a shock to the system. “Some guests will feel a bit nauseous the first few days, said Marlene Power. “They’ll moan, ‘I can’t believe I’m paying all this money to feel so bad.’ But once they’re over the hump on the third or fourth day, they feel really good.”
Said Maurer: “It doesn’t take killing yourself. It takes education.”
Cal-a-Vie, likewise, is not a fat farm. “We’re into health, not quick weight loss. Basically, we provide a 1,000- to 1,200-calorie diet. A lot of people come wanting to lose a lot of weight in one week. But you need to look at the long, not the short term.”
Once the rigors of the morning are out of the way, guests indulge in the pleasures of the afternoon: facials, massages, pedicures, and the more exotic treatments of thalassotherapy, hydrotherapy and aromatherapy--European treatments that supposedly “detoxify the body” and “restore balance between the mind, body, and spirit.”
Thalassotherapy is a fancy word for seaweed wrap, where the body is slathered in a paste of seaweed, clay and herbs, wrapped in thermal blankets to bake for 20 minutes, sponged down, wrapped again in Mylar, then showered clean and spread with a cooling gel.
“The seaweed mixture feeds the skin,” says health director Yvonne Nienstadt. “And as the clay dries, it draws out excess water, salts and toxins. It’s like an old-fashioned fever therapy, designed to cleanse the body from inside-out, while the nutrients in the mixture feed the skin.”
Hydrotherapy is another encounter with the deep. One is immersed in a tub of sea water where strategically placed jets “follow the lymphatic pathways of the body.” While your lymphatic pathways are being followed, an attendant massages your head, neck and shoulders to “further stimulate the lymphatic system to rid the body of toxins.”
Cal-a-Vie considers its Body-Glo/Aromatherapy the piece de resistance of treatments. The entire body is scrubbed and polished with cleansing grains and salts that peel away rough, dry and dead skin. Various scented oils, individually prescribed, are then massaged into the body. It seems if you’re listless, jasmine will pick you up. If you’re strung out, lavender will calm your nerves. If you’re an insomniac, essence of apricot will help you sleep like a baby.
“Even the skeptics notice the results,” says Nienstadt. “Aromatic oils have been used medicinally for thousands of years. Europeans have remained more familiar with their benefits than Americans, probably because of our puritanical roots,” she said. “They burned people at the stake for such practices not so long ago.”
LA COSTA
While Cal-a-Vie and the Golden Door are intimate and quietly elegant, La Costa in Carlsbad comes on big, bold and flamboyant. The 25-year-old resort was remodeled three years ago, boasting a California-Mediterranean style. Part of the spa is undergoing a similar transformation, so guests are currently staying in the resort hotel.
The 45,000-square-foot spa building can accommodate 300 women and 200 men in separate programs. The spa is part of the 478-room, 23-tennis-court, two-golf-course, 8-restaurant, 400-acre resort.
Facilities are lavish and varied. The jogging track, a weight room and gym are shared, but men and women have separate gyms, weight rooms, whirlpools, cold plunges, facial salons, massage cubicles, herbal wrap rooms, steam cabinets, milk baths and saunas. Swimsuit-optional pools are lined with nude bodies tanning like there’s no hole in the ozone. Tanning booths take up the slack on cloudy days.
The opulent resort attracts high rollers who fly in for racing season, New Yorkers who are escaping summer humidity and winter cold, and a large segment of the Hollywood crowd who come to see and be seen.
Ivanna Trump, Johnny Carson, Stephanie Powers and Gore Vidal are a few of the celebrities one may spot wrapped in terry togas, ferrying from “stretch and flex” to the sauna.
Pia Zador and her mother, Saturnia Shapani, have been coming to La Costa together for 10 years, though recently Shapani was there on her own. “Pia told me, ‘Mom, you’ve got to get that body to La Costa,’ ” said Shapani. “I’ve been sloshing it up pretty good for the past few months, and that will put it on every time. But I always take it off here.”
Unlike Cal-a-Vie and the Golden Door where the minimum stay is one week, La Costa offers a packages from a “Power Weekend,” to a seven-day “Life Fitness and Longevity Program” that includes a consultation with the medical director, a nutritional analysis, a health lecture series, daily spa admission, follow-up calls throughout the year, as well as unlimited golf and tennis. A seven-day package runs between $3,150 to $3,395, single occupancy.
