Mexican B&Bs Offer Luxury, for Mere Pesos
 Donald S. Stroetzel - LATimes
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| | Casa Obelisco — built by two Silicone Valley couples, John and Judi Levens and Bill and Barbara Kirkwood — was our introduction to bed and breakfast, Mexican-style. |
Casa Obelisco in San Francisco, a little fishing village on the Nayarit coast of western Mexico, is not your typical B&B.
Its four balconied rooms feature king-sized beds. The tiled baths are private, with twin sinks. And at one end of the pool, bar stools are bolted to the bottom. That's where my wife, Diana, and I spent time, plopped in water up to our midriffs, sipping margaritas.
But that wasn't the end of the luxuries the B&B offered.
"For $75, would you like a private candlelit Champagne dinner for two on the roof?" asked our host and Casa co-owner, John Levens. "Just the two of you under the stars! For another $75, the chef will bring along a guitarist to sing 'Besame Mucho' while you dance the night away. Or perhaps, for $50, you'd like an hour's massage in your room?"
Casa Obelisco — built by two Silicone Valley couples, John and Judi Levens and Bill and Barbara Kirkwood — was our introduction to bed and breakfast, Mexican-style.
Usually run by folks from the U.S. and Canada, Mexican B&Bs retain typical B&B virtues: moderate rates, great breakfasts, cleanliness, attractive decor and down-home friendliness. But they have also gone upscale in a big way.
Helped by a favorable exchange rate (about 11 pesos to the U.S. dollar) and low-cost labor, Mexican B&Bs offer luxuries usually found at high-end U.S. hotels, but at far lower prices: High-speed wireless Internet connections for your laptop, two-hour facial massages for just $20, rubdowns in seaweed body wrap and breakfast in bed. They'll even help plan weddings.
In Puerto Vallarta, we watched as the staff at Casa Mirador B&B produced a clergyman, photographer and sculpted cake for the beachside union of a Seattle couple.
Some B&Bs have incorporated local culture and influences into their décor and amenities. At Ignacio Springs B&B in San Ignacio on the Baja California peninsula, for example, guests can sleep under a thatched roof. Other B&Bs are in the haciendas of working horse farms or walled-in colonial houses, or are showcases for modern Mexican architects.
John Truax, a former Houston resident, restored a crumbling 202-year-old town house in Mérida in the Yucatán peninsula. The four-bedroom Ángeles de Mérida B&B features 18-foot living room ceilings and is filled with Spanish antiques and Maya artifacts. Like many Mexican B&Bs that have been exquisitely decorated, Truax caters only to adults. "No persons under 17, please," he says.
But for families with children, even pets, Mérida has In Ka'an ("My Heaven" in Mayan), a ranch-style B&B with seven ground-floor bedrooms.
"Ours is a put-your-feet-up-and-relax place," says owner Bonnie Wrenfall, a former Canadian banker. She will pack lunches for guests headed out to tour the Maya ruins. There's a lap pool for sweaty returnees and cable TV for news junkies.
On Cozumel, 12 miles off the Yucatán peninsula, Baldwin's Guest House, a five-bedroom B&B owned by British Columbians Dale and Kathy Gardner, is also family-friendly.
At Amigo's, also in Cozumel, owners Bob and Kathy Kopelman, former New Yorkers, offer diving packages from May 1 through the beginning of the winter high season at their three-cottage B&B. For $205 per person, double occupancy, a couple gets three nights' lodging, three breakfasts and two days' scuba diving with an English-speaking master diver, tanks and weights. The cottages have kitchenettes.
In areas where B&Bs cluster, competition keeps most rates around $40 to $90 per day for a double room. Daily rates tend to be higher in less competitive areas, such as Tlaquepaque, a suburb of Guadalajara, which is Mexico's leading craft center.
No fewer than 10 B&Bs cluster around Lake Chapala and Ajijic (Ah-hee-heek), providing handy bases from which to explore this hilly area near Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city.
On a hillside overlooking the lake, Mexican artists Georg and Phyllis Rauch created Los Dos, a four-bungalow B&B with kitchenettes.
There's also Los Artistas, run by the former U.S. attorney for Alaska, Kent Edwards, and one-time Alaska publisher Linda Brown, in one of Ajijic's elegant walled-in homes. Its six bedrooms look out on formal gardens and a fishpond.
California contractor Kief Adler transformed a 150-year-old Tlaquepaque town house into La Villa del Ensueño. With the help of Mexican partners, he's now expanded it to 20 rooms and two pools. Doubles run $99 to $129 a day.
San Miguel de Allende, an old city of cobblestone streets and picture-book colonial churches 180 miles northwest of Mexico City, has been a magnet for tourists, artists and art lovers. Retired U.S. advertising executive Bill La Vasseur and his artist wife, Heidi, built Casa de la Cuesta B&B, whose six bedrooms open onto a center court with fountain. A double is $145 daily.
Highest rates are found in beach resorts farther west, where B&Bs are not as concentrated.
On a hilltop overlooking the Pacific and the Gulf of California, Casa Contenta is just a short taxi ride from Cabo San Lucas' signature golf courses, horseback riding on the beach and rollicking nightlife. Its five bedrooms open to 5,000 square feet of sun-kissed deck sculpted around a large pool. Canadian owners Craig and Lori Harrison charge $120 to $175 daily.
At Casa Obelisco in San Francisco, doubles are $225.
While trying hard to blend with the culture, Mexico's American-run bed-and-breakfasts take great pains to retain the classic B&B virtues.
Cleanliness, for one thing. Each day, Casa Obelisco's bathrooms are washed to gleaming. Twice weekly, sheets are changed and 5,200 feet of floor tiles are mopped with vinegar and other dirt removers.
Knowing guests are wary of "Montezuma's revenge," Mexican B&B owners typically use only purified water for drinking, ice cubes and washing salad vegetables. Casa Obelisco even puts a little decorative jug of the pure stuff above bathroom sinks for tooth-brushing.
Just as they do in the U.S., proprietors of Mexican B&Bs are great interpreters of local scene. Driving our rental car from Puerto Vallarta's airport to San Francisco, or San Pancho, we were helped by an e-mail that proprietor John Levens had sent earlier. "Mexican drivers like to pass," he advised. "If a car or truck presses you from the rear, let it go by rather than push your vehicle to speeds you consider unsafe. And don't, as in the United States, just signal and stop in lane to make a left turn. That will bring angry honks."
Before we turned left into San Pancho, we dutifully pulled off the road to let all traffic pass.
Over coffee, Mexico's B&B hosts point out things to see and do, offering tips for inexpensive and splurge dining.
What hotel desk clerk would have steered us, as Bill Kirkwood did, to a roadside taco cart safe for munching? We got a most satisfying light supper for about $1.80. |
Vallarta Weddings
Travel & Outdoors | April 2007 
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