The Revival of the Hacienda

The Mexican hacienda, conceived in the 16th century and condemned in the early 20th, is making a comeback. But this time, instead of crops to reap or minerals to mine, it has rooms to rent.

In one such room last month, I dozed off to the sound of crickets and frogs, and woke on a massive bed beneath a slowly circling fan under a 25-foot-high ceiling of rough beams, within four very old, very thick walls. Just beyond the bougainvillea in the courtyard, I knew, fresh-squeezed orange juice and warm tortillas were waiting. This, I thought, is not a bad way to absorb Mexican history.

Two days later in another hacienda, I stood frowning in a broad hallway, surrounded by old family photos, tropical plants, a wall full of battered antique crosses and a dangling set of rusted Yucatecan cowboy spurs. I was frowning because the house’s caretaker had secured the place for the night by locking me in from the outside. I could wander the halls and get out of my room, but I couldn’t get outside. He also had forgotten to turn on the water. Now I was a prisoner, with neither water nor means of egress. This, I thought, is another way to absorb Mexican history. (I found some mouthwash to brush my teeth with, and even came around to liking the place.)

There’s been a remarkable revival of hacienda properties across Mexico in the last few years, and these rehabilitated places, whether plain or fancy, give outsiders a chance to peel back a layer of Mexican history that they’re not likely to find at a beach resort--or even on a Mayan pyramid.

“Hacienda” usually refers to a farm, ranch or mining operation that combines its commercial work with housing for the owner and laborers. Architectural styles vary depending on the region and age of the structures, but the buildings are typically arrayed around a courtyard, and most include a chapel.

I chose to approach the topic of haciendas in the flat countryside around Merida, the capital of Yucatan state in eastern Mexico, where summer temperatures climb into the humid 90s. But the state is nonetheless an epicenter for hacienda activity, surrounded as it is by more than 400 old and renewed haciendas within a 75-mile radius.

So far, about a dozen haciendas in Yucatan have been retooled as lodgings, where nightly rates range from $35 to $315. Dozens more have been pressed into service as restaurants, vacation homes, museums or community centers.

Together they form the legacy of the region’s 19th century bonanza from henequen--a fibrous plant of the agave family that can be processed into rope, hats, rugs and so on. Henequen was shipped worldwide from the nearby port of Sisal, which is why it’s known by that name (although true sisal and henequen are slightly different).

A century later, Sisal is again a backwater; the henequen trade has been devastated by a switch to man-made fabrics and metal cables and the competition from plantations in Africa; and the largest hacienda estates have been broken up since the land reforms of the 1930s that grew out of the Mexican Revolution.

Inside a hacienda hotel, a visitor still finds bright paint, heavy antique furniture, high-beamed ceilings and cool tile floors--a look and feel that have inspired countless architectural imitators throughout North America.

“There’s been a very interesting momentum created in just the last year and a half,” says Karen Witynski, an Austin, Texas, interior designer and coauthor, with husband Joe P. Carr, of “The New Hacienda,” published in November.

A key source of momentum is Roberto Hernandez, the chairman of Banamex, one of Mexico’s largest banks. Through a related company called Grupo Plan, Hernandez and fellow investors since the mid-1990s have bankrolled the restoration of four haciendas now operating as upscale hotels, three in Yucatan and one in the state of Campeche. A Singapore-based hotel management company runs those properties for Grupo Plan.

I spent my first hacienda night at the luxurious San Jose Cholul (part of Grupo Plan), the second at San Antonio Chalante, the third at Hacienda Tanil and the fourth at Hacienda Temozon (also a Grupo Plan hotel). In between, I looked in on other haciendas and asked a lot of strangers for directions in my rudimentary Spanish.

I found that the biggest obstacle to enjoyment of Grupo Plan’s luxury lodgings may be the tab: At haciendas San Jose Cholul, Temozon and nearby Santa Rosa (which I didn’t have time to visit), rooms run $315 and up--daunting rates in a country of such poverty and in territory that’s 20 miles from the nearest beach.

They are, however, exceedingly comfortable. At San Jose Cholul, where I spent that first night with the crickets and frogs, 11 many-hued rooms are arrayed in 18th century buildings around a garden courtyard. Part of the old stone irrigation system has been refashioned into a swimming pool.

The hotel opened in December 1998, and four more cottages are to be done by June. I was so smitten with the Old World feel of the place that upon arrival I spent half an hour photographing the courtyard. Then I realized I hadn’t loaded the camera, so I repeated the exercise and was almost as knocked out the second time: the dozen candles flickering in the chapel, the sharp geometry of cactus plants, the bold colors and weather-beaten walls, the droop of the hammock next to the still pool.

