Dorado Beach, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve

Clara Livingston, one of the first women in Puerto Rico to fly her own aeroplane, grew up on a family plantation on the north coast of the island, where coconut palms and grapefruit trees ran down to the Atlantic. In the 1950s she sold much of the land to Laurance Rockefeller, who opened the Dorado Beach Hotel there in 1958. Dorado Beach, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, opened on the same shore in December 2012, the first hotel of the Reserve brand in the Americas, and the Livingston house stands within it.

History

The Livingstons had bought the estate early in the twentieth century. Rockefeller built his hotel along a run of beaches and palm groves, one of the resorts he was creating in the Caribbean after Caneel Bay on St John, and he engaged Robert Trent Jones Sr. to lay out the golf. The resort drew the winter crowd of the early jet age, and a sister hotel, the Cerromar Beach, followed nearby in the 1970s, giving Dorado four courses in all.

Hyatt later ran the old Dorado Beach Hotel, which closed in 2006. The land was redeveloped as a residential community with a new resort at its heart, and in December 2012 Ritz-Carlton opened its Reserve there. The Reserve label is the company's smallest and most private tier, launched at Phulay Bay in Thailand in 2009; Dorado was its second address and the first in the Western Hemisphere. The continuity matters here: the new resort uses the same beaches, the same palm groves and the same golf land that Rockefeller chose in the 1950s.

Architecture and design

The new buildings are low and set back behind the beach, so that palms and sea grape still hold the shoreline. Rooms open onto terraces close to the sand, and the plantation's old trees were left standing among the buildings. Su Casa, the house in which Clara Livingston lived, has been restored as a private villa with its own pool and its own stretch of beach. It is the oldest building on the estate and the one that ties the resort to the plantation era.

Rooms and suites

Most accommodation faces the ocean, in rooms and suites with outdoor terraces, and a number of residences and villas complete the offer. Su Casa is the largest of them and the one with the longest story, booked by families and wedding parties who want a house rather than a suite.

Dining

COA, the resort's Puerto Rican restaurant, takes its name from the digging stick of the Taíno, the first inhabitants of the island, and builds its menu on island produce and the Taíno, Spanish and African strands of local cooking. Other restaurants and a beach bar serve the pools and the sand, and the kitchens draw on the fish landed along the north coast.

Wellness

Spa Botánico grew from the plantation's own plants and healing traditions. Its best-known feature is a treehouse, a treatment room raised among the branches of an old tree, with the sound of the sea below. The resort has several pools, and the beaches in front of it are long enough for a morning walk.

Weddings and events

Ceremonies take place on the beach, on the lawns among the palms and at Su Casa, and the resort has indoor rooms for dinners and meetings. The scale suits weddings and company retreats of modest size more than large conventions.

Location

Dorado lies on the north coast of Puerto Rico, about 30 kilometres west of San Juan. Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport is roughly forty minutes away by road, depending on traffic, and as Puerto Rico is a United States territory, travellers from the mainland arrive on domestic flights. The East course, laid out by Robert Trent Jones Sr. for Rockefeller, is still in play. Old San Juan, whose fortresses of El Morro and San Cristóbal are listed by UNESCO, makes an easy day out, and El Yunque, the rainforest in the east of the island, is further but within reach. For a luxury resort in Puerto Rico, few sites carry as much history in their trees and fairways.