Mexico has the lot: a great climate, eye-catching scenery, knockout beaches and a gripping cultural history. The only trouble is, it’s vast, and in a single trip you could never cover it all. So why try? Skip the squalor and sprawl of Mexico City, the tack of Tijuana and the vast distances you’d need to cover to see the territory between them, and make a beeline for the Yucatan Peninsula. Jutting out between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, the region is everything that’s good about Mexico.

For a start, this is the northern heartland of what was once Mayan country. The region is freckled with some of the most impressive archeological sites ever discovered; the ancient cities of Chichen Itza and Uxmal top a mighty impressive list. The Yucatan also has perhaps the most picturesque colonial cities in Mexico — Merida and Campeche stand out — while the countryside is full of evocative evidence of an era when this was one of the agricultural powerhouses of the world.

All over, you’ll find the dramatically dilapidated shells of haciendas — the former homes of the conquistadors, where plantation, processing plant and stately home were one and the same. The best of these have been converted into exquisite hotels, and if you like your five-star luxury to come with six-star character, they are exceptional places to stay.

Once the history’s done, there are the beaches. The so-called Mayan Riviera, stretching from Cancun to Tulum, has some of the best in Mexico, as well as a mushrooming selection of Caribbean-side hideaway hotels.

Here is our guide to a two-week, twin-centre break on the Yucatan, making use of an open-jaw flight into Campeche or Merida and out of Cancun. Spend your first six nights at two or three of those charming haciendas, then drive a few hours east and chill out with beachside cocktails at your pick of the resorts.

Historic Yucatan

All talk of the Yucatan begins with the Mayans. For more than a millennium, this was their land, a jungle tableau on which their will was writ large. There were cities of temples, castles and grand, stepped pyramids; pools for sacrifice and courts for elaborate games. Then the Spanish came, with their Christianity, weapons and disease. The indigenous people were killed or enslaved, their cities lost to the forest.

With the Mayans crushed, the Yucatan turned all industrial, and stately haciendas sprang up across the region, combining plantations, factories, stables and homes. By 1900, there were almost 1,000 on the peninsula, run like small feudal kingdoms and churning out corn, sugar and, most lucrative of all, oro verde — “green gold”, the sisal plant, used to make ropes and mats. World demand was great; pro-fits were high. The plantation owners built private railways, mansions, chapels and schools. Then revolution came, and many haciendas were abandoned, then looted, then “lost”. The invention of nylon was the final straw. The world preferred synthetics to sisal, and the heyday of the hacienda was over. The Yucatan’s buildings collapsed into decades of decline and dereliction.

Over the past 10 years, though, a small group of these fascinating buildings have been restored to their former glory — and some even beyond it. Structures have been strengthened, archways rebuilt, mosaic floors retiled and chapels repainted — lavender blue, daffodil yellow, sunset red. What were once water storage tanks are now luxury pools; stables are bedrooms; machine rooms are museums. The hacienda hotels exude atmosphere and colonial class, and the new lords of the manor are paying guests. They make superb bases from which to explore.

HACIENDA UAYAMON

Furthest south of the restored haciendas is Uayamon (00 52-981 829 7527), 15 miles outside the city of Campeche. At the turn of the 19th century, Uayamon operated as a self- contained village. As well as living quarters — opulent casitas for the masters, stone hovels for the Mayan workers — the hacienda had a chapel, a cemetery, a school, a machine house, even its own railway station. Damaged in a 1913 uprising that was the beginning of the hacienda’s industrial end, it has recently been restored to its former splendour. Each casita is now a luxurious stand-alone cottage, and a pool is sunk into what was once a factory floor.

Uayamon is ideally sited for exploring Yucatan’s diverse past. Campeche, a Unesco World Heritage Site, has Mayan roots but feels colonial in root and branch. It is reminiscent of a smaller, less tumbledown Havana — its stone sea walls protecting a cobbled collection of pillared and pastel houses, at their best as the sun sets over the sea.

Also near Uayamon is the Mayan site of Edzna, inhabited all the way from 600BC until the 16th century. Rather like the colonial settlements that followed them, Mayan cities were based around grand squares, and Edzna has one of the most impressive of them all. Its plaza principal is a huge site surrounded by towering structures. The most breathtaking is the so-called “Five- Storey Building” — a cascade of stone, with terrace upon terrace adding up to a temple, pyramid and palace in one.

