The Riviera Maya, where jungle meets sea in Mexico
I’ve been places these past few months. Swimming with sharks and stingrays off Bimini. Descending into bat caves on South Andros Island. Kissing the tarmac tenderly after a flight in a prop plane from Saint-Martin to Saint-Barths, which landed on a runway squeezed between a Kong Island-style rock and the sea.
Everybody shrugged about the places and things I’ve done these past few months. Until I said I was going to Mexico.
Mexico!? “Oh, I don’t want you going there,’’ my mother said. To be clear, my mother doesn’t think I should be going anywhere. I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to tell her about the sharks, bats and landing at Kong Island International. (Oops … hi, mom!).
Mexico!? “I have American friends who are usually fearless travelers who are nervous of Mexico,” another friend said.
Mexico?! “Exercise increased caution due to crime and kidnapping,” the U.S. State Department warned in an advisory on my destination of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, as of March 16. “Criminal activity may occur in any location, at any time, including popular tourist destinations.”
I listened. I absorbed all the advice and advisories. I decided to go.
And I had the best time in Mexico.
Sure, I followed such common-sense recommendations as to book transfers to and from the airport in Cancun through the (fabulous) Grand Velas Riviera Maya, where I stayed. I booked guides to sites along the coastline through my personal concierge at the resort so there’d be a record of who I was getting into the car with and where we were going.
Sure, there was a long-gun toting guard on a watch tower overlooking one end of the resort’s 1,000-yard, powdery-white beach. We got caught up in a checkpoint on the main highway by machine-gun wielding Mexican Marines, but that seemed more for show than anything else. (Like the jaguar-crossing signs posted along the same highway, just to let us know they were around). We passed both without incident.
Each of us has to decide what risks to take when we travel, of course. I’m not here to tell you what to do or how to feel about your own level of comfort. You may listen, absorb the same advice and advisories, and decide not to go.
But if I’d listened to friends, the State Department and my mother, there would have been no waking up to sea breezes and a cute coati (a raccoon relative) scampering through the bougainvilleas on the terrace of my suite overlooking the Caribbean Sea. No side trip to the jaw-dropping Maya ruins of Tulum. No floating on clear artisanal waters in a natural cenote water hole. None of the best Mexican food I’ve ever had (at Frida) or the best (and first) Yucatecan regional and international cuisine I’d ever had at Chaká, both at the resort. No visit to SE Spa, arguably the best spa I’ve ever been to. No meeting with a Maya shaman, who, after an ancient ceremony near Tulum involving copal smoke and cenote water dabbed with a leafy branch on my head, shoulders and knees, smiled and said a few words I didn’t understand.
“What’d he say?” I asked my guide.
“He said that you are his brother.’’
I am mindful of the risks of travel. And of such unforgettable rewards.
What’s cooking
I grew up north of the border, up New Mexico way. I earned my affinity for Hatch Valley green and Nambé red chiles honestly, clean plate by clean plate, at The Shed in Santa Fe, The Rancho de Chimayó and Doc Martin’s in Taos. So what I’m about to say here … well, it’s hard for a New Mexican to say. Not as hard as saying Texas has better skiing than New Mexico hard. (Ha! If God had intended Texans to ski, we say, He’d have given them mountains.) But hard.
So here goes: I have never had better Mexican food than at Frida at the Grand Velas Riviera Maya. There, I’ve said it.
From a crispy seafood chimichanga with smoked cheese to a short rib served in a mole de olla reduction with truffled potato purée to a warm corn muffin with cream spices and corn ice cream for dessert … every dish Chef Laura Isadora Ávalos Sierra sent out of the cocina here was a flavor bomb on all my fond childhood memories of Mexican food. Happily. Fair warning, the Manzanillo native’s dishes are delicious as well as authentic – which means a couple of them arrive as something of a dare. The guacamole and blue corn chips, for example, come with a side of crickets (and, because I’ll apparently eat anything with guacamole, I can confirm that they are toasty and nutty!) The shrimp taco in chili butter with mezcal comes with grasshoppers. (I didn’t go there, but the couple at the next table ordered their “grasshopper on the side” and seemed to be doing fine.) If not, the house margarita (recipe below) will help you forget any discomfort fast.
What they’re drinking
Travel in the land of mezcal and Maya honey long enough, and you’ll eventually be tempted with a cocktail. These two – with interesting twists – are especially easy to succumb to. Or three.
If you’d rather go full Maya, try the pineapple cocktail – featuring honey anise flavors the ancients knew – at Chaká, Chef Carlos Montejo’s exceptional restaurant on the Zen Grand Suites side of the resort, featuring Yucatecan regional and international cuisine.
Signature Frida Margarita
1 oz. mezcal
1 oz. tamarind pulp
1 oz. mix mango and strawberry
1 oz. orange juice
Shake and serve on ice with the garnish of orange and mint.
