Kokoro Mio

Have you ever spent February in NYC? This winter, the snow fell and fell and never melted, piling mountains of grey and yellow around the sidewalks. It was the kind of relentless cold where people asked each other deranged questions like, 'Do you prefer swimming in oceans, lakes, or swimming pools?' the way people crawling across a desert might discuss martinis. For me, it’s always been lakes, and the more I thought about them, the more I needed to transport myself to the best one in the world. Here’s what makes a perfect lake: you can swim in crystal-clear waters, as far out as you want, without worry. You are not tickled by aquatic plants, or worried about any marine life lurking in murky depths. You can see the bottom of the lake. You are undisturbed by motor boats. You can float on your back perfectly still. But if you are reading this, I would assume you already know about Bacalar. 

Bacalar is technically a lagoon because of its proximity to the shore, but it’s filled with the freshwater that runs through the underground rivers beneath the Yucatán jungle. It is also an unearthly blue, thanks to the ancient stromatolites, the oldest evidence of life on Earth, whose rocky growths bloom from the lake floor like coral reefs. For now, it’s an undersung tourist destination (home to more regional than international tourism), and the jungle surrounding the lagoon is studded with sustainable stays. 

If you want slick service and globalized perfection, the anonymity of a chain hotel, I would suggest looking at some of the larger hotels closer to the town of Bacalar. If instead you come to Kokoro Mio, on the southern tip of the lagoon, where the water is purest, you will feel lost at the edge of the world. You will have quiet in which to sit with the world’s most ancient life forms, the cawing of birds you cannot name, the orchids blooming from jungle tree trunks. If your winter has been harsh and long, and you’ve dreamed of a perfect lake for nights on end, thinking that you can barely remember what sunlight might feel like on your skin: this is where you want to go. 

The first thing the host Adea handed me upon entering the hotel was a printed treasure map of the grounds, hand-drawn like something out of childhood fantasies. It marked the cabins and restaurant and pool and yoga shala, the peacock enclosure, the shrines to the Mayan trickster gods of nature, the art garden, and the best places to watch the sunrise. Then she led me to my room. 'I love this way,' she told me, indicating the thatched tunnel we walked through, strung with lights. 'It is one personality in the day and another at night.' I had believed, as a child, that when I walked under two trees that formed an arch in the forest, I would enter a fairy world on the other side. I now finally know this to be true. The path led us to my room. 

But this wasn’t a room, it was a home. One central palapa on tall stilts, connected to a second smaller building via an outdoor bridge. Beneath the main hut, in its shade, a private pool and a spacious open-air living room, complete with, as all living rooms now must be for me, a hammock. Up the stairs, inside the room, there were soaring ceilings, and half of the circular walls were made of panes of glass that led to a spacious balcony. Across the elevated wooden walkway, in the second structure, there was the most spectacular bathroom I have ever seen. The walls were at half-height, open to the breeze, with a palatial stone bath tub beneath the rainfall (of course) shower head. Adea’s face became very serious for a moment. 'We have frogs at the hotel to eat the pests,' she said. 'Small frogs like this, they are safe. But sometimes they will, um… come into the bathroom. If it is a problem, call us and we will come.' I grinned, unable to imagine anything better than sharing this open-air shower with a tropical jungle frog. It was the kind of hotel room where you instantly feel you need a second vacation, one to explore your surroundings and one to spend solely in the room.  

But explore the surroundings I eventually did. Adea tucked her floral jumpsuit into her sports socks to ride the hotel’s rickety bikes with me to the lagoon’s edge (to note: the hotel is not located on the water, it is about a kilometre and a half from its own private beach club. Given that both places are enchanting, the only issue this posed for me was figuring out how to split my time equally between them). I told Adea about the wintery city I’d just left behind. 'I’ve never seen snow,' Adea, who grew up in nearby Chetumal, told me.

As I borrowed one of the hotel’s kayaks to explore the lagoon, I asked the man who placed it in the water, 'Where can i go?' He paused and smiled at me. At first I thought he was confused by my poor Spanish, but soon I saw he was confused by the question. 'Anywhere your mind imagines,' he replied, touching his temple, then gesturing out at the lake. As I paddled out, I was the only person in sight for miles. Just as I had, the night before, tried to imagine sunlight on my skin, I tried now to remember the cold I had left behind. I tried to imagine the stinging winds, the way the snow would slip into my socks when I climbed over snow drifts. It seemed impossible. 'Do you ever feel sad you haven’t seen snow?' I asked Adea later. 'No,' she said. 'I have all of this. I tell my friends all the time: do you know how lucky we are?'