Bewitchment from beyond

Unique out-of-the-way resorts offer unspoiled solace, relaxation

By CINDY LOOSE
WASHINGTON POST

Two hours after joining a sea of American humanity at the airport in Cancun, Mexico, I’m finally getting close to the front of the snaking customs line. By the time it’s my turn to flip open my passport, my patience for crowds is spent.
Luckily, the hordes are heading to the high-rise hotels crammed along the beaches of Cancun. I am heading south.
Less than 40 minutes after putting my rental car in gear, I’m at a small resort of palm-thatched structures on a white beach that stretches between the ocean and the jungle.
At sunset, a young man carrying an Olympic-style torch runs barefoot over sand that is turning temporarily pink. He stops every few yards to ignite smaller torches along a path. I feel a lot closer to Tahiti than to Cancun.
“This is fantastic. I can’t believe this place,” says an arriving guest with wonder in her voice.
“Don’t tell anyone else about it,” says a man passing by.
But KaiLuum II is just one of many unique, out-of-the-way resorts nearby. The area south of Cancun is filled with charming treasures waiting to be discovered. They are particularly unexpected because they are so close to Cancun, the No. 1 international destination for U.S. tourists, according to a recent report. Cancun has the dense development and American feel to prove it.
Most are tucked a mile or so off the main highway, down bumpy, pot-holed roads that offer little promise. But the roads end at quiet beaches and small, individually owned hotels that seem preserved from an earlier era of travel.
Not every property in this area between Cancun and Tulum fits that definition. In fact, the area is in danger of one day becoming yet another “little Miami,” as some locals derisively call Cancun. Mexican officials have built a smooth highway and have given the area a spiffy name: Riviera Maya. Developers, primarily from Spain and the United States, have been rushing in to build huge, all-inclusive resorts along the highway.
The resorts have names like the Mayan Palace, but the only Mayan you’ll ever see near the walled-off properties will almost surely be in uniform. The resorts offer no sense of place. In fact, the Coco Cabana looks like something that aliens tried to spirit out of Las Vegas in one piece, but mistakenly dropped from the sky onto this patch of Mexican soil.
There is much to be said for the place: Cancun was chosen for development specifically because its beaches are so fine.
There simply would be no point to traveling down the coast to yet another high-rise resort, this time along a highway, often some distance from the beach. And while some beaches along this stretch of coastline offer the perfection of Cancun’s beaches, others have rocks at the water’s edge.
But if intimate, authentic, unexpected and even funky little properties are your thing, then the Riviera Maya is your place. You need only leave the highway, and travel just slightly off the beaten path.
KaiLuum is about 30 miles south of Cancun and six miles north of Playa del Carmen. There is no sign for it from the highway. Instead, you turn at a sign for Capitan Lafitte’s and follow a bumpy country road for about a mile until it ends at the beach. A few hundred yards to the right is KaiLuum, built in 1999 by Mayan craftsmen who remembered the old ways for constructing simple but elegant buildings, called palapas, from wooden poles and palm leaves.
The bar and adjoining restaurant sit directly on the beach, with a floor of sand and a soaring, cathedral-style ceiling. The bar is open 24 hours a day; soda and beer are stored in an old-fashioned ice box filled with giant ice blocks.
Only one building on the property has electricity, and there is only one telephone, for emergencies. Yet the place exudes luxury; it’s simply the luxury of another century. Dinner, for example, is served by the light of gas lanterns hanging from the restaurant’s high ceiling. The place screams out “honeymoon,” except the lodgings aren’t quite as private as a new couple might wish.
Each couple — no children under 16 are allowed — has a separate palapa, a sort of open cabana with a palm-leaf roof. A large tent with giant mesh windows is erected under the roof of the palapa. Each palapa overlooks the ocean and has a platform bed with a mattress and Mexican blankets, side tables with candles and hammocks hanging just outside the room.
You walk a short distance to shared bathrooms. “People are leery of communal bathrooms; they associate them with a gas station or something,” says manager/owner Clayton Ball. But these are
something quite different. Shower rooms with bright tiles on the walls and floors are immaculate, as are separate toilet facilities with scented candles. Sinks surrounded by tile mosaics are outside, sheltered only by a roof.
Above the bath facility on an open porch overlooking the jungle and the beach, you can get a massage, then relax in a hammock.
“We use the fridge to store blocks of ice,” Ball says. “We buy everything we’re making fresh each day,” he says, which explains why restaurant patrons must reserve a place at dinner by 1 p.m. each day, before the chef goes shopping.
From KaiLuum you can walk along the beach all the way to Playa del Carmen, then miles beyond. You can arrange sightseeing tours of the area, or diving and snorkeling trips either in the ocean or in one of the many cenotes, or underground caves, that honeycomb the area. KaiLuum also offers Spanish classes on the beach most afternoons. Or you can just sit on the beach in an oversize chair made of logs, with a big rock as a footrest. That happens to be my choice for what’s left of my first day.
“The main product we sell is peace and quiet,” Ball says.
I travel down the lightly traveled highway, just past the Mayan ruins of Tulum, and turn left off the highway to the “hotel zone” in the town of Tulum. The two-lane paved street dead-ends after 1 1/2 miles, and a road of packed dirt and macadam stretches to the right and left. Along this country road, about 20 small