TRICIA WELSH

Meet Makepeace Island, Branson’s other private paradise.

A new wellness adventure retreat in the Southern Alps serves up physical and mental makeovers. The soaring granite peaks of Mount Judah surge above the sapphire water of New Zealand’s Wakatipu Lake. I am traversing a zigzagged trail, twisting up and down the Southern Alps’ undulating grasslands, with every turn affording a new angle from […]

My hands are slick with wet clay as I squeeze, mold, and shape balls of sticky matter into a monster with flaring nostrils and wild tufts of hair. I am nearing the end of an hour-long pottery class at Hoshinoya Okinawa, a traditional Japanese resort that opened in June on the diminutive coral island of […]

Due north of New Zealand’s popular resort city of Queenstown, a vast and beautiful wilderness remains largely inaccessible to tourists. Hikers can tramp into the South Island’s 1,373-square-mile Mount Aspiring National Park to pitch a tent or stay in a government-run bunkhouse, but travelers seeking a higher level of comfort (and warmth) in the backcountry […]