Soothed Without Getting Soaked

Does a week at a spa--say, Canyon Ranch or the Golden Door--sound good to you?

That’s a rhetorical question. Who wouldn’t want to get trimmed, toned, polished, pampered, deeply rested and generally improved at either of these high-end spas? But a seven-day program at Canyon Ranch in Arizona costs $3,830; it’s $5,250 at the Golden Door outside San Diego. And even less sumptuous health and fitness resorts can set you back big time--about $2,800 for a week at moderately priced U.S. spas, and $1,700 at budget places (according to Spa-finders, a New York-based booking agency).

So maybe the question is, can you afford a week at a spa in any category?

Here’s another question: How do you feel about Mexico, particularly the mountainous region around easygoing Cuernavaca, 50 miles south of the Mexican capital, where thermal springs gush and active volcanoes pump clouds of vapor into the sky? In this geological hot spot, favored by Moctezuma I, Hernan Cortes and stressed modern Mexicans, spas abound, from luxurious health and fitness retreats like Mision del Sol, to moderately priced resorts with spa facilities like the Hotel Hacienda Cocoyoc, to rock-bottom budget spas like the one in Ixtapan de la Sal. In all three price categories, rates are much lower than in the U.S. (None of the three was damaged in the earthquake that struck Mexico on Sept. 30.)

For instance, the seven-day Venus Reductive package at top-of-the-line Mision del Sol, a walled adobe compound on the outskirts of Cuernavaca, costs $1,798, which covers accommodations, meals, tax, exercise classes and 13 treatments. The seven-day Revitalizing Week at Hotel Hacienda Cocoyoc, in a historic sugar plantation 20 miles east of town, goes for $995. This includes accommodations, meals, 15 spa treatments, airport transfers and a sightseeing tour; it doesn’t include a fitness program, which is why I put Cocoyoc in the moderate category. And at the old Hotel Spa Ixtapan de la Sal, west of Cuernavaca, the seven-day Spa Classic package could take your breath away: accommodations, meals, exercise classes, three golf or tennis clinics, horseback riding, six massages, six facials, a luffa scrub and mud treatment, four hair and nail treatments, a manicure/pedicure and one hairstyling for $1,075. (All rates above are per person based on double occupancy.)

Mike Nelson, who runs an L.A.-based Mexican spa booking service and is the author of “Hot Springs and Spas of Mexico” (Hidden Books, $12.95), says that fitness takes a back seat to beauty treatments in Mexico, with exercise programs relatively mild or nonexistent. On the other hand, facials, massages, body wraps and the like are so plentiful that guests feel as if they’ve died and gone to spa heaven. Even if you find a U.S. spa package for roughly the same price, you won’t get as many services. For this reason, Nelson says, “Packages are the way to go, not a la carte treatments.” Still, it is worth noting that spa treatments cost $20 to $60 a la carte in most Mexican spas, as compared to $50 to $150 in the U.S.

Rates and features like these were all the inducement I needed to fly south last month, though I could only spend two nights each at the Mision del Sol, Hotel Hacienda Cocoyoc and Ixtapan de la Sal. Still, that was enough to find out what you get for the price, and how Mexican spas compare to their U.S. counterparts.

Mision del Sol

Built three years ago, Mision del Sol has become the spa destination of choice for well-to-do Mexicans. As yet, few Americans have discovered it.

Nor is it likely that the average tourist would chance upon it, because the resort is in a residential neighborhood about a 10-minute drive outside town on a deeply rutted road that doesn’t bode well for a spa experience. But once you enter the front gate and a staff member whisks you to the main building in a golf cart, the charm of the spa is immediately apparent, as is its state-of-the art, ecologically correct New Age philosophy.

The service strikes you first--it’s very good, with many English-speakers on staff. Then you notice the grounds. Gravel paths wind through seven acres of orange groves and beds of flowers, herbs, blowzy reed and bamboo. Created by a Japanese landscape artist who employed the Chinese feng shui design system that aims to achieve balance and harmony, the gardens have an unstudied, slightly wild appearance and a culturally hybrid air, with Mexican planters and pots, a long central fountain that wouldn’t seem out of place in an Italian villa and a meditation pavilion in a minimalist Asian style.

A walking path encircles the resort, enclosing tennis courts, a small fitness center, the restaurant, a blue-tiled swimming pool and a graceful spa with a large hot tub surrounded by an open colonnade.

In the spa you can have a manicure or something more esoteric, like craniosacral therapy (a massage focusing on the head and spine) or a detoxifying Temazcal steam bath (inspired by pre-Columbian medicine). Chime-y New Age music floats everywhere on the breeze. Guests are requested to wear natural fabrics and use biodegradable toiletries. And in the restaurant, the menu is 70% vegetarian, featuring marvelous fruit plates and fresh juices as well as creatively prepared soups, salads, fish and pasta. (The one discordant note is the smoking section, well used.)

