MERIDA, Mexico — Sitting at dinner on the patio of what was once a machine house at an 18th-century sisal plantation, awash in candlelight and sipping a glass of a lovely Champagne, I knew I had reached another, more palatable Yucatan. While this elegant hacienda was only a three-hour drive from Cancun, the mood was eons removed from those shimmering hotels and rowdy nightclub scenes crowding the carefully manicured beaches of the Mayan Riviera.
On the garden patio outside my beautiful room at Hacienda Xcanatun, a few miles north of the colonial city of Merida, I could listen to the rhythm of night frogs chirping in harmony with rustling palm fronds high overhead. In the morning, I would awake to bird songs from the poolside a few feet away and the occasional dog’s bark in the tiny village on the other side of the hacienda’s thick stucco walls. After breakfast, I would take off for a dive in a nearby crystal-clear cenote or swim at a quiet beach or wander through the Maya’s mystical ruins at Uxmal, followed by an afternoon nap in a hammock, back at the hacienda.
This is what I want from my Yucatan vacation today. The parties on Cancun’s shores will always be there if I need that kind of diversion again, but for now, all I want is to be surrounded by vintage Mexico, where vestiges of an ancient people and a colonial world combine to provide a sense of place with true heritage. Here, I can lose myself in the secrets and wisdom of the Maya through art, food, visits to tiny villages and old markets, and even spa treatments that utilize Mayan traditions.
Because I’m not alone in such yearnings, the Yucatecan hacienda hotels are enjoying a tourism boom today. Not unlike stays at West Texas ranches or Italian villas, the opportunity to explore a culture with great depth, and in beautiful surroundings, holds particular appeal for travelers looking for a meaningful experience. It’s the anti-Cancun, and it’s catching on.
“People who are looking for a more authentic glimpse of Mexico and are interested either in the ancient cultures or birding in the Yucatan tend to stay at haciendas,’’ says Nancy Weakley, a director at Dallas-based Adventures & Travel in Mexico. “If they’re looking for service that’s more personalized and upscale, they find the haciendas.”
Weakley notes that haciendas tend to mirror the appeal of Merida, which bears more resemblance to Europe than Mexico City. Families and customs here are directly traced to the colonial period and that of the wealthy traders of the hacienda glory days, when Yucatecans who could afford it sent their children to school in Europe rather than to the capitol, which is a significant distance away.
Typically the haciendas were built atop pre-hispanic settlements and became the stylish homes of agave plantation barons, who made millions a century ago by producing sisal, a natural plant fiber used in making cord or rope. When synthetic fibers became popular in the 1940s, fortunes were lost and most of the haciendas fell to decay. Fortunately for travelers looking for a Yucatan stay with roots, many of these have been lovingly restored.
Luxury lodging
For me, Hacienda Xcanatun – pronounced “sh-CAH-nah-TOON” and one of several hacienda hotels near Merida – hits the perfect notes. Converted over a five-year period from utter wreckage to an unfussy but elegant boutique inn, Xcanatun opened five years ago with 18 suites and a sensational restaurant that’s become the rage of Merida dining with what co-owner Cristina Baker calls their “cuisine internacional.”
Baker, a New York-born and Ivy League-educated woman who grew up in countries from Mexico to Brazil, enjoyed a career as an advertising executive in Mexico City, where she met her husband, Jorge Ruz, a Merida native and son of famous archaeologist Alberto Ruz, who excavated the temple and tombs at Palenque. Ruz’s enormous success as a commercial director bankrolled their monumental task of turning the numerous buildings and expansive lands of the ruined sisal plantation into a lodging that would turn heads anywhere.
Typical of the renovated haciendas – most of which once contained a main house, machine house, chapel, workers’ dormitories, stables, jail, school, infirmary and cemetery – Xcanatun has been transformed with an eye to the buildings’ original design and character. In reconstruction, Baker and Ruz chose locally used materials, such as hardwoods, wrought iron, clay, glass, marble and coral stone. Walls, ceilings, windows and verandas of massive scales are the norm, a swimming pool replaces the original reservoir and additional buildings that copy the originals accommodate the new spa.
