Santa Barbara Hotels

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 brulee, 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.

- Susan Spano, L.A. Times Staff Writer (Nov. 12, 2000)