The 52 guest rooms, named for planets, signs of the zodiac and precious stones, are scattered over the grounds in 12 tiered adobe buildings with arched entryways, exposed beams and rough stone tile on the floor. In my room, called Mercurio, there was a sliding glass door leading to a private patio, a big folk-craft armoire in an alcove and an irresistible king-size bed covered in soft yellow cotton. positioned directly beneath the high dome of the ceiling. The bath had a muslin curtain instead of a door, a double shower with a louvered window and a separate toilet chamber. I could happily have spent the whole weekend in Mercurio, ordering room service meals and reading. But on my first morning at the spa, I rose early and dressed for the fitness program.

This began at 8 a.m. with a “buildup walk” of four laps around the resort, led by a cute young aerobics teacher, for me alone since nobody else showed up. Nobody showed up for tai chi by the pool after that, either--not even the instructor. After waiting 30 minutes I gave up and swam laps.

I had better luck with yoga in the studio above the spa. The instructor, Florencio, didn’t speak English, but he managed to guide me gently and expertly through a meditation and several postures. Again, I had the teacher all to myself.

My two-night package included three treatments: a relaxing massage, an excellent facial and the Temazcal (held just twice a week because the steam chamber must be specially prepared with live coals, like a Finnish sauna).

The Temazcal is a group affair, so at last I got to see the other guests, mostly dreamy-looking couples down from Mexico City for a romantic weekend, which could explain why they weren’t at the exercise classes.

About 30 of us assembled in the spa, where we drank herbal tea, formed a semicircle and held hands while Florencio passed in front of us carrying incense. Then (still wearing bathing suits) we filed into the steam chamber, which got hotter and hotter as he splashed water on the coals, generating thick clouds of vapor.

Like a Native American sweat lodge, the Temazcal ritual attempts to cleanse the spirit as well as the body. So Florencio led a long meditation inside the steam chamber, played drums and chanted in Spanish. I didn’t understand everything he said but felt wonderful when I emerged, clean, emptied of tension and ready to face the challenges of the day--like sunbathing and walking in the garden, which is about as challenging as a day can get at Mision del Sol.

Hotel Hacienda Cocoyoc

Set apart from Cocoyoc village by old stone walls, the 22-acre resort occupies the grounds of a sugar plantation begun in 1614 and destroyed during the revolution of 1910. Some colonial structures remain, including arched aqueducts, the mill (now a discotheque), connected courtyards with fountains, a sweet 16th century chapel and the original plantation house (used for weddings and special events). Giant banyan trees grow out of stone walls, and the gardens are beautifully manicured.

The resort’s 300 rooms and suites are in white stucco buildings built since 1968, when Cocoyoc opened as a hotel. Mine was on the second floor of the west wing, large, clean and simply decorated in Spanish colonial style, with wrought iron light fixtures, heavy wooden furniture, a small, prettily tiled bath and a big arched window overlooking an arbor.

Meals are served in the hotel’s two restaurants. There is a set menu for guests on spa packages, featuring fruit, omelets, vegetable soups, herbal teas and entrees like quesadillas and grilled chicken. I preferred early breakfast served in my room (about $3 extra).

Hotel Hacienda Cocoyoc is primarily a resort, favored by families on weekends and business conferees during the week, with a playground for kids, three huge swimming pools and tennis courts.

On one side of the resort there’s a nine-hole golf course (greens fees $25 to $40, plus $15 with cart and caddy), ringed by a red cinder path where guests walk, jog or ride horses ($3 for 30 minutes).

The spa, which was added in 1995, doesn’t seem integral, physically and psychologically, because only a small percentage of the guests come solely for the spa experience. Still, it’s lovely, with a semicircular hot tub in the first-floor atrium. Treatment facilities, changing rooms, saunas and steam baths are on the second floor, furnished with handsome, contemporary couches and benches, burnished wood lockers and red stone on the floors and walls.

No one there spoke English, and I felt a distinct lack of tender loving care during the luffa scrub and massage that came with my package. The manicure/pedicure I had was amazingly long--two hours of cuticle cutting, rubbing, buffing, paraffin wax treatments and polishing--and might have been a prime pampering experience but for the rather uncomfortable chair.

If you want to get fit between pamperings, you’re on your own, because there’s no set schedule of exercise classes at Cocoyoc. I ran around the golf course, swam laps and visited the tiny gym, which has a Nautilus machine, two stair machines and two stationary bikes, and then retired, feeling slightly guilty, to a chaise by the pool.

