Yucatan Peninsula
From conquistadores to luxury hotels
At Bristol university, I and ten others would sit spellbound, listening to Dr Michael Costelloe describe the progress in 1512 of Hernan Cortéz. A handful of soldiers of fortune, led by the great conquistador, crossed a land where no European had trodden, ultimately to capture the magnificent city of Tenochtitlán, where Mexico City now stands.
The sophisticated civilizations and monumental cities of Mexico were at least as impressive as anything Spain had to offer. From his account of the adventures, battles with Aztecs, ambushes and tales of derring-do of the conquistadores, I’m sure that Dr Costelloe could have upstaged Steven Spielberg, had he decided to make his career in the movies. But his real academic expertise was in the rather drier subject of encomiendas.
After the conquest of New Spain, as the conquistadores called Mexico, huge tracts of land were granted to the original conquering soldiers and their descendants. For the centuries that followed, favourites of the king and viceroy continued to receive estates the size of an English county - and in return, theoretically at least, these encomenderos (landlords) safeguarded the spiritual well-being of the peons that worked their land.
In practice, the natives were on the lowest rung of the ladder of a feudal system that ruled Mexico for three hundred years.
During this period, the huge ranches (haciendas) switched their specialisation according to the market - cattle, sugar, wood-dye - and at the end of the 19th century in the Yucatán, to the production of henequen (sisal).
Development of new machinery meant that the fibres of the maguey cactus could be stripped on an industrial scale, and for forty years vast fortunes were fuelled by the unprecedented demand for sisal created by the Great War.
Farmhouses were rebuilt as palatial mansions; gardens and courtyards replanned on the scale of French chateaux. Railways were routed to get the product to the ports. Fine lace and fashions were imported from Paris; broughams and landaus were overtaken by Cadillacs.
Cigars were probably lit with million-peso notes.
After the Mexican revolution, in the 1920s, social change and the redistribution of land caught up with the hacendados. The estates were no longer economical to run, and the owners shut up shop and retired on the profits.
In the following 80 years, the grand houses fell into dilapidation, trees took root in the foundations, machinery was cannibalised, flagstones and walls were quarried for local houses. The stately homes were destined for the same derelict fate that, a thousand years before, befell the cities of the Mayas.
Until the tourist boom of the 1990s.
Haciendas today
The idea is a relatively simple one - rather than let your historic buildings crumble, or preserve them in aspic as museums, re-use them in a modern context. Spain and Portugal long ago realised that by blending the elegance of a bygone age with the convenience of today, you could turn castles and mansions into Paradores and Pousadas. Tasteful and evocative hotel accommodation for guests who would appreciate it.
In Mexico, four haciendas (three close to Mérida in Yucatán, one near Campeche on the Gulf of Mexico to the south) have been painstakingly and faithfully restored to provide first-class accommodation. All are within easy striking distance of the well-known and impressive Mayan ruins of Uxmal and Chichén Itzá. Uayamón is also close to the less-visited but equally spellbinding ruins of Edzná.
All four haciendas are owned by the same development company so there is a continuity of management style as well as design and concept. All have European managers and employ staff from the surrounding villages - whose natural deference is a refreshing change from the slicker standards we‘ve come to expect from city hotels.
The largest of the haciendas with 28 rooms is Temozón, some 39km from Mérida airport. Its gardens and lawns are laid out on the scale of a French chateau; the plaintive cries of peacocks fill the afternoon air, the 40m swimming pool is both functional, if you crave some physical input, and ornamental if you prefer to just gaze and laze.
But because the size of the hotel and grounds is so vast in comparison to the number of guests, it appears that hardly anyone ever uses the pool, or the gym, or the library, or the jogging track - a 15-minute circuit through the walled fields where once grew ranks of henequen cactus.
The other three haciendas are more intimate - San José Cholul (68km from Mérida), Santa Rosa de Lima (67km from Mérida), Uayamón (40km from Campeche) - and have about a dozen rooms each.
A feature of all the haciendas is the large high-ceilinged rooms, air-conditioning (hidden where possible), ceiling fans, cool tile floors, and a bathroom area which is equally palatial - often with an interior or exterior plunge-pool rather than a bathtub.
There are delightful touches - nosegays of jacaranda or hibiscus, tiny all-night candles, ceramic pots for shower gel and shampoo. Interior decoration is pale - oatmeal, stone or pale blue. Understated. But outside terracotta achiote reds and dark mustard yellows proclaim that this could only be Mexico.
The dining rooms overlook the gardens on a shady tiled terrace - the food is excellent - an evening meal costs about £25-30 a head, though a bottle of wine is more than you might expect.
Who goes there?
You can go alone, though you‘ll probably wish you had a companion with you (there are rooms with king-sized or two double beds). Although they are happy to accept children, the ambience of refinement and contemplation doesn’t really cater for youngsters.
The atmosphere is tangibly romantic
You can be completely self-contained, and have your meals served on your terrace or in the garden. Or you can engage your fellow guests in conversation - at San José, for example, if there’s a chill in the evening air, they light a bonfire in the garden, and you can socialise with warm toes.
The haciendas offer guided excursions (usually on a private or a semi-private basis) to the nearby Mayan citadels. Alternatively, if you’re doing self-drive, they have a very helpful little guide booklet.
If you ‘do’ Chichén Itzá - and I strongly recommend that you do - go early (they open at 9am). It is the most visited of all the Mayan sites, and deservedly so, with an impressive ball court (the largest in the Maya World) and the ceremonial Pyramid of Kukulkan (El Castillo) - an exact representation of the Maya calendar in stone.
By midday the site becomes very busy - a good time to set off for the small town of Izamal, with its delightful yellow-hued streets and vast Franciscan monastery of San Antonio de Pádua. Built on top of an important Maya pyramid-temple complex, the convent’s imposing porticoed atrium is at its most photogenic in the late afternoon. Opposite, in the main square, a dozen horse-drawn cabs wait for customers.
The southernmost of the four haciendas is Uayamón, near the old colonial port of Campeche, where survive much of the old city’s fortified defences and brightly washed mansions, and the streets are uncharacteristically quiet for Mexico.
Both Chichén Itzá and Uxmal offer son et lumiéres, though in my opinion Uxmal is the better. Other Mayan cities on the Puuc route (so called for the distinctive style of architecture) such as Labná, Sayil and Kabah are within easy reach of both the Temozón and Santa Rosa haciendas.
Although now easily accessible, the latter three are still largely away from the trodden tourist trail. If you go on a misty morning, it’s easy to imagine yourself in the shoes of John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, who first revealed to the Victorian world the existence of these mighty stone cities - hidden for a thousand years in tropical rainforest: unsought, unvisited, and utterly unknown.
Chris Parrott - Journey Latin America’s Marketing Director.