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This Old Hacienda
The house hotel tradition in Europe is being revitalized with new projects, like a conversion of the 19th-century palace of Napoleon Bonaparte’s great-nephew. (The Shangri-La Hotel, Palais d’Iena, Paris will open in early 2009.) Now, descendants of Ecuador’s aristocratic families along the hacienda-rich Avenue of Volcanoes, a 325-kilometre corridor between the Andes’ largest ranges, are following suit. More than plantations, the centuries-old haciendas – sometimes on thousands of acres of land – also manufactured products and served as de facto towns for hundreds of peasant farmers who tilled the estate’s minifundios (small holdings) and were way stations for politicians and explorers. (In 1736, French geographers stayed at places like San Agustín de Callo on their quest to measure the circumference of the world. They eventually found their mark at 16th-century Hacienda Guachalá, dividing it into two hemispheres.) In the 1960s, however, land reformation ended the feudalist-style encomienda system. Who’d have thought that land reform would result in luxury lodges? Aimed at travellers used to customized amenities and private concierges, such properties are hotel-as-anthropology. “The hotel haciendas, castles and mansions still echo with the personalities and passions of their former owners, so it gives you a profound connection with the place and culture,” says Gina Hyams, who visited the revamped estates of Mexico for her book Mexicasa: The Enchanting Inns and Haciendas of Mexico. “These places are soul-satisfying in a way that cookie-cutter hotels, no matter how luxurious, can never be,” she adds. (Not that Frette linens and design aren’t important: Starwood Hotels & Resorts added five of Mexico’s sleekest haciendas – one has a restaurant carved into a cenote – to its Luxury Collection.) |