In my room, a small dining table, bearing fresh fruit and flowers, was set at the foot of the bed. Like the room, the bathroom had 25-foot ceilings.

Night 2 was at the other end of the price spectrum, at a still-developing hacienda known as San Antonio Chalante.

Diane Dutton de Tuyub, a college archeology lecturer and horsewoman from Florida, owns a bed-and-breakfast in Merida and in 1997 joined with partners to buy the 800-acre hacienda near Izamal, 44 miles east of Merida. San Antonio Chalante is still a rustic spot (lacking telephones, staffers communicate with Izamal by radio), but nine individually themed rooms are available for rent.

My fan-cooled room--named, unaccountably, for the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch--cost $35 for the night. Two reproductions of works by Bosch (Bosco in Spanish) hung on the walls, and a Spanish-language tome about the painter lay on the night stand. (The one air-conditioned room, known as Nefertiti, fetches $50.)

Dinner is $10 for two, and bottled beer costs 60 cents. I didn’t ride any of the owner’s horses ($7 an hour), but this is a great place to be if you love horses and enjoy a more rural feeling.

Heberto Valenzuela, son of a prosperous Merida family, has spent holidays at Hacienda Tanil all his life. The charming, rambling complex, which sits at the fringe of Merida’s satellite city, Uman, dates to 1607 and includes a livestock operation with about 300 head of cattle. After lobbying from Valenzuela and his grandmother, the family started taking guests last year, charging $50 to $75 nightly each for four guest rooms. All have private baths, and three have air-conditioning.

In a telephone conversation before I arrived, Valenzuela warned me that it wouldn’t be fancy. And sure enough, once I’d arrived for my stay on Night 3 and dispatched a dinner of panuchos--tortillas stuffed with beans and topped with shredded beef--the caretaker excused himself, and I realized I was alone, captive and waterless for the night.

Like my room in other haciendas, this one had high ceilings, but it was more personal, decorated as it was with knickknacks. (This is where Valenzuela’s grandmother stays when she’s here.) From the window is a view of the countryside and the cattle.

When the caretaker returned the next morning and I complained, he reached into a dim corner and opened the pipe that controlled water flow to the house. Then he scrambled me some eggs and chorizo. When I peered outside to the courtyard, a gorgeous white horse stood saddled and waiting in the shade, in case I wanted to ride.

(Reminder to self: If you nose around off-the-beaten-path haciendas, you must expect off-the-beaten-path experiences.)

Eventually, when the family has finished building four new guest rooms, a full-time innkeeper will run the operation, Valenzuela said. Visitors may prefer to wait until then, or settle for a $15 tour (transportation from Merida included).

My last night was at the 26-room Hacienda Temozon, an hour’s drive south of Merida. This hacienda, opened in 1996, is less intimate and more stately than its sibling San Jose Cholul. The main buildings are coated in rich red hues, and a second-story dining veranda looks out over a long, pale-blue pool. Peacocks stalk the back lawn, and roughhewn ladders descend into a pair of cenotes--caves leading into the vast network of underground rivers that run just beneath the Yucatan’s flat plains.

The maid here unfurled a hammock in the front part of my room, and I tried it out, dozing off for a quick nap before padding off for bed in the adjoining room.

For those not interested in paying $315 a night, the good news is that there’s lunch. Each of the Grupo Plan haciendas features an atmospheric but relatively affordable restaurant. (Reservations are recommended for non-guests.) Most main courses cost less than $10, and the menus are strong on Yucatecan specialties such as sopa de lima, a broth flavored by lime juice with bits of chicken. Another favorite is pork or beef marinated in achiote (which has a slightly bitter flavor) and sour orange juice, then wrapped in banana leaves and cooked underground on coals.

Even without chasing after haciendas, a four-night visitor to the Yucatan is likely to be busy. Most tourists make day trips to the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza and Uxmal, pass a day or two exploring Merida and perhaps make a side trip to the well-peopled beaches of Cancun (a five-hour drive east of Merida) or the flamingo-rich shores of the preserve at Celestun. Some also spend an afternoon or a night in the yellow-hued city of Izamal, where the Spaniards plopped a massive convent atop a Mayan ruin in the 17th century.

Visitors are bound to encounter a few haciendas whether they’re seeking them or not. One prominent site, south of Merida on the road to Uxmal, is the Hacienda San Pedro Ochil. Opened in 1999 as another well-capitalized Grupo Plan project, it has no guest rooms but includes an open-air, ochre-walled restaurant and craft work center with teams of woodworkers, embroiderers and weavers, along with a shop and a small but well-appointed museum of local hacienda history. For a tourist making a quick bus tour to Uxmal, this makes a logical stop on the way--and seems to have been designed as exactly that.

