MEXICOCHIC

Going loco down in Acapulco!

20 years ago my start up business published the book Mexicochic - the first in a series of coffee table guide books as they were known in those heady pre iPhone days. The days when travellers in India all carried an encyclopaedic Lonely Planet book with them - everywhere. Was there any other way? Mexicochic was effectively the brainchild of Manuel Diaz Cabrian - at the time Director of the Mexico Tourism Board in London. He had mentioned to a mutual publishing friend that he would like to publish a book on the new Mexico in a bid to get away from the tarnished image of Cancun spring breaks, all you can drink all inclusive resorts and, yes, tex mex food washed own with endless tequilas.

A series called Hip Hotels had recently been published by Thames and Hudson and this really paved the way to the print portrayal of so called boutique hotels being hip. The early incarnation of boutique hotels had been an expensive disaster: great places to party in but not to sleep, especially if you liked to swing cats. I remember staying a few times at the Paramount Hotel - one of the more successful parts of the Ian Schrager empire. Wow the bar was good, the music was deafening, the people beautiful and wonderfully weird but my word, that room. The whole genre seemed to stutter and fall through the nineties with a few global chains trying their hand at this customised micro hotel thing but not very successfully. But the seeds were there. All you had to do was get the balance right between creating a trendy people spotting lobby and provide a smidgeon of service along with a sensible sized room and it just might work.

Mexico was a wonderful starting point for the Chic Collection. Manuel promised to, and did, open doors to some interesting people and delightful hotels. He arranged a December trip for me that took me on Air Canada via freezing Toronto to a rather chilly Mexico City (it’s high!). I stayed at the Habita Hotel the flagship of the Habita hotel in downtown Polanco,. I had heard ghastly stories of people being held up and robbed by gun point if they took one of the notorious green and white VW Beetle taxis from the airport so I decided to jump into a notorious green VW Beetle taxi  from the airport and see if that might happen. Sadly it was an uneventful and reasonably quick trip through late night ‘DF’ (as Mexico City is known) but not too late for me to find the best tacos I had ever tasted in my entire life round the corner from the hotel. The centre of DF is one big heaving lung of a park that makes up for the sprawling conurbation of tens of millions of people that call the federal capital home so I decided to get up early and go for a run round the park. It was freezing. This wasn’t the tropical paradise I had come totally unprepared for but what do you expect at over 2000 metres above sea level.

My few days in DF were a whirl of wonderful hotels and open mouthed admiration at what groups like Habita were doing around the country. Off I went to Cancun and Playa del Carmen which back then was a ramshackle bohemian chic seaside town in the shadow of its monstrous concrete 70s built big brother Cancun with its huge hotels and deep deep blue wonderful sea. Playa was totally cool and Hotel Deseo an absolute revelation with old black and white movies projected onto a giant white wall above the pool. And yes margueritas aplenty by the pool and in the multitude of bars around town. Things were happening fast in Playa and it really was the definition of chic. I haven’t been back in a while but I gather it's now become another Cancun and Tulum has now take on the chic mantle.