Every holiday needs one perfect afternoon, the Kodak moment you'll tell your friends about for months to come. My Sunday afternoon in Arizona was cartoonish in its perfection. Desperate Dan cacti rose out of the ground on either side of us, and a clear sky burned blue above us as we sped down the endless Suharito Road in a convertible. We were just outside Tucson, on the way back to our hotel from a friend's house, with the wind making candyfloss of my hair and Air on the stereo.
From my spot in the back seat, concentrating on the blue sky above, I didn't see the white car shoot in front of us from a side road. The first I knew of it was hearing my driver friend, Mary Elizabeth, screaming 'Oh Jesus' (although there's some debate about whether or not she said something more profane), and then we all felt the crunch of metal upon metal as we slammed into the other car.
The impact and skid that followed seemed to last an eternity, long enough for us all to think we had died, and then for it to dawn on us that we hadn't. We scrambled out of the car and examined our injuries.
Crying and spitting out blood from my bitten tongue, it then became clear how friendly Arizonans are. A four-wheel drive stopped as soon as it passed our wreck and the driver, a mustachioed man with leather trousers and a rock band T-shirt, got out, saying: 'You folks called 911 yet?' We hadn't, so he did it for us. While we were waiting for the ambulance to arrive, every single car slowed down, and a window was lowered to reveal another Tucson resident asking: 'You folks need any help?'
The ambulancemen tallied up my injuries: a sore neck, a bruised and swollen foot, an equally blackened shin, pain in my chest from the impact of the seatbelt. Undressing later revealed lines of bruises across my hips, and most attractively, in my cleavage. I was shellshocked and sore, but nothing was life-threatening. The ambulancemen ruled out hospital, which was fine with me, because I was going somewhere a little better - a whirlwind tour of Arizona's spas.
The state is famous for its spas and deservedly so. While this desert region can be hellishly hot in the summer, it's warm and sunny the rest of the year - it averaged 25C with sun for my week in March. Alternative therapies flourish here, and the desert is home to clays and plants that can be harvested and made into unguents to make you look and feel a lot less like a cactus than you did when you first arrived.
I was visiting my spas in ascending order of luxury and dedication. It's become popular for hotels and golf resorts to tack on a 'spa' to their facilities so that golf widows and trophy wives can have something to do while the real business is happening on the course. The Omni Tucson National Golf Resort and Spa was just such a place. So golf-oriented that the bell hop drove me to my room in a golf cart. Ducks waddle and rabbits scurry along the edges of this incongruous verdant mass in the desert. Piped music at the swimming pool says a lot about the kind of middle-market family place it is.
The day after the accident, I was booked in for a Trezzeto treatment, a new type of massage carried out by two therapists working in tandem, using a combination of regular massage and hot stones. Muscles screaming, I hauled myself onto the therapy table, and pointed out my many sore spots to the therapists who then seemed to make a point of pummelling just those spots during the course of their 'blissful' treatment.
I flinched and tensed every time their hands moved to a different part of my body, or they picked up yet another hot stone to supposedly soothe aching muscles. When the ordeal was over, I sat in my towelling robe in the lounge area, drinking iced water and wondering how on earth I was going to deal with another four days of such treatment. The spa experience as endurance test was not something I had accounted for.
Luckily, my next spa, Westward Look Resort, was an altogether gentler proposition. Again the spa was a small part of a family-oriented resort, but with its lavender aromas and sand-influenced interior, it felt like a much more nurturing place. And sure enough, the lovely, plump therapist who was going to do my Three Muds Deluxe treatment avoided my sore spots altogether. She applied Sedona mud to my chakras, Catalina Dust to my face and feet and Pevonia Moor mud all over my body to cleanse it of toxins. After delicately rinsing me off, she guided me through a 'desert breath' breathing exercise for relaxation. It was one of only two or three times all week that the movie of the crash didn't play in my head and the sickening crunch didn't ring in my ears. I sat in the hot tub under the lemon tree for the rest of the afternoon and looked forward to my next stop.
