SAY SPAAAAAH

It probably wasn’t healthy to eat pretzels for dinner and watch prime-time TV in bed at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa. But after a full day of yoga, hiking, swimming, mud baths and massage, it felt good.

At destination spas, you stay for a week with other health seekers, eat spa cuisine and work hard to get fit. But at luxurious resort spas like the three I visited in and around Santa Barbara last month, simply feeling good is the goal--and that may or may not entail self-improvement and physical exertion.

Small wonder, then, that resort and hotel spas such as the swank new Bacara are popping up as fast as bubbles in a hot tub; there are almost twice as many hotel and resort spas today as there were five years ago, according to the International Spa Assn., or ISPA. Classy little hideaways like San Ysidro Ranch, tucked into the nearby village of Montecito, have put exotic treatments and spa cuisine on the menu. And even established golf resorts like the 77-year-old Ojai Valley Inn & Spa, a 30-minute drive southeast of town, have spent millions adding spa facilities.

My friends were envious when I went to Santa Barbara to offer up my body and mind to the spa experience at these three places. I couldn’t persuade them that I wouldn’t have a chance to see much of Santa Barbara or that I was on an investigative mission (and after a massage or two, I stopped believing it myself). Most of all, they wanted to know whether it was worth the price of, say, a new refrigerator to stay one night at these places.

Each man must balance his own checkbook, I say. But if you’re looking for a special getaway, all three of these resorts easily qualify, offering superb service, resplendent surroundings and a virtual pastry case of spa treatments and programs.

Bacara

Bacara, with its three swimming pools and its 220-seat screening room, is the property of New York billionaire Alvin Dworman. The 360-room resort, on the beach just north of Santa Barbara, opened in September, launched by a $7.5-million print advertising campaign starring supermodel Shalom Harlow. “Bacara” (pronounced bah-CAR-ah) is a made-up name that’s meant to evoke the loveliness of the California coast, which is everywhere on display at the resort. Bacara doesn’t have quite the same cachet as the fabled Miramar and Four Seasons Biltmore because it’s actually in Goleta. But the setting--a dramatically pitched valley in the lee of a sea cliff that opens onto a wild stretch of beach--is its secret weapon.

The right to break ground on this stunning 78 acres, one of the few sizable tracts available on the pricey Santa Barbara County coast, was 25 years in the winning and involved the out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit brought against Bacara by environmentalists. Other obstacles included the discovery of Chumash Indian burials on the grounds and natural methane gas seeps that are still being monitored, says John Patton, director of the county’s Planning and Development Department. Bacara’s nearest neighbor is a well-camouflaged oil and gas processing plant, Patton notes, underscoring the site’s environmental fragility.

But as you look down from the top end of the resort near the palatial reception building and arrival court, gas seeps are the last thing that come to mind. From there, you see what resembles a ritzy Spanish Colonial-style condominium complex fanning out around two opulent pools on a terrace above the sea. The resort buildings (about a dozen of which hold guest rooms) have whitewashed walls, terra-cotta roofs, peaked chimneys, gracefully curving staircases and myriad wrought-iron balconies from which you half expect to see Zorro ride by. And though the flowers and shrubs are newly planted, they are plentiful and so well manicured that they put my nails and hair to shame.

After I checked in, a bellman took me in a golf cart to my room on the second floor of Building 11, which overlooked the courtyard. At $450 a night, it was not the most expensive room; rates here crest at $5,000 a night for the Presidential Residence. But it was dreamy, with terra-cotta tile floors, an electric fireplace, wooden shutters, a sliding glass door that opened onto a balcony, and a king-size bed mounded with a white coverlet, blue striped duvet and a half-dozen pillows. In the marble-lined bath were two sinks, a deep tub, separate shower and toilet cubicles, a big basket of towels, handsome white cotton robes with black piping, and a New York touch in the light, natural toiletries from Kiehl’s Pharmacy on Third Avenue in the East Village.

Holing up in such a room is one of my fantasies, but it was time for my $375, 3 1/2-hour spa “Restore” package, intended to cleanse and detoxify: a spa lunch, a 25-minute Crystal Sea Bath, a 50-minute Mineralizing Marine Body Mask and a 50-minute Aromatherapy Massage. All of this took place in the two-story, 42,000-square-foot spa building, which has 41 treatment rooms, two big studios for classes, an exercise center for cardiovascular workouts and weight training, a heated outdoor lap pool and a spa shop selling fetching workout togs and skin unguents from France. At a place where treatments average $150 each, you expect this, as well as the open shelves of plump white towels, multiple-nozzled Swiss showers, steam room, sauna and hot tub in the women’s locker room.