Another roadside hacienda is San Idelfonso Teya, a 1683 complex just east of Merida on the main highway to Cancun. Rehabilitated and opened as a restaurant in the early 1990s, Hacienda Teya since 1995 has also offered six air-conditioned, well-appointed bedrooms at $125 nightly. Back in the luxury category, the 17th century Hacienda Katanchel sits a few miles east of Hacienda Teya along the road to Cancun. Katanchel’s buildings are well back from the road, and the grounds (740 acres in all) are thick with palms and jungle vegetation.

Built as a cattle ranch, converted to henequen, then reopened as a lodging in 1997, Katanchel has 40 rooms and prices of $200 and up nightly. Many of the guest rooms started out as workers’ cottages.

The site’s rescuers--architect Anibal Gonzalez and his wife, Monica Hernandez, the sister of Banamex’s Roberto Hernandez--clearly have a sense of drama. Arriving for lunch, I was pulled from the entrance to the restaurant by a horse drawing a carriage along the plantation’s old narrow-gauge rail system.

In the restaurant, set in the former machine house, a dozen ceiling fans stir the thick air and a set of halogen fixtures throws a dramatic light on the dining area. There were plenty of organic dishes on the menu, and in other public rooms, walls and archways of bright yellow and orange rose above well-trodden checkerboard tile floors. It’s a resort looking forward and backward at the same time--which, given the history of the hacienda, can be dizzying.

Not as chic but still charming was the Hacienda Ruinas de Ake east of Merida. Here the din of those 19th century days still seems to echo. Then again, that might just be the racket from the machine house. The Hacienda Ruinas de Ake, bordered by Mayan ruins and more than 200 years old itself, still produces 3 to 4 tons weekly of sisal, running it through a 1912 machine house. Teo the foreman welcomes visitors, and for about $3 offers a tour that traces henequen’s path from field to spool.

Teo, who spoke no English but was kind enough to dumb down his Spanish for me, led me past massive grinding wheels and teetering stacks of unprocessed henequen, and pointed to a high tin roof so peppered with holes that it made me think of the night sky. In the next building we found his work force--a dozen men expertly running loud, grimy and intricate machines that spat out sisal onto the floor in long, blond coils.

In the living area of the house, a lone bed lay beneath a snakeskin nailed to the wall in a room 30 feet high and 40 feet long, with a 9-inch TV for entertainment.

Andres Solis, the hacienda’s owner, says he hopes to renovate the property as a self-catering lodging in the next year or two.

Yucatecan state officials have been offering incentives to buyers who renovate haciendas--and it appears to be working. The market reflects that increased interest, says “Hacienda” coauthor Joe Carr. Two years ago, you could buy a hacienda fixer-upper for $20,000, Carr says. Now Merida real estate brokers are asking $140,000 or more.

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GUIDEBOOK

Arranging a Hacienda Stay

Getting there: Connecting flights from LAX to Merida International Airport are available on Aeromexico, Mexicana and Continental. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $488.

Where to stay: All rates exclude 17% tax and meals, unless noted.

For luxury: Hacienda San Jose Cholul, Hacienda Temozon and Hacienda Santa Rosa (all in Yucatan within 50 miles of Merida), telephone (800) 337-4685 or 011-52-99-44-36-37, fax 011-52-99-44-84-84, Internet https://www.ghmhotels.com. Rates $315 nightly and up.

Also luxurious is the Hacienda Katanchel, just east of Merida. Rates begin at $200, double. Tel. 011-52-99-23-40-20, fax (888) 882-9470 (toll free) or 011-52-99-23-40-00, Internet https://www.hacienda-katanchel.com.

For moderate rates: Rates for Hacienda Tanil’s four rooms are $50 to $75, breakfast included, no credit cards. Tel. 011-52-99-25-91-94, fax 011-52-99-25-36-46, e-mail hebertovalenzuela@hotmail.com.

Rates at Hacienda Chichen, tel. (800) 624-8451 or 011-52-99-24-21-50, fax 011-52-99-24-50-11, Internet https://www.yucatanadventure.com.mx, are $85 nightly. The site, about 75 miles east of Merida, recently expanded to 28 rooms. It has been a lodging since the early 1920s when U.S. archeologists descended on Chichen Itza.

For a tight budget: Rates are $35 to $50, including breakfast (no credit cards), at Hacienda San Antonio Chalante, about 44 miles east of Merida. It is reachable via the Macan Che Bed & Breakfast in Izamal, tel. and fax 011-52-99-54-02-87, Internet https://www.macanche.com.

Worth visiting: Hacienda Yaxcopoil, tel. 011-52-99-27-26-06, Internet https://dyred.sureste.com/yaxcopoil, is a museum on Federal Highway 261 about 20 miles south of Merida. Open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sundays. Lodgings are expected to be completed in July.

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