La Costa fans like the permissive atmosphere that pervades, and the flexibility of the program. Red meat is on the menu, and instead of a highly structured day where every minute and calorie is planned, guests are free to choose just how much they want to exert themselves, and what, where, and when to eat.
“I take the classes I like here, says Carole Fields, a New Yorker/Los Angelino who has been coming to the spa for 24 years. “I’ve been to spas all over the world, but I like La Costa best since there are so many choices offered,” she said. “My husband is here to lose weight, and I’m here to relax. That’s the beauty of this place. We can each do our own thing.”
The Fields usually stay for seven weeks at a time, which is not unusual. Many long-time visitors own or rent homes on the resort and stay up to three months using the facilities on a membership basis.
The calorie count ranges between 800 and 1,200 a day. Meals are served in the spa dining room, a pleasant linen-and-fresh-flowers-spot overlooking the golf course; but one must pass by a lively bar and a calorie-permeated dining room to reach it. Guests also have the option of having their meals delivered to their rooms or to the spa pool.
Guests are issued menus every morning with the calorie count beside each item. Breakfast may consist of an egg-white omelet with mushrooms, or whole wheat pancakes with fresh fruit, usually totaling less than 150 calories. Lunch could be linguini with clam sauce and vanilla custard for desert, totaling 240 calories. Dinner might be shrimp cocktail, followed by leg of lamb, and butterscotch mousse, totaling under 300 calories.
A dietitian consults with each guest daily, taking orders and offering tips for nutritionally balanced meals. A five- to seven-pound weight loss a week is about average, if guests stay on the plan.
But with seven other restaurants and three bars on the premises, temptation lurks. “That’s actually a plus,” claims Dr. Gordon Reynolds, the resident medical director. “La Costa offers enticements that participants are taught to cope with while they’re here and when they leave.”
Where to Tune Up in Splendid Style
THE GOLDEN DOOR
777 Deer Springs Road
Escondido, CA 92025
744-5777
One week minimum stay: $3,750, plus tax, no service charge.
CAL-A-VIE
2249 Somerset Road
Vista, CA 92083
945-2055
One week minimum stay: $3,750, plus tax, no service charge.
LA COSTA HOTEL & SPA
Costa Del Mar Road
Carlsbad, CA 92009
438-9111
Various packages from a “Power Weekend” $440-$520 single occupancy, to the deluxe “Life Fitness & Longevity Program” at $3,150 to $3,395, plus 15% service charge. (Tipping is accepted as well.) Spa services are also offered a la carte to hotel guests.
More spas in North County and beyond:
SPA DEL MAR
The Inn L’Auberge
1540 Camino Del Mar
Del Mar, CA 92104
259-1919
Part of the 1-year-old The Inn L’Auberge in downtown Del Mar. Packages run from a one night “Spa Escape” including three spa meals, one exercise activity, one massage and various beauty treatments for $418, to a six-night “Renaissance Week” (the works) for $1,823.
BADEN-BADEN
HEALTH RESORT
Olympic Resort Hotel
6111 El Camino Real
Carlsbad, CA 92009
438-8330
Spa guests are housed in a separate wing of the hotel, and the spa itself is on a sub-floor level. Spa rates range from a “Half Day Energizer,” which consists of a manicure, pedicure and lunch for $153.77, to a seven-night package, which includes exercise, treatments, and all meals for $1,401.12. A “Deluxe Day of Pampering” is also available without staying at the hotel for $197.87 for women, and $208.37 for men. Or services can be purchased a la carte from an $8 brow tint to a $60 “full body facial.”
MURRIETA HOT SPRINGS
39405 Murrieta Hot Springs Road
Murrieta, CA 92362
714--677-7451
800--458-4393
The spa is actually a small part of this 47-acre, 88-year-old, mineral springs resort. Room rates run from $60 to $95 double occupancy. Services like mud baths and massages can be purchased separately, or a two-night spa package is available consisting of one massage, one mineral bath with body wrap, one morning walk, and two breakfasts for $198.