Monday 03 July 2023 4:09 pm

Andaz Mayakoba is a near-perfect beach resort on the Mexican coast

Life & Style Editor

Playa del Carmen lies halfway between Cancun and Tulum, both geographically and spiritually. It’s not quite the tourist hellscape of the former, a haven for spring breakers and the kind of traveller who wears sports socks with sandals, but neither does it have the bohemian charm of the latter, which has positioned itself as the Ibiza of the Americas.

So it was with some trepidation that I boarded a flight to the Yucatan province on Mexico’s Caribbean coast for an all-inclusive, five-day beach resort holiday. (These fears were not allayed by the Russian lady wearing a neon blue Juicy Couture lounge suit who sat next to me on the plane.)

Thankfully, pulling into the Mayakoba estate is like entering an hermetically sealed world, one precision engineered by an army of designers and landscape architects to present a perfectly manicured slice of paradise, nary a blade of grass nor grain of sand out of place.

Once you enter through the grand gates you can essentially ignore the outside world – indeed you’re encouraged to, with a fleet of golf buggies and pedal bikes scooting around the vast complex and a suite of bars and restaurants providing enough diversions to keep you perpetually sated. The first thing that strikes you is the sheer size of the place.

Mayakoba houses four hotel groups – Andaz, Fairmont, Rosewood and Banyan Tree – each with its own gigantic resort peppered with beachside and lagoon-side villas. I barely strayed from the Andaz, which alone occupies a vast tract of land; a buggy ride from the beach to the farthest restaurant lasts six or seven minutes. You certainly wouldn’t want to walk it at night after a mescal or three.

There are few surprises here: rather this is the kind of place that goes out of its way to iron out anything that might catch you off guard, aiming instead to utterly perfect the beachside experience.

Perhaps the purest expression of this is the lagoon tour, where you glide across impossibly clear waters that snake through mangrove forests so verdant that none of it looks real, like you’re on a ride at Disneyland, with even the wildlife posing dutifully at the correct spots: iguanas lazing on low-hanging branches, a caiman basking on a rock, cormorants drying their wings in the sun.

This philosophy is repeated throughout the resort. My room was a chic rectangle of polished concrete complete with private plunge pool. On the beach you’ll find dozens of loungers flanked by neat stacks of towels, and an attendant will immediately rush over to furnish you with an ice bucket filled with your beverage of choice. Want to swim in the sea? There’s a section of water fitted with giant filters to make sure you’re not disturbed by the seaweed that clogs this stretch of ocean. There’s a yoga and sound bath studio, a dive centre, an 18-hole golf course, a pool with resident DJ, and half a dozen places to eat, ranging from spins on local dishes to the kind of international cuisine beloved of big hotel groups.

Amate, the flagship, is decked out like a well-to-do Mexican home, complete with bookshelves housing such titles as The Holy Bible and The Fundamentals of Financial Accounting. It’s “Latin” rather than Mexican, encompassing everything from Peruvian ceviche to Uruguayan stew and Argentinian cheese, each dish a Jackson Pollock collision of colour and texture.

The day I arrived a collective of local fishermen had set up a pop-up seafood grill on the terrace, serving fried oysters and thick, meaty chocolate clams. Another evening I ate sea bass on the beach as the sun set. You certainly don’t go hungry.

It’s all so meticulously put together that leaving the resort feels like a jarring clang back to reality. The Andaz organises planned or bespoke excursions, including the one I joined to the Melipona bee reserve, a two hour drive down the choked motorway that connects the north and south of the province. We eventually arrived at a remote Mayan village where the locals farm both European and local bees, the latter producing honey that’s said to have medicinal benefits. Mmmm, delicious medicinal benefits.

After a serious trek through the forest to check out the hives, the village matriarch made us tacos on a wood-fired hob. If it’s your first trip to this area you should also arrange a trip to the amazing “cenotes” – underground limestone caves – of which there are some 10,000 across the region.

And then I was back on the beach at Mayakoba, sipping an ice cold michelada, listening to a group of American finance bros long-distance call their clients about “interesting new investment opportunities”, presumably fired up after an afternoon on the back nine.

Mayakoba feels as far away from the Melipona bee reserve as it does from London; an independent nation state designed to wring all stresses out of life. On those terms it’s a roaring success, approaching the Platonic ideal of what a resort can offer. If “beach holiday” factors in your plans for the summer, look no further.

NEED TO KNOW

Steve travelled as a guest of Andaz Hotels by Hyatt and Untold Story Travel. Rates at Andaz Mayakoba Resort Riviera Maya start from £310 per night (andazmayakoba.com). Untold Story Traveloffers bespoke luxury travel experiences to Mexico and destinations around the world (untoldstorytravel.com).

Add 48 hours in Mexico City

If you have an extra couple of days to spare, take an internal flight to the amazing Mexican capital…

Trying to see Mexico City in 48 hours is a bit like being handed the complete works of Shakespeare and being told you have 10 minutes to flick through it: you might stumble across some good bits but it’s really just a tantalising glimpse at something you have no hope of fully comprehending.

You can, nevertheless, have a great time, with the world’s fifth biggest city (population 22 million) a cultural and culinary hotspot to rival any in the world.

The most famous tourist attraction is the Blue House where the artist Frida Kahlo lived for most of her life. Located in the Colonia del Carmen area, the house became a haunt for some of the most important artists of the 20th century. Much of it remains as it was when Kahlo died there in 1957, including the bed where she spent her final moments. It’s a stunning building, part museum, part art gallery, populated by works by Kahlo herself and many of those who passed through. Give yourself enough time to relax in the expansive gardens and check out the new exhibition of Kahlo’s distinctive dresses.

If architecture is your thing, a trip to one of the houses designed by Luis Barragán is a must. His properties, which pioneered fusing architecture and nature, are recognised as some of the most important examples of their kind in the world. The most famous is Luis Barragán House in the Miguel Hidalgo district but it sells out quick; I managed to get a ticket for an intimate tour of the nearby Casa Pedregal, a stunning home built over volcanic rocks whose organic shapes are incorporated into the walls and garden. It’s a wonderful, meditative experience, quite unlike anything I’ve seen before. The area around Casa Pedregal is also worth checking out, including the restaurant-cum-cafecum-record shop next door.

I stayed at the Andaz Mexico City, a stylish, modern hotel that opened earlier this year. The buzzy Cabuya Rooftop restaurant is worth a visit – it has a glass-sided swimming pool if you’re feeling brave – but if you fancy something a little more low-key there are great bars and taquerias in the surrounding neighbourhood of La Condesa, which boasts colonial architecture and an air of nonchalant cool reminiscent of Shoreditch circa 2010.