Chablé Yucatán

Henequen, the sisal fibre that made Yucatán rich in the nineteenth century, paid for the hacienda at Chocholá: a plantation house, a chapel, a machine hall and workers' quarters on 750 acres of low jungle west of Mérida. The estate decayed with the fibre trade after the 1920s. Chablé Yucatán opened on the site at the end of 2016, keeping the hacienda buildings and placing new casitas among the trees around them.

History

The Chablé company, a Mexican hospitality group, acquired the derelict hacienda and spent several years restoring the main house and the machine hall before opening. The chapel, the arcaded corridors of the casa principal and the stone machinery house were kept as the public rooms, and the plantation's water source, a cenote, became the centre of the spa. The name Chablé comes from the Maya for a type of local tree. A sister resort, Chablé Maroma, opened on the Riviera Maya coast in 2018.

Architecture and design

The architect Jorge Borja and the interior designer Paulina Morán worked together on the project. Their rule was that the hacienda stays visible: the ruined walls and the original colours of the plantation house were stabilised rather than rebuilt, and the new casitas are low stone-and-timber pavilions set apart in the jungle so that the old buildings keep their dominance. Local materials, Maya textiles and work by Yucatecan craftsmen furnish the rooms.

Rooms and suites

The accommodation consists of about 40 casitas and villas, each a freestanding house with a private pool, a terrace and a garden walled by jungle. The larger villas add separate living rooms and kitchens, and the Royal Villa is the largest house on the estate. Guests move around the grounds by bicycle or buggy.

Dining

Ixi'im, the fine-dining restaurant, was created with Jorge Vallejo, the chef of Quintonil in Mexico City, and occupies the restored machine hall with the old henequen presses still in place; its walls hold a collection of several thousand bottles of tequila, recognised by Guinness World Records as the largest. Ki'ol is the all-day restaurant serving Yucatecan cooking, and there is a bar in the hacienda.

Wellness

The spa is the reason many guests come. Treatment pavilions are arranged around the cenote, and the programme draws on Maya practice: temazcal steam ceremonies, a shaman in residence and treatments using local honey and herbs. The spa has its own pools and a hydrotherapy area in addition to the private pools of the casitas.

Weddings and events

The hacienda chapel and the open courtyards of the casa principal are used for wedding ceremonies, with dinners in Ixi'im or under the arcades, and the estate is taken over in full for larger celebrations. Meetings are small and held in the hacienda's rooms. Chablé Maroma on the coast is the sister property for beach weddings.

Location

Chocholá is a small town on the road between Mérida and Celestún, and the hotel is about 30 minutes by car from the centre of Mérida and from Mérida International Airport. The Maya city of Uxmal is about an hour to the south, and the flamingo reserve at Celestún about an hour to the west. Mérida itself, with its colonial centre and the Paseo de Montejo, is the base for day trips. The resort on the Yucatán peninsula with the strongest link to the region's own history, it sits in the jungle rather than on the Caribbean coast.