Canyon Ranch is the Rolls-Royce of Arizona spas. It's a destination health resort in that people go there specifically to detox, de-stress, diet, or just generally divest themselves of the fallout of modern life. The 'health' aspect extends far beyond the ubiquitous fresh fruit and constant exhortations to drink water; it's staffed by medics and counsellors who can deal with anything from bereavement to cancer rehabilitation. It also runs a pro bono programme for 9/11 widows. My whiplash paled into insignificance next to all of that.
At check-in, I was given a water bottle with my name on it. These people were clearly overestimating the amount of exertion I was planning, but water is the backbone of the Canyon Ranch philosophy - on my last night, I overheard a woman refusing another glass with the words: 'Ugh, no, I am never drinking water again.' I was planning something altogether more gentle, namely my mango sugar glow treatment.
In a dimly lit room, the most gentle of therapists smoothed mango gunk, infused with desert aloe, all over me. She descaled and gently exfoliated before rinsing me off and slathering me with mango moisturiser. She finished off the treatment with a blessing, because that's what her Burmese grandmother told her to do.
Things got even more spiritual the next day, during my Watsu treatment. Originating in California (of course), Watsu was billed as 'a passive water therapy'. Assuming that didn't mean sitting quietly, drinking yet more water, I got into the chest-deep pool with the therapist who explained she would be supporting my head throughout and manipulating me into a series of positions.
I still wasn't sure, so I uncharacteristically just closed my eyes and let her do her thing. It was absolutely magical. She guided me through a series of movements, stretching me and bending me gently in the water, keeping a constant flow going as she held my head and the water held the rest of me.
I didn't want it to end, but eventually she brought me to rest at the side of the pool and I opened my eyes to come back into the real world. It was just about as far away from standing by a smoking wreck at the side of the road as it was possible to be.
Factfile
North America Travel Service (020 7938 3737) has flights with Delta Airlines via Atlanta and Tucson and seven nights' accommodation at the Canyon Ranch including meals, tax, service charge and a $285 (£180) credit for spa and sport services and transportation to/from Tucson airport. The cost for travel from 8-30 June is £2,245 plus airport tax of approximately £68. Sample treatment prices: Mango sugar glow: £110, Watsu: £72. Flight-only prices in July cost £638 plus tax.
Omni National Golf Resort and Spa (00 1 520 297 2271) offers a night's stay for £78 per person, based on two sharing in early July. Sample treatment price: Trezzeto: £102
Westward Look Resort (00 1 520 297 1151) has a night's stay for £68 per person, based on two sharing in early July. Sample treatment price: Three Muds Deluxe: £75
For a copy of the Arizona Visitor's Guide, call the UK brochure line: 0906 577 0031. More information at www.arizonaguide.com or www.arizonavacationvalues.com.
Spa'd out? Try these Arizona alternatives
Ride into the sunset: This is cowboy country so the riding and ranching is just dandy. In The Saddle (08700 133983) offers Arizona ranch holidays in Bellota and Tanque Verde, from where long-distance rides and cattle round-ups are taken.
Get down to nature: Encounter Gila monsters, hummingbirds, boojums, wolves and rattlesnakes at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson (00 1 520 883 2702) a zoo, natural history museum and botanical garden set in the stunning desertscape amid the beautiful Tucson Mountains.
See live sport: State capital Phoenix and nearby Tempe between them boast a pro-team in all four of the US's national sports: American football (Arizona Cardinals), baseball (Arizona Diamondbacks), basketball (Phoenix Suns) and, bizarrely in a desert state, ice hockey (Phoenix Coyotes). Get details on www.bigcitynightlife.com.
Head to the local church: The eighteenth-century Mission San Javier del Bac (00 1 520 294 2624), known as the 'White Dove of the Desert', has a pure white exterior and elaborately coloured interior and is still the San Xavier Indian Reservation's active Catholic church.
Glimpse the Grand Canyon: Last but certainly not least, this vast natural wonder is hard to miss as it's 227 miles long, up to 10 miles wide and more than a mile deep.
