What a strange igloo this is. Made of stone rather than ice, the temperature inside is 50C with 100 per cent humidity. Sweat is puddling around our bare feet and our swimming costumes stick to our skin.
In front of us are a dozen red-hot stones in a pit. A woman chants and thrashes them with rosemary stalks soaked in orange oil, provoking furious sputtering.
Steam swirls around us. The woman beats a drum with a deer’s antler and begins wailing.
Jorge, the grey-haired shaman, a jaguar tooth round his neck, cries: ‘We are back in the womb. Breathe in your first breath – then breathe out your pain like your dying gasp.’
Through the darkness and din, I can hear someone quietly sobbing.
Most people go to luxury hotels to pamper the body, not to purify the soul. But the temazcal – meaning ‘house of steam’ in the Nahuatl language – ceremony is unmissable at Four Seasons Tamarindo.
We have come here in bright January sunshine to sample two sides of Mexican life. First, the bustle and roar of Mexico City, the capital, and then the peace of the Costalegre, the ‘Coast of Joy’, a 200-mile strip of remote, largely undeveloped Pacific shoreline hemmed by jungle and cliff, and home to this resort hotel.
Pat Jones visits Mexico in January to sample ‘two sides of life’ in this vibrant and beautiful country. He stops in first to the capital, Mexico City, before heading to Costalegre, along the Pacific shoreline
Pat checks into the Four Seasons Resort Tamarindo for a different flavour of life in Mexico, and where, as he discovers, ceremony is at the forefront of life
Guests at the Four Seasons Resort Tamarindo can immerse themselves in a number of different authentic rituals and experiences, including visiting a temazcal – meaning ‘house of steam’ in the Nahuatl language, to help purify the soul
Mexican tourism is booming. More than 45 million people visited in 2024, up nearly a third on a decade earlier.
But choose where you go carefully. Many inevitably head to the packed resort city of Cancun, others to the groaning influencer hotspot Tulum. Even boutique resorts, such as Holbox Island, are increasingly overrun.
In June, to make matters worse, the World Cup will be hosted jointly by Mexico, Canada and the US, with both the opening ceremony and the first match (against South Africa) being held on June 11 in the Mexican capital.
Restaurants and bars are updating their menus and hotels are being hastily spruced – none, perhaps, more so than the Four Seasons Mexico City, sister property to Tamarindo.
Four Seasons Mexico City has four different restaurants available for guests to sample, as well as a cocktail bar, Fifty Mils. Zanaya restaurant, pictured, focuses on coastal Mexican cuisine
Here, the stylish rooms have just been refurbished with textiles, glass and stone carvings by local artists. The tranquil setting includes a shaded courtyard with a gurgling fountain, and hummingbirds flittering in the bougainvillea.
On our first morning, we explore the smart local neighbourhoods of Condesa and Roma Norte. Mexico has long had a tricky security reputation and the Foreign Office currently advises against travelling to several regions – but these plush side streets feel perfectly safe.
They are studded with boutiques selling art, homewares, ceramics and clothes, alongside classy coffee shops populated with laptop-toting clientele. Many thousands of ‘digital nomads’ base themselves in Mexico, taking advantage of cheap rents and speedy wifi.
We stop for lunch at Rosetta, dining in a courtyard crawling with jungle vines and which features on the influential list of the World’s 50 Best restaurants. We tuck into butter flavoured with chicatana ants (a smoky, savoury delicacy from the jungle) and delicious prawns with a ‘mole’ sauce spiked with spices and fermented plums.
Pat stops in for lunch at Rosetta, one of the World’s 50 Best restaurants, and tries prawns with a ‘mole’ sauce, spiked with spices and fermented plums
At the Museum of Anthropology, we ogle stone heads dug from riverbeds, golden Aztec treasures, obsidian daggers and monuments to reptilian gods.
The collection at Chapultepec Castle, below, the former viceroy’s palace above the city’s largest park, picks up where the museum leaves off, covering the fascinating period from European conquest in the 1520s to independence two centuries ago.
From the capital, it’s a 90-minute flight west to the city of Manzanillo, then an hour’s drive to Four Seasons Tamarindo.
Our temazcal ceremony took place within a 3,000-acre nature reserve bristling with jaguars, ocelots, giant white butterflies, crocodiles and macaws.
As well as the baking igloo with all that chanting, we also go on a nature hike, enjoy the peaceful spa, and join a fermented drinks class.
A highlight is a three-hour boat trip, on which, after a while, our guide Eduardo cries: ‘I see some wheels!’ And sure enough, there they are. An association of humpback whales rolling past our boat spouting 20ft plumes, tails slapping the surf.
We track them for a while – two adults and a calf – and then a manta ray flips by, it seems purely for the pleasure of doing so.
Mexico is enchanting and, at times, mystical away from the crowds.
TRAVEL FACTS
Doubles at Four Seasons Hotel Mexico from £613. Doubles at Four Seasons Tamarindo from £841. Prices are based on availability and seasonality, plus tax and service (fourseasons.com).