I had the spa lunch on the patio of the Spa Cafe, where only organic food is served and menu selections make it easy to stay on a diet. I had a delicious bowl of clear gazpacho, decorated with jicama and red and yellow baby tomatoes, followed by barely seared slices of tuna. The resort has two other elegant restaurants, but lunch converted me to the cafe. The next morning, I tried its Irish oatmeal bru^lee, topped with a crust of caramelized brown sugar.

That’s what I’ll remember most about my stay, not the treatments, which were professionally done and certainly pampering. But I’ve had a good number of spa treatments, from exotic flower baths in Bali, to an ayurvedic Shirodhara oil rub in India (with warm scented oil dripped in a continual stream on my forehead), to a seaweed wrap on the coast of Brittany in France. So it amused me when a spa attendant told me she was adding lymph-cleansing freeze-dried Brittany seawater, with 104 trace minerals, to my high-tech hydrotherapy tub. The skin doesn’t absorb minerals, says Dr. Mary Hardy, director of Integrative Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A., and there are no authoritative medical studies to prove that the lymph system, itself one of the body’s cleansing mechanisms, can be flushed out in a spa treatment.

Moreover, after rubbing seaweed goo all over me and wrapping me in silver foil during the Mineralizing Mask, no one tucked an electric heating blanket around me the way they did in France. The Aromatherapy Massage was nice, but not the best I’ve had. Of course, massages, the main reason people go to spas, according to the spa association, depend partly on what the subject brings to the table. For people with orthopedic ailments and such stress-related problems as high blood pressure, massages can be beneficial, Hardy says. But there’s no proof that baths, wraps and facials help you stay healthy, except to the extent that they promote a sense of well-being.

So it really is all about feeling good. This must have been what prompted me to have a Maker’s Mark Manhattan in the companionable round bar off the Bacara lobby, then retire to my room, where I switched on the fireplace, ordered a room service dinner and hit the duvet.

At 7 the next morning I took yoga, taught by a young man who showed me the “happy baby” pose (lying on the back, with arms and legs uplifted). Then I walked on the beautiful beach, took a not-too-tough, 30-minute “Ab Solution” class for flattening the tummy and checked out.

If I’d stayed longer, I could have played tennis or golf, gone horseback riding in a lemon grove or pedaled off on a bike.

San Ysidro Ranch

Many of the same choices (although not the exercise classes) are available at San Ysidro Ranch, just east of Santa Barbara. Nevertheless, this place is Bacara’s opposite. It’s an intimate, white clapboard, begonia-festooned compound of 20 cottages (holding 38 variously decorated suites and rooms, most of which have hot tubs), arranged haphazardly over the Montecito foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains. You need only see the nearby gated mansions and the lobby’s vintage black-and-white photo of Jack and Jackie Kennedy honeymooning at the ranch to know that this place is dedicated to protecting guests’ privacy and doing whatever it takes to please them, which includes accepting pets. (Babka the chocolate Lab and Bogey the poodle were there when I arrived.) So, even if the pool is sweet but small, the tennis courts water-stained and the fitness center a shed-size joke, I was thrilled to check in.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and there was a wedding in the central garden, which I didn’t like since I wasn’t invited. But I liked my cottage, which was part of the “Spa Package” for $595 a night (single or double occupancy), including a spa breakfast, massage and tax. Once again, the room wasn’t the best this resort has; rates here top out at $3,750 a night.

Inside my quarters, both the sitting room and bedroom had TVs and real wood-burning fireplaces. The decor was cozy and country-stylish, with lots of lamps, botanical prints, pillows and mirrors, a half-canopied king-size bed and a bathroom as nice as the one at Bacara, if not nicer, thanks to the jetted tub.

Janis Clapoff, managing partner of San Ysidro Ranch (recently purchased by Beanie Baby tycoon Ty Warner, who bought the Four Seasons Biltmore here in May), says a menu of spa treatments (averaging $135 each), performed in guest cottages, was introduced more than a dozen years ago. In the next two years, however, a small spa treatment building and a new workout center will be added.

My spa package massage was delivered late that first afternoon by a freelance masseur who carried his scented oils in a backpack and brought a fold-up table. Even in front of a crackling fire, I found that massages are delicate things, easily disturbed by the hilarity of wedding guests.

I had dinner at the Plow & Angel, the resort pub, which offers some menu entrees from the protein-rich Atkins and Zone diets. I ordered Atkins beef medallions and an off-diet Ketel One vodka martini, because a place like the ranch should know how to make them (and it did). The next morning I wallowed for a while in my fancy sheets, had a room-service egg-white omelet for breakfast, went for a run in the fog, then called my body worker back to give me an Indian Shirodhara treatment. I was surprised to see it on the menu of spa services because it is one of the more esoteric and least portable treatments, best performed in a room lined with tile. He gave me a joyful massage and dripped a little bottle of warm oil on my forehead and through my hair.

