VIVA LA MEXICO

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Text by Alex Marashian   Photos by Rainer Hosch

VIVA LA MEXICO

Twilight in Tulum. A soft breeze. A big, bright moon, almost full, rising over the Caribbean sea. And me, bobbing here, my back to the shore, neck-deep in saltwater so soothingly warm I almost can’t tell where my body starts or ends, wondering how I’ll ever manage to leave this place. Never mind that it’s only my first day.

Tulum has that effect on people, it seems: They come for a week and stay for years. Just look back to shore, a ribbon of twinkling lights where once stood only palms. Or take the story of Nicolas Malleville and Francesca Bonato, in whose gorgeous beachfront property we’ve decamped for the next few days.

Nicolas is an accidental hotelier. When he first came to Tulum back in 2003, he knew he had landed in his own tropical dream. A successful fashion model, he bought himself a plot of land on the beach, propped up a tent and made himself at home. Over time, that tent became a stone hut, a spa and then a hotel, Coquí Coquí.

In the early days, Nico was practically alone on this particular strip of beach, but it wasn’t to last long. Tulum was too good for word not to get out, and the presence of Nico, low-key guy though he is, probably didn’t help matters: Soon, friends like Jade Jagger were dropping in, and Tulum was on the international fashion map.

Nicolas first met his partner, Francesca, back in 2004. She was walking down the beach, still remote and largely uninhabited at the time, and saw a sign that read ‘spa.’ Then she noticed the sandy blond nature boy working on the house adjacent. Together, the pair have turned Coquí Coquí into the most desirable hotel in Tulum.

Over the course of today, we’ve met or heard stories about a number of people like Nico and Francesca, people from Europe, the States or South America who settled in Tulum to start a new life. One of them, Gerardo Beber, a kite-surfer from Argentina, came zipping across the waves and ended up in our photo shoot.

Gerardo and most others we speak with say there’s something special, even spiritual, about this stretch of coast. The Mayans, who chose its most spectacular beach to build their walled city, Tulu’um, probably felt the same. Maybe Pablo Escobar, the Columbian drug lord who built here in the 80s, felt a twinge of something, too.

But if indeed, as we heard repeatedly today, there’s "a special energy" in Tulum, it helps explain why spiritualism in general, and yoga in particular, is so big here. In the morning, the beach is a mosaic of yoga mats, everyone out saluting the sun before it gets too hot. Signs advertising assorted New Age therapies line the road coming in.

Still bobbing amid the gently rolling waves, I turn towards shore.

Straight ahead of me is the wonderful Coquí Coquí. An unpretentious, almost rustic-looking stone construction, all creams and chocolate browns by day, the hotel is so effortlessly chic, you almost don’t notice it. Too bad about its neighbors, though.

Coquí Beachfront property has been divided and subdivided until there’s a hardly a vacant lot left (and any which does remain is going for millions). Houses and hotels, none approaching the good taste of our hosts’, are crammed together, one after the other. Intimacy, it seems, has been replaced by community.

That’s not a bad thing, necessarily. The mega-developers have been kept out. Hotels are small, quirky and generally owner-operated. But for those who knew it when it was a lot less crowded, the Tulum of today must be a bit of a bummer. Perhaps that’s why Nico and Francesca have resettled inland, in Valladolid, where we’ll be heading next.

In the almost darkness, I can just make out members our team, milling about on the hotel terrace. Dinner is almost ready, and I should be getting out now. But oh, how good it is to bob here in the warm sea, the moon rising above. I wonder how I’ll ever be able to leave this place. Then again, it’s only my first day.