Chablé Maroma

Chablé Maroma, a restful beachfront retreat along the Riviera Maya, is the kind of hotel that ruins other hotels for you. Its approach to laid-back luxury feels so effortless that it’s easy to forget how exceptional its service and amenities are. Don’t all hotels have a terry-cloth-covered chaise in their villa bathrooms for guests to rest on after choosing between an indoor or outdoor shower? Don’t all hotels have a picnic basket of coffee and breakfast pastries waiting outside guests’ doors each morning? No, they don’t. And it’s this top-drawer spoiling that puts Chablé at the top of our list of really-nice-but-not-too-pretentious hideaways. 

Chablé is the last leg of our eight-day Mexican tour. We start in vibrant Mexico City, with its Frida Kahlo-esque colours, kitschy luchadores, and gastrointestinal roulette of street tacos. Leaving behind the city for the beach, Mrs Smith and I take the road less travelled to a certain little-known, never-before-Instagrammed, yogi-luring destination called Tulum – maybe you’ve heard of it? Three days and six açai bowls later, we are sad to leave our hammocks for our final stop. We brace ourselves for the usual traits of resort vacations: fighting for beach chairs, themed restaurants, the odd swinger… 

The first sign that this will be a very different experience is the lack of any sign at all. If you’ve spent any time in the Riviera Maya, you’ve come to expect grand entrances with enormous Roman columns or extravagant Vegas-style fountains fronting all of the resorts you pass. Chablé, however, takes a different approach. After a nondescript turn off the highway, a 10-minute drive down a winding road surrounded by towering jungly foliage, and numerous questioning glances from Mrs Smith, we arrive at a grand open-air lobby. As soon as the van doors open, a staff member appears bearing cold towels and a refreshing grapefruit-mint juice that tastes like a holiday distilled. Despite arriving hours before check-in, we’re immediately shown to our villa. 

The property is a sprawling maze of run-wild-yet-perfectly-manicured greenery, white-paved paths, and minimalist casas that look as if they were swiped from the set of Castaway. On finding our villa, which is labelled with both a number and corresponding Mayan characters, Mrs Smith and I ascend the stairs to our private patio – complete with a plunge pool and day-bed. With a wave of the key, the 10-foot wide wooden doors slide open and disappear into the wall, revealing our weekend pied-à-terre as if by magic. Like the resort around it, the room’s aesthetic is one of clean, modern comfort, and there’s space to spare – our jaws drop as we walk into a bathroom the size of our New York apartment but with twice the showers. 

Not ones to waste a minute in the sun, Mrs Smith and I drop everything and run to the pool. Imagine our surprise when we have our pick of sunloungers at both the pool and beach. Once we settle on one, staff rush over to set up our chairs, somehow already knowing our names. Our chairs are beside the enormous L-shaped pool, but we’re facing the private beach and reaping the benefits of the ocean view. As spa novices, Mrs Smith and I emailed with the hotel ahead of our stay to choose the best treatment. We settled on a 30-minute ‘stress-reliever massage’, although truthfully there was not much stress to be relieved by this point in the day. Before we begin, a member of the staff leads us in a meditation, with delicious-smelling incense, quiet Spanish chanting and low horn blow that reminds us of a shofar, an ancient musical instrument used for Jewish religious ceremonies. Somehow, this all works together. After our restorative massage, we are brought back to the  lobby to enjoy some cocoa tea.

After a perfect night’s sleep, thanks to the cloud-like king-size bed and effective black-out curtains, we begin the next day with the hotel’s charming ‘eye-opener’: a picnic basket left on our deck with coffee, pastries, and a personalised itinerary of the resort’s activities that day. We forego snorkeling and cheese-tasting to work on deepening our tans before we head back to snowy New York. We soak up the final rays of sun poolside as we’re offered frozen grapes, horchata, and a refreshing facial mist. An ingenious designer has lined the pool with wavy tiles in different shades of blue. From what we can see in our chairs, the colours blend together to perfectly match the ocean. As we doze in and out of our sun-induced naps, it’s hard to tell where one ends and another begins. 

Chablé is laidback yet incredibly thoughtful at the same time, beautiful yet understated, with relaxed yet attentive staff – and it’s nailed the seemingly impossible balance between luxury and simplicity.