Hotel Spa Ixtapan

de la Sal

At dinner on my first night at Ixtapan de la Sal, about a two-hour drive west of Cuernavaca, I met a woman from St. Louis who’d been visiting the spa for 20 years. People get devoted to this old hotel, not only because its packages, ranging from four days to a month, are so astonishingly cheap and inclusive--most guests get a facial and a massage every day--but because it’s run in an efficient (if not exactly polished) fashion.

Seventy percent of the spa guests are from the U.S. and Canada, from what I saw, mostly women somewhat past their prime in years and shape, lapping up the treatments like cats in cream. While having a tomato puree hair rinse in the beauty salon, I saw a woman at a styling station being worked on by three attendants at once--one for her hair, another for her hands and a third for her feet.

At first I wasn’t impressed by the hotel, built about 1940 in a region known for its thermal springs. The resort sits on a hillside across a rutted road from a golf course just outside the town of Ixtapan de la Sal, with a boxy coral-colored high-rise building that houses plain, motel-style guest rooms, a restaurant, exercise room and spa.

There are more guest rooms in single-story white stucco villas on the flank of the hill, interspersed with tiled fountains that must have been a marvel when they were built. Now, however, the fountains are mostly dry, tiles are missing and the grounds and buildings have gone a bit to seed--though painters, plasterers and gardeners were constantly at work trying to keep the place up. Happily, they’ve managed to nicely maintain the two large pools (one of which contains mineral water) and hot tub at the base of the hill.

The fitness program is comprehensive but not too challenging, starting with a brisk two-mile walk, followed by yoga or aerobics, then aqua fitness in the mineral pool. The instructors spoke English and were reasonably adept, though the yoga didn’t seem authentic.

If you want further exertion or entertainment, there’s golf, tennis, horseback riding and mountain biking (all free). An afternoon walk can take you into town, where there’s a handful of interesting shops, or to the public water park next door, which has its own spa, offering bargain treatments like a 50-minute massage for $9.

None of the programs is mandatory, though, because Ixtapan de la Sal is a laid-back place where you can order high-calorie meals off the menu in the restaurant or choose the bland but healthy spa cuisine. At orientation for spa guests, margaritas are served, and one woman told me that though she’d left her cigarettes at home, she bought a pack on her second day at the spa because so many guests were smoking.

I didn’t book a package at Ixtapan de la Sal because the shortest one offered lasts four days. My room and meals cost $103 per day, and the exercise program was free. I took my beauty treatments a la carte, including a hair treatment, massage, luffa scrub, mud wrap and facial, all for under $150. None of them was special. Still, in the U.S. I’ve had massages alone that cost $150. The place is an incredible value. That’s why all the spa ladies, showing off new hairdos and freshly painted toes, are smiling at dinner.

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GUIDEBOOK

Spa Pampering in Mexico

Getting there: Aeromexico, Delta, Lacsa, Mexicana and United fly nonstop from Los Angeles to Mexico City. Round-trip rates start at $300.

First-class Pullman de Morelos bus service (telephone 011-52-73-18-69-85) runs about every 90 minutes to Cuernavaca from Mexico City’s Benito Juarez International Airport. The trip takes about 1 1/2 hours and costs about $9.

Cuernavaca has numerous car rental agencies; Avis and Hertz are north of the zocalo on Emiliano Zapata Avenue.

Where to stay: Mision del Sol, Av. Gral. Diego Diaz Gonzalez 31, Col. Parres, Cuernavaca 62550, Morelos, Mexico; tel. 011-52-73-21-09-99, fax 011-52-73-21-11-95, e-mail misolmex@mail.giga.com. The spa has one- to eight-day packages for $145 to $2,530; room-only rates start at $184.

Hotel Hacienda Cocoyoc, P.O. Box 300, Cuautla 62736, Morelos, Mexico; tel. 011-52-735-622-11 or (800) 537-8483, fax 011-52-735-612-12, Internet https://www.mexicoweb.com/cocoyoc. Three- to seven-day packages, $420 to $1,250; room rates start at $75.

Hotel Spa Ixtapan de la Sal has a U.S. booking agent at tel. (800) 638-7950, fax (210) 499- 0702, Internet https://www.spamexico.com, e-mail ixtapan@ spamexico.com. Four- to 28-day packages run $465 to $4,500; room rates (with meals) start at $89.

Spa-finders can be reached at (888) ALL SPAS, Internet https://www.spafinders.com; Mike Nelson’s Spa World Reservations is at (818) 762-9333.

For more information: Tourism Office, Consulate of Mexico, 2401 W. 6th St., 5th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90057; tel. (213) 351-2069, fax (213) 351-2074, Internet https://www .mexico-travel.com.

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