HACIENDA SANTA ROSA

Sixty miles to the north lies Uxmal, a sheer joy to wander around. In contrast to sites such as Chichen Itza and Tulum, it remains quiet — on an average day, you’ll find more resident iguanas clambering over the ruins than human visitors trying to take a snap. It wasn’t always so. In Mayan times, Uxmal was the political centre of southern Yucatan and home to 25,000 people. Its name means “thrice built” — temples built upon temples as different factions invaded and ran the city.

Today, in a large forest clearing, a temple pyramid, stone columns, a palace and an ancient ball court rise up out of the earth like the secret lair of a baddie from an Indiana Jones movie. Thrillingly, there’s probably much more to find here: though the site was first excavated in 1929, undergrowth still rules, and more ruins are thought to lie beneath.

Forty miles from Uxmal, just off the road towards the Gulf of Mexico coast, is a second restored hacienda, Santa Rosa (999 910 4852). Airy architecture, a huge lawn, a peach-red chapel and a pool overlooked by the former processing chimney make this the most attractive of all the haciendas. And with just 11 guest rooms — most with their own petal-strewn plunge pool — it’s also the most intimate.

The hotel is close to an intriguing driving trail known as “the route of the abandoned haciendas”. Using their chimney stacks as waymarkers, you can follow the road from Chunchucmil to Maxcanu, southwest of Merida, and pass five forgotten haciendas in little more than 15 miles.

Each has its own chimney, towering and proud. Otherwise, they are ornate shells, bombed out by decades of neglect: a tumbledown Moorish arch here; a parade of roofless stone columns there; perhaps a ballroom floor, its cavernous potholes exposing wooden beams like bones through an open wound. Nowadays, the plazas of these haciendas are football pitches, and kids clamber over rusty machinery that was once the envy of the world.

HACIENDA TEMOZON

Not far east of Santa Rosa is Temozon (999 923 8089), the largest and most opulent of the restored haciendas — more spectacular rooms, an even more expansive pool. Originally a cattle ranch, by the late 19th century Temozon was one of the most productive sisal plants in Mexico, its success reflected in the opulence of its buildings. Recent restoration has not meant sterilisation. Not every crumbling wall has been rebuilt, and as an artistic statement, giant tears in the bright paintwork remain.

Peacocks roam the gardens, adding to the atmosphere of chaotic colour, while the vast grounds are littered with relics of the past — giant storage trunks, railway cargo carriages and fraying hammocks strung from tropical trees.

Temozon is the ideal base from which to visit the colonial city of Merida, just over 20 miles away. Although the city has Mayan roots, Merida today looks every bit the classic Spanish city, with the pastel- coloured houses of the first conquistadors much in evidence. Its wide-open plazas still remain the focal points of civilised city life, and Sunday is a particularly good day to visit: the streets are colonised by markets and on every other corner a different band plays, competing with the constant cry of the ice-cream vendors.

HACIENDA SAN JOSE

The final hacienda on our itinerary is also the one closest to the top-ranking Mayan site of Chichen Itza. Hacienda San Jose (999 910 4617), in Tixkokob, is the very picture of industry made beautiful, with lavender-painted archways, a pool splendidly converted from an old water tank and beds suspended from wooden beams.

Chichen Itza itself is an hour and a half away, along the main road towards Cancun. It is undoubtedly the most impressive Mayan site in Mexico, but also the most crowded — early morning or evening are the best times to go, unless you want to be mown down by the bus tours from the east.

The vast complex was founded by the Mayans in about AD700, and later taken over by the warmongering Toltecas, from central Mexico. At the site today, all spheres of Mayan and Tolteca society are on display: administrative, religious and recreational. Most imposing is the castle, a vast pyramid with exactly 365 steps on all four sides — the Mayans are thought to have used it as a grand stone calendar.

There are also ornate temples and a sacrificial pond, but most interesting of all is the huge Gran Juego de Pelota, the Mayan version of Old Trafford. The Juego is an enormous stone-walled stadium with viewing stands hewn from rock; the rules of the game it hosted are lost to the ages. Mounted high on the longest walls are two stone rings, and it’s thought victory was achieved with a shot through either — rather like Quidditch, but without, one assumes, the broomsticks. Carvings on the side of the arena make one thing very clear, however. After the match, someone — the best guess is the losing captain, but some think the entire losing team — was beheaded in a sacrificial ritual.

A good, clear strip of highway runs the three hours east from Chichen Itza to the Caribbean coast. With the culture covered, it’s time to hit the beach.