Pineapple cocktail at Chaká
1 oz. raicilla (a Mexican liquor similar to mezcal)
1/4 oz. Xtabentún (anise liqueur)
1/4 oz. lemon juice
1/4 oz. Xila (agave liqueur).
2 oz. pineapple juice
1/2 oz. plain syrup
Shake and serve on ice, garnish with a mix of chilies, pineapple powder and dehydrated pineapple.
Don’t miss Part 1: The Ruins of Tulum
Unlike towering Egyptian pyramids, the tallest of Tulum’s ancient structures – including 40-foot El Castillo – were used primarily as observation towers, astronomical calendars and a lighthouse along the Caribbean coast.
One of the only Maya ruins on a beach, “Tulum is located on a rise from which it is possible to contemplate the sun’s journey by day and to admire the heavens at night,’’ the guides say along the pathways of the 1,400-year-old Maya fortress. “Builders intentionally oriented the structures to register solar phenomena such as solstices and equinoxes, important events for initiating agricultural activities.”
Once you know this – it helps to hire a guide who can walk you around the site and point out the astronomical sight lines – you begin to realize you’re standing in an ancient observatory, protected by 15- to 20-foot stone walls up to 20 feet thick. There was much to protect, evidently.
“All things come together at Tulum,” the guides say: “Dawn, noon and sunset. Land, sea and sky. Religion, politics and trade. Mayans and Spaniards.” All pressed into 12 little acres, overlooking the turquoise sea. It’s overwhelming, and not just because the ancient Maya knew how to pick a beach.
Don’t miss Part 2
I wondered at first what I’d stepped into at SE Spa, in the Zen Grand section of the Grand Velas Riviera Maya.
“Millet,’’ whispered Kenia, the masseuse in the hushed treatment room, nodding to the bowl of polished kernels at my feet.
“Uh … millet?” I said, slipping my feet reluctantly into the bowl. Followed quickly by something along the lines of, “Ahhhh … millet.”
A millet foot “bath” is the opening salvo of sensations in SE Spa’s new Bacal Massage, “an authentic Maya treatment utilizing one of the Maya’s most sacred plants, corn.”
I was born in Kansas, where corn and millet are near-sacred as well, but I’d never thought of sticking my feet into a bowl of them. I wish I had when I’d had a chance – I am not in Kansas anymore – because it’s surprisingly wonderful.
The Maya-influenced treatments roll on next with, “a soothing honey exfoliation that detoxifies the skin, followed by an essential oil massage using bacal – Mayan for corn cobs – to apply pressure to the skin in a unique method.”
With a spot secure on Forbes Travel Guide’s list of The World’s Most Luxurious Spas, this almost 90,000-square-foot spa set in a tranquil cenote (artisanal spring water hole) is overwhelming and intimate at the same time. A great place to try new things far, far from Kansas.
Fair warning, I tried keeping track of the seven steps in the SE Spa Water Ceremony – sauna, ice room, Jacuzzi, color therapy steam room, sensation showers, scrub room and hot tub/cold plunge over 35- to 50 minutes – but I kept losing track and had to keep starting over again. My seven-step journey was more like 17. Your results may vary.
Could miss
The sargassum seaweed season generally runs from May through October on the Riviera Maya, but you could miss it completely at the Grand Velas because crews with rakes and a Bobcat loader start clearing it from the otherwise powdery white beach at 7 a.m. each day. While experts predict the Yucatán coast could have especially heavy bouts of seaweed this year, “The resort always has a beach cleaning team, consistently throughout the year,” staff say. “Additionally the resort has man-made barriers to assist with beach erosion as well as the incoming algae.”
If you go
Grand Velas Riviera Maya
At kilometer marker 62, Carretera Cancun Tulum, Playa Del Carmen, Municipio de Solidaridad, Riviera Maya, Quintana Roo, Mexico, 77710, 877-418-2963, e-mail reservations@velasresorts.com, rivieramaya.grandvelas.com/.
An ultra-luxury, AAA Five Diamond-rated all-inclusive resort featuring 195 1,200-sq.-ft. Ambassador Suites, 90 1,300-sq.-ft. Grand Class Suites, with private outdoor plunge pools, both situated along two resort pools and 1,000-foot beach; and 253 1,100-sq.-ft. Zen Grand Suites, 36 with private plunge pools, in a jungle and mangrove setting, with a pool area of its own. (Even larger Governor and Presidential suites are available in all three areas of the resort).
Convenient to Cancun International Airport (CUN), Maya ruins, water-theme park, golf and nature sites. 24-hour personal concierge service, recent $4 million renovation, 89,305-square foot SE Spa, featuring a seven-step Water Ceremony, Maya-inspired treatments and a tranquil cenote (clear artesian-water hole) ambience; eight restaurants, including five gourmet, collectively winners of 17 AAA Diamonds awards and the first AAA Five Diamond for a restaurant (Cocina de Autor); five bars, including swim-up and karaoke; live entertainment, meeting and banquet rooms, two fitness centers, watersports, activities and centers for children 4-12 through teens.
