South of the Border

by Matt Morgan

The Southwestern United States is home to some of the most exclusive, most beautiful and most effective resort spas and destination spas in the world. However, if you’re looking for a spa experience that truly is in a world of its own, you need to look no further than our neighbor to the south.

Mexico’s weather is near-perfect year-round, the kind you’d only expect in a Mediterranean climate. Unique scenery, culture and indigenous treatments also contribute to making Mexico an ideal destination for avid spa-goers.

Scenery

Often the top draw of the best Mexican spas is the sheer beauty, serenity and diversity of the country’s coastline.

The crystal-blue waters and white, sandy beaches on the coast of San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas—Los Cabos—in Baja California Sur are unequalled. Mexican spas deliver at every turn, in five stars—or five diamonds.

Las Ventanas al Paraíso was the only property in Los Cabos to receive AAA’s Five Diamond rating for 2005, a rating it has held for four years straight. The property was designed to blend into and complement its surroundings, meaning a spa of this caliber is the only place a discriminating spa-goer can find the beauty of the Mexican coast.

Where else but Mexico can you sip margaritas under thatched palapas while being served by pool butlers? And where else will those butlers wake you up in your hammock in time for your 4 p.m. facial?

Further down the coast, just north of Puerto Vallarta, Nayarit, guests of Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita can become one with the Mexican Riviera’s nature and culture. The 1,500-acre property overlooking the Bahía de Banderas (Banderas Bay) brings together the best of Mexico’s beaches, desert, jungle and mountains and preserves them through careful ecological planning and development.

Scenery, Culture & Gray whales, which raise their young in the bay, can be spotted there from December through March. The bay also is home to four types of marine turtles. In fact, each summer resort guests can observe the nesting process and even watch baby turtles take their first trip toward the ocean.

Away from the coast, just one hour’s drive from San Diego in Tecate, Baja California, is Rancho La Puerta. Considering itself to be the world’s first fitness spa, the Ranch provides 40 miles of trails ranging from rolling meadow walks to challenging mountainous hikes set within 150 acres (one acre for each guest) of Mediterranean-style gardens, native trees, olive groves, ponds and fountains. One hike leads to the Tres Estrellas organic garden, where most of the vegetables for the kitchen and the aromatic and medicinal herbs for the treatments are grown.

Culture

Mexico is steeped in tradition, history and heritage, and it shines through at its most exclusive spas.

If you like a little cerebral stimulation with your relaxation, visit the Cultural Center adjacent to the lobby at Four Seasons Punta Mita. Books, videos, computers and Internet are available daily—all with sweeping ocean views from a generous terrace. Tours and lectures teach about the Huichol Indians, tequila, whales, Mexican art and cuisine.

Punta Mita’s Apuane Spa, named after the Huichol language for a healing and spiritual stream of water, offers a variety of treatments that take advantage of the nutrient-rich ecology of Mexico.

Rancho La Puerta draws upon the spiritual legacy of the Kumeyaay Indians, who inhabited the land stretching from San Diego to 60 miles south of the Mexican border. They knew Mount Kuchumaa, which provides the fitness spa’s backdrop, as the “exalted high place.” Spiritual leaders were initiated at its summit, and the valleys and oak woodlands below it— where the Ranch has called home for 65 years—was an important gathering place for the tribes.

At Paraiso de la Bonita Resort & Thalasso near Cancun, Quintana Roo—another of Mexico’s AAA Five Diamond resorts—Mexican flavor is carefully melded with designs from around the world, namely the Mediterranean, India, Africa, Bali, China and the Caribbean. In fact, each suite is personally decorated with fabrics and treasures gathered by the resort’s owners during their travels across the globe. The exterior reflects the region’s Mayan culture and architecture, resulting in a feeling more like a private home than a hotel.

Treatments

Treatments Mexican spas feature rituals and ceremonies not found anywhere else in the world—because they incorporate traditions and heritage exclusive to the region. Indigenous herbs and plants also play an integral role in signature treatments.

Combine culture and spa, and you get Temazcal, a ritualistic and spiritual journey rooted in Mayan and Aztecan history. The ceremony, which is featured at Four Seasons Punta Mita and Las Ventanas al Paraíso, incorporates heat and steam, often with chanting, fasting and natural herbs, to heal and purify the mind, body and soul. The focal point of Temazcal is the communal adobe hut where guests are guided by a specialist to observe ancient wisdoms through song and music in a bath of herbal steam. While these types of steam treatments are not exclusive, the ritualistic aspects are unique to Mexico.

Paraiso de la Bonita—from its 22,000-square-foot Thalasso Center—and Las Ventanas al Paraíso are two of the few facilities in North America to practice thalasso-therapy, the ancient form of therapy using seawater. Thalasso-therapy—as defined by French physician De la Bonnardière in 1867—is “the combined use of all the beneficial aspects of the sea environment, [that is to say] the climate, sea water and various types of sea mud, seaweed, sand, and other substances derived from the sea,” according to the Federation Internationale De Thalasso-therapie. At Paraiso de la Bonita, water is pumped from the sea then treated, warmed and used in a variety of therapies including stress reduction, weight loss, and muscle and joint healing.