I groped my way through the darkness toward the only window in the room, a half-moon-shaped gap in the thick stone walls. The opening to the dawn light outside was barred — a remnant of the dangerous days of Hernán Cortés’s conquest of the Central Mexican highlands in the early 16th century — and screened to protect against more mundane invaders: insects. Had the space, with three big beds in two cavernous rooms, not rivaled the square-footage of some of my former apartments, I might have felt claustrophobic. Instead, I was giddy.
Those 500-year-old walls, a two-hour drive south of Mexico City, insulated us not only from the sweltering July heat, but also from raucous roosters and barking dogs. So when I woke at 5 a.m., it wasn’t because I couldn’t sleep, but because I was excited to see the hotel, Hacienda Vista Hermosa, founded in 1528, in the early morning light.
I fell for Mexico’s haciendas years ago while road-tripping through the country’s interior. Most of the once-grand estates were, at that point, in ruins. Their stone walls, arched gates and aqueducts stood tall above maize stalks and ranch land, but their adobe walls were crumbling, their grounds overgrown, their talavera tiles faded.
Many of these haciendas were seized or destroyed during the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which sought the dismantlement of the plantation-like system in which native Mexicans endured inhumane work conditions. With the agrarian reforms that followed, the haciendas’ farmlands were redistributed and their palatial houses abandoned. In the decades following the revolution, some of these properties, including the Vista Hermosa, began to be reimagined as tourist destinations, but many weren’t restored until later, with a boom in the 1990s and 2000s.
Last summer, when I was planning a trip to the rural highlands around Mexico City with my husband, Tim, and our two children, I cluttered a Google map with pinned locations for haciendas that had become atmospheric restaurants, intriguing museums, distinctive hotels and even water parks. All were within about three hours from the capital.
Finding them wasn’t hard: The state of Morelos, where we spent much of our time, is marketed by the local government as the Hacienda Route. And the Ex-Hacienda Owners Association keeps an extensive list of the 2,500 or so former haciendas — in varying states of repair — across the country. We spent our weekends seeking them out. Here’s what we found.
Fountains, statues and massive walls
Hacienda Vista Hermosa was our first stay. When we arrived at its massive, guarded gate outside the lakeside town of Anenecuilco, less than an hour south of Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos, we were waved through formidable stone walls to a cobblestone lane lined with palms and towering cactuses.
Our kids, Roxie, 9, and Felix, 5, raced for the pool, returning breathless, unable to find the words to describe what they had seen. Built around an arched stone aqueduct, the huge pool was surrounded by statues, fountains and fuchsia bougainvillea. Elsewhere, a pool this elegant would belong to a luxury hotel, where children are shushed. Here, the hacienda’s 100 rooms started around 1,400 pesos, or about $70, and there were kids everywhere, water guns in hand, playing amid the centuries-old stonework.
The next morning we left our room with its half-moon window and walked the grounds. There were great lawns edged by vine-draped ceiba trees, stables, a working farm with fowl, a cavelike chapel filled with worshipers, a former bullfighting arena and retired horse-drawn carriages. Every corner held a glimpse into Mexico’s history.
Showy restaurants, water parks and museums
Most haciendas operate mainly as hotels, but nearly all have restaurants and other lures, including spas, golf courses, horseback rides and even hot air balloons, as well as museums devoted to regional tradition, like the Pulque Museum at Hacienda Soltepec in Tlaxcala. At many, staying overnight is not a necessity.
In a Cuernavaca suburb, we dropped in for the popular brunch — crepes in a poblano chile sauce, fluffy pancakes, fresh fruit — at La Distral, the restaurant at Hacienda San Antonio el Puente (515 pesos for adults, 205 pesos for children). There, the aqueduct was repurposed as a wall dividing sections of the expansive patio dining room, and the indoor-outdoor space was covered by an industrial-metal, barn-style roof with ivy dangling like a waterfall. In front was a long pond, lush garden and geyser-like fountain.
One feature at nearly all of these defunct agricultural powerhouses was water: Water flowing through canals, water gushing through tunnels, water splashing from aqueducts. Water was among the hacienda’s most potent assets, providing not only irrigation, but also power via water wheels and steam. Today, this rushing water is an atmospheric backdrop and white noise machine.
Sometimes water becomes the reborn hacienda’s raison d’être. After brunch, we went to the nearby Ex Hacienda de Temixco Parque Acuático, a water park with looping, primary-colored water slides, paletas and a snaking body of water where tube-bound families shrieked as they bounced off one another. Even amid this glorious kitsch, there were stone courtyards carved with religious reliefs.
At Hotel & Spa Hacienda de Cortes, we splurged on a meal on the patio of the romantic dining room, where stone walls were veined with vines, a tree grew toward the ceiling and tables were covered in linen and elaborate settings. We ordered an extraordinary Caesar salad, showily prepared table-side, and Mexico’s national dish, chiles en nogada. Other dishes included quail prepared from an 1853 recipe (500 pesos) and suckling pig in a banana leaf (320 pesos).