Seaside Yucatan

Every evening, so they say, more than a thousand candles are lit by hand around the lush grounds of the Maroma Resort and Spa. It’s probably not worth taking the time to check, though. Every minute spent candle-counting will be a minute out of a steam bath, a minute away from the warm, moonlit sea, or a minute away from your bed, as comfortable as a postcoital cuddle.

What’s safe to say is that at night, Maroma twinkles with candlelight, every path through its 80-hectare gardens shimmering, every casita door flickering with the warm Caribbean breeze. Numbers? They mean little in paradise.

Just 30 miles north of the resort is Cancun, a place where you’d be hard pressed to find a single candle. In what has become a Mexican mega- resort, neon is the order of the day. Billboards advertising assorted Americana jostle for position with US-style shopping malls and brash, brutalist hotels. Whatever charm Cancun once had has long been buried under concrete and commerce: this is a seaside Las Vegas, except without the casinos or the charm.

The town does have one saving grace, however. Its airport is the main gateway for the island of Isla de Mujeres and the Mayan Riviera — the 81 miles of Caribbean coast that stretch south to Tulum.

Along the Riviera’s length lie the Cancun alternatives: some, admittedly, are wannabes; others, like Maroma, are a world away. There is a beach for every taste, a bungalow for every budget.

With Cancun itself just too tacky to consider, the traveller essentially has three choices here: first, the Mayan Riviera stretch, with some of the best boutique hotels in Mexico, and some of the most beautiful Caribbean beaches; second, the more rustic accommodation options that stretch south from the Riviera, near the Mayan ruins of Tulum; and third, the eclectic mix of options on Isla de Mujeres, just offshore from Cancun.

Note that all the prices quoted below are for mid- season, which roughly extends from January to April. Prices in low season (September- December, May-June) will be 10%-20% lower, and in high season (July-August), 10%-20% higher. At Christmas, prices are close to double the mid- season rate.

THE MAYAN RIVIERA

Highway 307 spools out along the entire length of the Riviera Maya, just a mile or two back from the shore. To the west is low-lying jungle; to the east are mangrove swamps full of wildlife, and a wonderful beach that stretches right down the coast. As you go further south, you’ll also find some of the most luxurious small resorts in Mexico.

Technically, the entire length of beach is public. The problem for day-trippers from Cancun is that most of the land between the highway and the beach is not. Away from the towns of Puerto Morelos and Playa del Carmen, the only roads linking the two are the gated driveways of the resorts: tough for the hordes, fantastic for anyone staying in one of the über- exclusive retreats.

Maroma (00 52-998 872 8200, www.maromahotel.com; doubles from £215) is a prime example of the type. Exclusive enough to have catered for Prince William, Tony and Cherie Blair, and Sharon Stone, this has become the standard to which other hotels aspire — say you’re staying at Maroma and you raise eyebrows right along the coast.

The hotel’s name derives from a local sea current and means “somersault” in Spanish. It couldn’t be a less appropriate name. Nothing about Maroma is chaotic or upside-down. Its 58 rooms, each set in a thatched cottage, are cosy, immaculate and within 20 paces of a pool. Its beach is cleared daily of unsightly seaweed, and at night, all those candles resemble dancing fairies. Maroma is the ultimate in romantic chic — its restaurant so low-lit that waiters carry torches, to prove that what you’re eating looks as good as it tastes.

Hot on Maroma’s heels at the luxury end of the market is the Ikal del Mar (984 877 3000, www.ikaldelmar.com; doubles from £254), a slightly smaller resort whose cottages are so immersed in the foliage that it’s impossible to see one room from another. All have private pools. The beach here, Playa Xcalacoco, is slightly narrower than Maroma’s, but the hotel has a beautiful pool running right to the sand.

A more affordable option on this stretch of coast is KaiLuum II (00 1 800 538 6802, www.mexicoholiday.com; doubles £54), on Punta Bete beach.

The rooms here are tentalapas — a hybrid of thatched cottage and commando tent, set right beside the surf. It’s a simple place on a wonderfully soft stretch of sand.

Finally comes Playa Tankah, just north of Tulum, with another quiet stretch of beach and a couple of small hotel resorts. Slightly less pretentious than the celeb hang-outs of Maroma and Ikal del Mar, Casa Cenote (998 874 5170, www.casacenote.com; doubles £85) has a small number of casita cottages self-built by the owner. It has no pool, and is not as luxurious as some other places, but it is private and offers extremely good value.