My room at Xcanatun rambles from one set of huge, wooden French doors to another. One opens onto a patio with napping chairs facing the pool and the other puts me out on a garden patio with hammock, fountain and a view of the thick, green lawn. Ceiling fans turn overhead, an armoire holds all my clothes, a minibar provides cold, bottled water and beer, and excellent reading lights and a clock radio sit beside my very firm king bed. The bathroom could house a small family, who would stay clean with custom-made soaps and luxuriate in the oversized bath with two shower heads beneath a huge skylight.
There’s no TV in my room, and that’s OK. On the off-chance I’ll need one, I can find it across the pool inside the old chapel, now a common room for guests. That building opens onto another courtyard where the plantation’s old horse carts and wagon wheels create backdrops for tropical plantings. The spa and a second pool are beyond the main house, across the courtyard.
Xcanatun may be the most splendid of the Yucatan haciendas, but it’s far from the only fashionable choice. Hacienda Santa Cruz Palomeque, about 20 minutes from downtown Merida in the Cuxtal Ecological Reserve, occupies a shady, 15-acre, 17th-century hacienda with two guest casitas inside former workers dorms. Extensive remodeling by the owners, former New Yorkers, rendered lodgings with wrought-iron beds, handmade twig furniture, local artworks, terraces, gardens, big bathrooms and hammocks. The old machine building at Santa Cruz now houses a grand salon, and a terrace just outside the building opens onto a swimming pool.
Three other luxury haciendas were acquired last year by Starwood Properties, best known stateside for its Westin and W hotels and resorts. Hacienda Santa Rosa is less than an hour south of Merida on the road to Campeche; San Jose is just east of Merida on the highway toward Cancun; and Temozon is just south of Merida off the Ring Road. Beautifully restored historic buildings, these offer the usual hotel services and amenities, including swimming pools, spa services, restaurants and room service.
The traveler on a more moderate budget has good hacienda choices in the Yucatan, as well. Among good picks is Hacienda Chichen, a 16th-century landmark next door to the immensely popular Chichen-Itza archaeological site. The handsome hacienda is framed by verdant gardens, provides comfort with any ostentation and offers rooms and cottages, a library, dining, swimming pool and satellite TV. Immediately outside of Merida is Hacienda San Pedro Nohpat, a 400-year-old country estate made over into a pleasant bed-and-breakfast seven suites. Here, guests can take advantage of a steakhouse and bar, beautiful pool, child care, Spanish lessons and massage therapy.
Each of the haciendas has a staff that helps guests figure out how to use their time away from the hammock and swimming pool. They point you to the Mayan city ruins at Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Edzna, Dzabilchaltun and other even smaller archeological zones. They’ll send you off to swim or dive in the cenotes (freshwater caves) and to see some of the Yucatan’s 300 bird species at wildlife preserves, or they’ll point you to the magnificent market in Merida or put you in touch with a cooking school or guided city home and garden tour.
At Xcanatun, Baker hooked me up with an archaeological guide to spend an overnight at an old Mayan village called Yaxunah. There I slept in a hammock in a simple hut, walked the town to visit the church and watch kids play in the square, and learned the traditional, in-ground cooking techniques by sweet, welcoming villagers who still speak the complicated language of their ancestors.
Obviously, I was custom-made for this hacienda travel stuff. I love the white-sand beaches, too, but the intimate stay and spirit of the Yucatan interior suits me fine today. And if I want to head over to do the glitzy shopping with the cruise-ship passengers, I can. Plenty of people do both, after all.
“We are an antidote to Cancun. But the fact is that the Mayan Riviera is quite close, and we have had guests who want their cake and eat it too, so they spend a few days on the beach and head here for another few days,” says Baker of Xcanatun.
For now, I’m sticking with my hammock and the glass of champagne on the hacienda patio.