In general, though, the food at the haciendas was less thrilling than the surroundings. My favorite hacienda restaurant, for atmosphere alone, is on the southern edge of Mexico City, at Antigua Hacienda de Tlalpan. There, in a dining room lined with antiques-filled cabinets, suited waiters serve classic dishes like mole poblano (340 pesos) and pato en pipián (duck in a sauce of pumpkin seeds and spices, 460 pesos) beneath a stained-glass ceiling, and crooning musicians compete with fountains and screaming peacocks.
Swaying chandeliers and a horse named Ohio
I hadn’t planned an overnight stay at Hacienda San Gabriel de las Palmas, a 20-room hotel in Amacuzac, deep in the Morelos countryside. But one day Tim suggested I have a night to myself. I jumped on it, and booked a massage and horseback ride.
Once among the largest sugar-producing haciendas in the country, Las Palmas is exclusive and doesn’t allow non-guests to visit its restaurant or grounds without a reservation. (Rooms — mine had high ceilings with stone arches, religious art and a whirlpool bath — start at 4,440 pesos per night, and suites cost upward of 20,893 pesos per weekend.)
It’s the kind of place where the staff, dressed in tan slacks and pale blue guayaberas, greet you by name. Everywhere I went, I heard “Good morning, Señorita Moon.”
At dinner, the wind whooshed through the open-air dining room with its tall-backed wicker chairs and swaying chandeliers, blowing out the candles. Thick drops splashed into the glowing blue pool with a swim-up bar — an oddly 1990s-esque addition to this nearly half-millennium-old estate — and trees threw off tiny white, star-shaped flowers that fell like snow.
Later, the ceiling of my luxurious room sprung a leak, and I was whisked into the main building while the staff hurriedly rearranged the room to prevent water from falling directly onto my king-size bed. The detour gave me a chance to stand alone in one of the hacienda’s galleries, where the house’s colonial antiques and artwork were displayed in the near-dark as a thunderstorm crashed outside. The next morning, when I arrived for a 9 a.m. trail ride with Gerardo Flores, a distinguished caballero, or horseman, who has worked at the hacienda for a quarter-century, the sky was cloudless.
Mr. Flores asked if I knew how to ride.
“I have,” I said as I clumsily pulled myself onto my horse, named Ohio. We set off along the estate’s cobblestone thoroughfare, outside its walls, through the village that grew up around them and into the countryside.
In my inadequate Spanish, we discussed our families and my reddish-brown horse, who had a mischievous streak. Ohio was easily spooked when his hooves sank into the post-storm mud, and was inclined to graze whenever he felt like it. Mr. Flores gently admonished me to hold the reins more firmly, with one hand. And to use my feet and legs con confianza — with confidence — to show Ohio who was in control.
‘Remarkable beauty, born from darkness’
By the time we reached Hacienda Santa Barbara, we had spent hours navigating back roads as cumulus clouds sprouted like mushrooms above the electric green Tlaxcala landscape. Soon, the foothills of La Malinche, an inactive volcano an hour north of Puebla, were a blur behind windshield wipers.
Unlike San Gabriel, which embraces exclusivity, Santa Barbara is a creative and political reimagining of a traditional hacienda. Instead of a museum of colonial-era antiques, the gallery displays the work of Malena Díaz, a Tlaxcalan artist and photographer, whose work depicts queer lucha libre performer-fighters and farmers who produce the region’s celebrated, sacred maize.
Instead of a pool, the hacienda has a temescal, or traditional sweat lodge. The exceptional home-style meals — both breakfast and dinner, served in a dark, chandelier-lit, nearly silent dining room — were included in the room cost (not quite 3,000 pesos).
When we arrived, the hacienda was aglow with lights. Ancient, wet-leaved pear and apple trees stood in a courtyard of maguey and lavender. The place was vacant aside from a stoic trio of older guests who sat at the dining room’s long table in silence, and two women with a giant English sheepdog.
After a dinner of calabaza squash stuffed with cheese in a mild, brothy tomato sauce, the rain stopped. A fire was lit in the common room, and fragrant wood smoke joined with the aromas from the kitchen, whose walls were decorated with barro clay pottery. There was no internet, but there were games — Clue, chess and dominoes — as well as paints and brushes and ceramic peacocks, unpainted, awaiting a moment of inspiration.
Our room, accented with folk art, had a high ceiling of wooden beams and clay tile. The bathroom had skylights, a pressed aluminum mirror and a spa tub, though not enough hot water to fill it (a situation remedied by bucket after bucket from the kitchen, where it was boiled in batches).
In the morning, once again awake at dawn, the kids ran, zigzagging through maguey, sage and corn. We visited horses in a crumbling corner, where the stone walls created makeshift corrals, and climbed the rickety wooden spiral staircase of the disused chapel. It was the highest point for who-knows-how-far in all directions. We stood just above the treetops, looking into the distance, but when we turned our focus closer, we noticed that leaf after leaf, ledge after ledge, was lined with bright green caterpillars.
On our way back down, through the darkness of the stairwell, we spotted cocoons. First one and then another and then too many to count. The hacienda’s chapel, it seemed, had become a butterfly breeding ground. It was a poignant illustration of what had drawn me to haciendas in the first place: Remarkable beauty, born from darkness, the capacity for a place to transform itself, again and again.
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