The First Chukker: Newport Polo's Diamond Jubilee World Tour Begins in South America

In polo, a chukker is a period of play - six to a match, each one building on the last. We think it's also the right way to describe what Newport Polo is setting out to do.

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This December, the oldest polo club in America marks its 150th season with a journey. Not a celebration confined to Newport's storied grounds, but a world tour - six legs, six destinations, and six chapters in a story that has been building since 1876. This is the First Chukker - South America.

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For the past century and a half, polo clubs from around the world have made the journey to Newport. The Diamond Jubilee World Tour is about Newport returning the call by going back to the places that sent their players and their traditions to America. Few clubs anywhere can claim a network like Newport Polo. Fewer still would mark their anniversary by honoring it. And tucked into the schedule of all three destinations is a visit to the polo club that knows Newport well. This time, the Newport Polo team and their ambassadors come to them.

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The Route: Lima to Santiago to Buenos Aires

Ten days in December. Three countries, three of South America's great cities, and a single thread running through them. These are places where food, landscape, and a love of the game are not separate things, but the same thing expressed differently.

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The journey opens on the Pacific cliffs of Peru, climbs toward the Andes in Chile, and ends in the boulevards and ballrooms of Argentina, at the tournament every polo player in the world knows by heart.

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Lima

You begin in a city that keeps exceeding its reputation.

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After a VIP welcome at the airport, the first night is at the InterContinental Miraflores - set above the Pacific with the largest hotel rooftop pool in the city. The early days are unhurried by design. There is time to wander the clifftop Malecón, drift through the galleries and streets of Barranco, and settle into the rhythm of a city that rewards the traveler who eases in rather than races through.

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One evening the group gathers privately at Sapiens, where chef Jaime Pesaque cooks a six-course menu over a seven-metre open fire - an experience that is about place as much as it is about the plate. Between meals, a private afternoon traces colonial Lima from the Plaza de Armas through the catacombs of the San Francisco Monastery, ending at Casa Aliaga: a mansion built in 1535, lived in continuously by the same family for seventeen generations, the oldest inhabited colonial home in the Americas. History, in Lima, is not behind glass.

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Santiago

A short flight south brings you to Santiago, where the Andes rise straight out of the skyline. Home for these nights is the Mandarin Oriental - the brand's first South American hotel - with a lagoon pool and mountain views that make the city feel expansive rather than urban.

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Here you might spend a day in the Casablanca Valley with a sommelier among boutique wineries or follow the coast to the storied hillside streets of Valparaíso. But the experience that stays with most travelers is an afternoon in the hands of Mapuche sculptor Fabiola Lefiman, whose clay workshops draw on ancient technique and leave you with something you actually made. Dinner at Ambrosía - where chef Carolina Bazán turned a family bistro into one of Latin America's most celebrated tables - closes with a live cueca performance, Chile's national dance, performed just for your group.

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Buenos Aires

The first two legs were always leading here.

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The Park Hyatt occupies the restored Palacio Duhau in Recoleta - the only appropriate address for what comes next. Days are shaped by curiosity - a private art tour through MALBA, a cocktail masterclass in a hidden library at the Presidente Bar, long lunches in a neighborhood that has been perfecting the Porteño meal for generations. Buenos Aires does not rush. Neither do you.

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And then the reason a polo club crossed a continent. The Argentine Open Final at the Campo Argentino de Polo is the most hallowed afternoon in the sport. The finest players and horses on earth gather before a crowd that doesn’t merely watch the game but lives inside it. The day closes beneath the domes of Palacio Bencich, with a reception and a live tango performance as the Buenos Aires skyline lights up around you.

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One final morning transfer, and three countries stay with you in the way only the right trip can manage.

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Built for the Game. Open to Everyone.

You don't have to play polo to belong on this journey. The trip asks only for a simpler appetite - places with a story, a preference for the table over the tour bus, and a sense that a milestone this rare deserves to be marked in a way you will still be talking about for a lifetime.

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Newport Polo's 150th comes around once. The world tour that marks it comes around once. This is the First Chukker, with five more to come.

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If the idea is already pulling at you, get in touch soon. These trips fill on instinct, and instinct is usually right.

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