It wasn’t as authentic as the Shirodhara I had in New Delhi. But it left my hair amazingly bouncy and, most of all, it felt good.

Ojai Valley Inn & Spa

When I reached the 220-acre, 206-room Ojai Valley Inn & Spa, set on an emerald green PGA golf course rimmed by tall eucalyptus trees and the Topa Topa Mountains, I went straight to the 31,000-square-foot spa. It sits at the base of the hillside over which the resort buildings are scattered and has all the obligatory Spanish Colonial flourishes, including a courtyard, fountain and 50-foot bell tower. Within the whitewashed walls of the complex there’s a little cafe called the Acorn, a salon, a basement exercise room (with such high-tech machines as virtual reality bikes), a wood-lined studio where classes are held, a lap pool and 28 treatment rooms.

The women’s locker room on the first floor, lined with bright hand-painted tile, is the sort of place where you’d happily spend hours alternating between the sauna, steam room, indoor and outdoor hot tubs and a spot on a sun-drenched chaise.

I started with the spa’s signature “Kuyam” ($50, although treatments average $100). It was performed in a special room that looks like something out of a harem, accommodating up to eight people, with narrow blue glass windows, tiled banquettes and an urn of water scented with lemon grass steaming on the central heater. (Inhaling the scented air while meditating is supposed to be therapeutic, though the guided meditation was taped, not live, and that struck me as tacky.) As the temperature in the chamber rose to 108 degrees, an attendant passed a pot of black Hungarian mud to me and two other women, and we slathered it on ourselves. Then we cooked for 30 minutes to promote detoxification and finally cleaned the mud off under Swiss showers. As any child knows, getting muddy is fun, and afterward I felt soft and warm all over.

The more time I spent at the spa--taking yoga, using the machines, swimming laps, getting another massage, eating healthful low-calorie lunches of soup and veggie wraps at the Acorn, and just lolling--the more I came to like it.

Before the spa was added three years ago, the resort was favored by older, mostly male golfers. Now the demographics have changed, says Thad Hyland, the general manager. The resort is attracting women, families, couples and conferences. While one person spends time at the spa, other members of a party can shop in downtown Ojai, play golf, go sightseeing or read by the pool. Moreover, the prices are a little lower than at Bacara and San Ysidro Ranch, particularly if you book a package.

My “Best of Ojai” package cost $335 (single occupancy), including tax, one treatment or activity a day and a “vista” room in a building near the spa, with a balcony that yielded views of passing golf carts. It was spacious, although not as handsomely decorated as the others I stayed in, and the bathroom wasn’t special at all. Nevertheless, by the time I polished off the pretzels, I felt like one happy baby.

GUIDEBOOK

A Soothing Time in Santa Barbara

Getting there: From Los Angeles, it’s a 90-minute drive to Santa Barbara on U.S. 101. You also can fly from LAX on Skywest (United) and American Eagle (American). Restricted round-trip fares begin at $128.

Getting pampered: Bacara Resort & Spa, 8301 Hollister Ave., Goleta, CA 93117; telephone (877) 422-4245 or (805) 968-0100, fax (805) 968-1800, Internet https://www.bacararesort.com. There are 311 guest rooms and 49 suites, priced from $395 to $5,000. The resort has three restaurants and 24-hour room service.

Spa treatments cost $70 to $265, packages $325 to $765. Classes and use of the fitness center are free for resort guests, but locker room facilities cost $25 for hotel guests who haven’t booked a treatment.

San Ysidro Ranch, 900 San Ysidro Lane, Santa Barbara, CA 93108; tel. (800) 368-6788 or (805) 969-5046, fax (805) 565-1995, Internet https://www.sanysidroranch.com. The resort has 38 rooms and suites priced from $375 to $3,750. There are two restaurants.

In-room spa treatments cost $135 to $210 and must be reserved in advance. The spa package includes a superior room (usually $575), a massage, a spa breakfast and tax for $595; it can be booked only for Sundays through Thursdays.

Ojai Valley Inn & Spa, 905 Country Club Road, Ojai, CA 93023; tel. (800) 422-6524 (reservations) or (805) 646-5511, fax (805) 640-0305, Internet https://www.ojairesort.com. Room rates range from $245 to $2,000. Packages are available, including the “Best of Ojai,” with accommodations, tax and one treatment or activity, starting at $335, single occupancy. The resort has three restaurants.

Prices for treatments and massages range from $25 to $280. All hotel guests may use spa facilities at no extra charge.

For more information: The Santa Barbara Conference and Visitors Bureau and Film Commission, 12 E. Carrillo St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101; tel. (800) 927-4688 or (805) 966-9222, fax (805) 966-1728, Internet https://www.santabarbaraCA.com.