Midway between Cancun and Tulum is Playa del Carmen, which is fast developing a reputation as the party capital of the Mayan Riviera. The town is currently Mexico’s fastest- growing, and it really feels that way — there’s an incredible pace to the place. All manner of feverish activity — selling, eating, drinking and building, building, building — goes on in every direction. The frenetic nightlife feels less sterile than in Cancun, and the beach — amazingly clean and well tended, given its urban location — is buzzing day and night. Great fun, but definitely not a place to get away from it all.

Deseo (984 879 3620, www.hoteldeseo.com; doubles from £88), in the heart of Playa, is probably the trendiest place on the entire Riviera. Few of its guests bother with mornings, instead grabbing the nightlife with both hands — both in the hotel’s chic poolside bar and out in the town itself. The hotel has just 15 rooms, all with ultramodern, minimalist decor: it’s an Asian-Italian fusion in Central America.

The best of Playa del Carmen’s cheaper options are Kinbe (984 873 0441, www.kinbe.com; doubles from £25), with 19 rooms in a simple but delightful treehouse-style complex; and Blue Parrot (984 873 0083, www.blueparrot.com; doubles from £65, beach huts from £28), which has the town’s best beach bar and is one of the few places in Playa with a pool.

TULUM AND THE SOUTH

At the far end of the Mayan Riviera, a 2½-hour drive from Cancun airport, Tulum is most famous for its collection of Mayan ruins. They are not as spectacular as those further west, certainly, but their location — with the ancient temples almost overhanging the cliff — makes them aesthetically unbeatable.

Many people arrive, visit the ruins, then leave town again. It’s a big mistake. Tulum has some of the best beaches on the coast — exceptionally soft, dune-backed and easily access-ible. This openness, combined with Tulum’s relative distance from Cancun, means the area attracts a more laid-back crowd than the beaches further north — a mix of backpackers and slightly more adventurous package holidaymakers.

Accommodation is in two areas: strung along the beach closest to the ruins; and along the road that runs south beside the water towards Punta Allen. Be warned: this coast-hugging road south of Tulum is bad, and you’ll need a 4WD or very nifty steering skills to negotiate even the first few miles. Beyond that, quick hands alone won’t save your suspension.

Plush is a relative term, and there is nothing south of Tulum to compare to the boutique retreats further north. In many ways, though, that is part of the charm. A short walk along the beach from the ruins, the Italian-run La Vita e Bella (984 806 4628, www.lavitaebella-tulum.com; doubles about £55) has 10 bungalows that seem to undulate with the sand dunes. Each has a balcony, complete with wicker chairs and a hammock — many guests choose to sleep in the latter.

The other higher-end options are a few miles down the coast, along the potholed road towards Punta Allen. Mayan Tulum (984 877 8638; doubles £51), on a thinner and rockier stretch of beach, is delightful, and offers absolute relaxation both on and off the beach. The current favourite on this stretch, though, is Zamas (00 1 415 387 9806, www.zamas.com; doubles £34), with basic rooms but a trendy crowd and a seafood restaurant to die for.

The Tulum region also has the cheapest backpacker accommodation in Yucatan. A mile or two south of the ruins, Mirador Cabanas (00 52-984 879 6019; beach huts £9, or £6 with a hammock rather than a bed) offers a glimpse of what the entire Riviera coast was like 15 years ago. There is a string of similar places right along the beach.

ISLA DE MUJERES

A half-hour boat ride from Cancun lies the “Island of Women” — a thin sliver of land five miles long and seldom more than half a mile wide. Style-wise, this is something of a halfway house between the chic boutique hotels of the Riviera and the back-to-basics options of the Tulum region.

As its monstrous neighbour grew and grew on the mainland, Isla rather stumbled into tourism, and it has the feel of a friendly frontier town that is just beginning to find its sophisticated feet. Jumbles of telephone wires hang above the narrow streets of its only town, and the beaches, though soft and wide, are far from the groomed sand fairways that typify much of the Mayan Riviera.

Although there are a couple of smarter resorts on the island, most accommodation is in the mid-range or budget band — a notch above backpacker, but far short of Sheraton.

The most stylish place is Na Balam (998 877 0279, www.nabalam.com; doubles £79), offering low-rise rooms right on the best of the island’s beaches and a great beach bar full of swing seats. Right next door, Cabanas Maria del Mar (998 877 0179, www.cabanasdelmar.com; doubles £60) has a lovely pool and a large courtyard.

Otherwise, the island’s youth hostel, Poc-Na (998 877 0090, www.pocna.com; £8 for a bed in an air-conditioned dorm, £16 for a private double), is surprisingly comfortable, has a large beach area and lays on parties every night.

Andrew Thomas travelled courtesy of Cazenove & Loyd Powerstock

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