MERIDA, Mexico -- ''You look just like a Mayan princess," Carolina said, gazing down at my prostrate body. Except for a flurry of rose petals, I was naked. Raising my head to peek, I thought I looked rather like Nijinsky in his famous petal-strewn costume for ''Le Spectre de la Rose."
I had just enjoyed Carolina's honey and rose massage, a traditional Mayan rite. At dinner that night, as I uncrossed my legs there was a sticky-Velcro sort of sound. Carolina does wash off the honey with rose water, but a bit remains. On the other hand, I smelled great.
Carolina Martinez is a masseuse at Hacienda Xcanatun, pronounced ''Ishkanatun," and meaning ''Tall Stone House" in Maya. A former sisal farm dating from the 18th century, it's been converted into a luxurious little hotel with one of Mexico's finest restaurants and a location convenient to important Mayan ruins.
Most North Americans who visit the state of Yucatan, in the easternmost part of Mexico, head for Cancun, on the coast. To me, a beach is a beach, so Merida beckoned. I thought it was going to be a sleepy place. Turns out it's a bustling city of almost a million inhabitants. But once you turn onto the little road that takes you to the village of Xcanatunname, with Xcanatun at the far end, there is utter peace. No televisions disturb the tranquillity of the 18 suites (the only one on the property is in the old chapel). Hear a wide variety of birds. Stroll on the lush grounds, dotted with cooling ponds, pools, and enough varieties of butterflies to keep a lepidopterist happy.
Don Manuel Zapata, descendant of the conquerors of the Yucatan, founded the hacienda; he and his family made a fortune in sisal. But with the invention of nylon and other synthetics the market for sisal slid, and the Zapatas sold their property to owners who used it as a summer retreat. In 1988, Hurricane Gilbert swept through, leaving only ruins.
In 1993, Jorge Ruz bought the place -- without telling his wife, Cristina Baker. It took him several months to summon sufficient gumption to fess up.
''I was cleaning it," he says, rationalizing the delay.
''It was a dump," she counters, recalling her first look at the place. ''I cried for three days."
''There were trees growing inside the buildings," Baker recalls.
There were no telephones in the village at the time, and very little electricity. The couple brought in the power lines. They now employ 60 people from the area. They keep the restaurant affordable to encourage local clients. Still, says Baker wistfully, ''we're outsiders here."
Ruz is a Mexico City film producer, working mostly in advertising. He still commutes to Merida, leaving Baker to run Xcanatun during the week. She now loves the place -- but it took a while.
Part of the process of restoring the hacienda was archeological, and for that Ruz was well prepared. In 1949, his father, Alberto Ruz Lhuillier, discovered the royal crypt at Palenque, the most legendary of the great Mayan sites. It took the older Ruz four years to excavate the tomb; it took his son six years to reconstruct Xcanatun.
The hacienda is now stunning -- especially compared with others in the area, most crumbling, some with only an ornate entrance arch still standing.
My suite at Xcanatun had beamed ceilings, 17 feet tall, mottled peach-colored walls, floors of local coral stone, alabaster sconces held up with bronze ''twigs," a headboard made of antique spindles, and a bathroom roughly the size of Cleveland. On the terraces outside are hammocks: The Mayans used them instead of beds.
The bar in the restaurant was salvaged from an old hardware store, and much of the new furniture on the property mimics its florid style. An elevator goes to a loft-like private dining room, much used by Merida's smart set for special occasions.
Unless you've come to the Hacienda Xcanatun just to de-stress, you will spend most of your days sightseeing. You could build a tour around the area's majestic convents, its caves, or its ''cenotes" -- the sinkholes that were a source of water for the Mayans. Nowadays, some are used by the locals for swimming, in defiance of the signs saying not to.
By far the biggest attractions are the great Mayan sites. A smallish one very near the hotel, Dzbilchaltun, is so undervisited that honeymooners staying at the hacienda have been known to take a picnic and spend the day there without seeing another soul.
At Labna, another archeological site, a restored house shows how ordinary people lived in the first millennium. The single oval room is made of a wood frame covered with stucco, attached to an oval porch that circulated air.
But it's the grander structures that impress -- the stone pyramids, palaces, and temples, carved with symbols of the gods. The Mayans created grand vistas: From one building you see another maybe a mile away, and another beyond that. Some buildings were aligned to frame astronomical events. Because excavating and restoring Mayan complexes is unending, at some sites there are what my guide called ''organ banks": piles of stone noses, ears, and so forth, all awaiting the day when archeologists reassemble them.
You can, of course, visit the Mayan sites in whatever order you want. But for the biggest impact, save the biggest one on your route for last. For me, it was Uxmal, a vast collection of buildings including a Governor's Palace that many consider the most beautiful structure in Mesoamerica.
Merida itself, while ringed with factories and chain hotels, does have a historic Colonial heart, known as the ''White City" because of the pale stone of many of its buildings, the mansions lining the broad Paseo Montejo among them. Other buildings are painted riotous shades of orange, rose, even purple, which gives them a more frivolous character.
Merida's Cathedral, begun in 1563, is the oldest on the American mainland. It is oddly austere, given the gaudy -- to some eyes -- decor of other Mexican churches. That's partly its design, and partly the result of mobs destroying much of the interior in the 1915 riots during the Civil War. One of the few relics here is a glass coffin with a bloodied Christ figure. This particular Christ is wrapped in a gorgeous, hand-embroidered shroud, the memory of which stuck with me as I strolled through the city's shops and outdoor markets. There, everything was machine-made -- and rather poorly.
After the aborted shopping expedition I returned to Xcanatun disconsolate. Cristina -- we were by then on a first-name basis -- sprang into action, producing what amounted to a hastily arranged trunk show. Teresa Novelo Ek arrived at the hacienda with one large trash bag after another, all containing exquisite handmade embroidery: dresses, skirts, shawls, and, most charming of all, children's clothes. I grabbed likely candidates, went to my room, tried everything on, and decided on a white on white dress and an extravagant peridot silk shawl.
There was more. Cristina drove me to the home of Carlos Millet, 64, an erstwhile engineer who switched to designing hand-painted pocketbooks. The three I acquired are all in black silk, painted with images of flora and fauna. The handles are made of gorgeous glass beads.
Cristina, to no one's surprise, is planning a boutique for the hacienda.
I stayed three nights at Xcanatun, and it didn't seem long enough. Among the area attractions I missed was the weekly outdoor Indigenous Theater performance, which involves almost 500 performers, toddlers to great-grandparents
Another thing I missed was the hotel's spa, where the piece de resistance is a round, domed room with glass blocks embedded in the walls. The treatments I had all took place in my suite. (Carolina's cohort, Sylvia Maldonado, gives a facial so splendid that for the first time in my adult life I went to dinner without makeup.) I didn't indulge in the massage with Cicbche leaves and milk, the one with Mayan stones, and the Mayan Romantic Ceremony, which is $50 for one person and $75 for two. Next time I'm bringing my husband.
And, I didn't get to stay in one of Hacienda Xcanatun's two suites with indoor waterfalls --reason enough for a hotel junkie like myself to return.
Christine Temin can be reached at c_temin@globe.com.
