In the not too distant past, life as a travel writer for D Magazine meant exploring a private Fijian island that was frequented by mononymous celebrities. Or taking a helicopter for a picturesque picnic in British Columbia. Or arriving at your 6-star Singapore hotel room to find rose petals trailing to a freshly drawn bubble bath, chilled Champagne, and a robe meant to be taken. That fantasy was the reality for Nancy Nichols and Jennifer Chininis, who produced D Magazine’s special travel section from the years 1996 to 2017. “I was almost embarrassed by how they were treating us,” says Chininis, recalling the full-time butler at her beck and call in a London Dorchester terrace suite.
“It was the days of wine and roses. What can I say?” Nichols says. Every six weeks, Nichols and Chininis were spirited away on the respective far-flung adventures of their choosing. Back then, press trips were doled out with abandon to members of travel writing associations. Penning a travel piece for a church newsletter? Welcome aboard your river cruise.
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Though the trips usually came with a pre-planned itinerary, strange things tend to happen in foreign lands. Chininis, terrified to be driving on the left side of the road, was pulled over in the New Zealand countryside for hugging the shoulder and unwittingly became audience to a Kiwi constable’s life story. On the way out of Dubai, in 2015, Nichols and her photographer had to flee the airport under threat of arrest. A belligerent security guard accused them of being drunk in public, an offense that could have led to six months in prison. (They made it home safely the next day.)
The day Nichols arrived in Nicaragua, in 2012, tsunami warnings rang out due to a 7.6 earthquake in nearby Costa Rica. Then, the day after climbing a volcano, it erupted. And on the plane out, a passenger in the back suffered a fatal heart event. After making an emergency landing, passengers had to get the brawny body off the small aircraft by loading it on a stretcher and passing it over their heads as if the corpse were crowd-surfing.
In 2005, Nichols was bamboozled by website photos for a southern Sardinia resort. Within an instant of arriving, she knew the place didn’t live up to D Magazine reader standards. “It was a shithole,” she says, “one of those places that has five themed resorts inside like Treasure of the Sea.”
“Social media came along, and everybody was a travel writer. Just like they’re all now food critics.”
The scene became bleaker still when she was ushered to the spa, which was co-ed and, evidently, nude. With no robes to be found, Nichols clutched a towel to her body as she waited for her masseuse. “I swear to God, I could spot him in a crowded mall.” Her so-called massage therapist was a hulking figure covered in a thick carpet of curly body hair and dressed only in a loincloth. As the masseuse worked, Nichols could feel his sweat droplets hit her skin. She knew she needed to hatch a new plan and find something worth writing home about.
A Dallas restaurateur’s family had a hotel and restaurant on the island, but at the opposite end. After dining at the resort (also terrible), Nichols remembers hitching a ride on a golf cart to the front gate and hailing a cab bound for the town center. What followed was an Odyssean escapade that involved a missed bus, screaming in a piazza, a crowd of gracious Italians who spoke zero English, many hand gestures, $50 in bribe money, a speeding cab ride, an uncertain wait on a dusty country road with no one but a roaming goat, and a three-hour journey in a ramshackle van. “My arms were tired from trying to speak to people,” Nichols says.
Her gamble paid off. Su Barchile in the town of Orosei was an Italian Eden. “To this day, it was the greatest eating experience. Ever,” Nichols says. “They had their own gardens, grew all their own herbs. They grew their own olives and made their own oil. I can still taste the cappuccino.” Her story, “Savoring Sardinia,” dished all the delicious details, and no reader was any the wiser that her 5,500-mile journey was a near disaster.
Yet, all good things must come to an end, including D Magazine’s special travel section. What changed? “Social media came along, and everybody was a travel writer,” Nichols says. “Just like they’re all now food critics.”
Though Nichols and Chininis have long since hung up their travel writing spa robes, both continue to trot the globe. Nichols regularly plays host to groups on African safaris, and as for Chininis, she will soon be embarking on the greatest travel feat of her life: taking an overnight flight to Europe with a toddler.
This story originally appeared in the June issue of D Magazine with the headline “Hairy Journeys.” Write to [email protected].
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