bhrubin

Thanks so much for this! If you don't mind, I've got a few follow-up questions:

(1) Can you comment on air con at each of the haciendas? Did it work well in the rooms/suites? Did any have air con in restaurants or were those all open air?

(2) Can you comment on which hacienda (or haciendas) is best for a visit to Chichen Itza? To visit Calakmul?

(3) If you had 4-5 nights to spend in the Yucatán, where would you stay?

FlyerJ

The guest rooms all have individual air conditioning -- and it works well.

I don't think any of the haciendas have air conditioned restaurants. All of the restaurants and other public spaces are 'open air'.

If you're going to this area - already off the beaten track in the Yucatan - I'd recommend you explore places other than Chichen Itza. (It's a mega-tourist-destination filled daily with tour buses from Cancun.)

Instead, go to Uxmal. It's an amazing archaeological site that's not over-run with the Cancun crowd.

And there are tons of small towns, other archaeological sites and old abandoned haciendas all around the area. Great stuff that the 'bus tourists' and packaged-vacation beach crowd will never get to see.

Closest to Chichen Itza: Hacienda San Jose

Closest to Uxmal: Hacienda Temozon

(They're all great properties, but Temozon would be my pick for 'if you could only choose one'.)

Here's a great map showing where they all are in relation to towns and major attractions:

http://www.thehaciendas.com/#location

As I mentioned upthread, be sure to spend at least one day and one night in Merida, too. Great town. (And Rosas y Xocolate - part of SPG's Design Hotels - is amazing.)

Thunderroad

Thanks for this useful info, FlyerJ!

Thunderroad

Well, aided in part by the useful info on this thread (thanks to all!), and after years of having our eyes on the haciendas, my wife and I are finally going to Yucatan in February and plan on spending a couple nights each at San Jose, Temezon and Santa Rosa. After SR, we'll spend three nights at Celestun. The trip will be bracketed by a night at the beginning and at the end in Merida (on a Sunday for the festival day), with the latter at Rosas y Xocolate.

The one question I have for anyone who might know is: Does the order of M-SJ-T-SR-C-M make sense? Looking at the map, that would seem to sequence right in terms of Santa Rosa being closest to Celestun, and we do want a few beach days there near the close of the trip. But if I'm missing something, I'd welcome any input.

And of course, any other advice or suggestions are also appreciated.

stimpy

I think it must have been mentioned above, or perhaps in the Santa Rose thread, but it's not easy to get to Celestun from Santa Rosa. Someone tried it some years ago and the GPS did not guide them well and the roads were very poor. I would call up the hotel and ask for their advice. Perhaps things are better now. And I'm sure I must have mentioned before that I prefer to stay at one hotel and really, truly relax. I did just that over 5 days at Santa Rosa. We then went to Temozon and were relatively disappointed. But your Merida plans sounds perfect!

Sam P. Goodman

We had this experience several years back when we tried to make the trek back to Santa Rosa from Celestun using the most direct route (against the advice of the hotel). We made it a couple of miles (maybe), but the infinite, massive pot holes and crocodile in the road led us to turn around and take the long road. That said, I feel like I read (probably in this thread) that the road has since been fixed and is now drivable. Don’t quote me on that though...

Thunderroad

Well, to quote Samuel P. Goodman, "the road has since been fixed and is now drivable."

Just kidding.

Seriously, thanks very much for these replies. I'll indeed check with the Celestun hotel and will post back here on this thread after we've actually done the trip, re various impressions including getting from A to B to C.

As for the concentrating on one place versus three, stimpy, I hear you and in fact we ordinarily do our trips that way. But this is a bit of a scouting expedition for possible future trips, I'm curious to check out these various properties and I think/hope we'll at least relax in each one for our full day there, with the sightseeing en route from one to another. Or at least that's what passes for my planning on this.

Sam P. Goodman

Famous last words. Enjoy your trip. Ours still ranks as one of my favorites of all time.

amaroo

It's been 9 months since we booked this part of our 5 week Mexican / Belize / Guatemala holiday - down to a couple of weeks before we depart. The itinerary has changed, and we're now staying at three of the properties - San Jose, Uayamon, and Santa Rosa. The communication and service pre-stay from the hacienda team has been fabulous, this is a great indicator that our stay should be something special.

I'll get to celebrate my 50th at Hacienda Uayamon .... the icing on the cake - platinum status challenge being completed.

amaroo

We've just completed our trip and had the best time. In regards to driving from Santa Rosa to Celestún, I can confirm the road is in pretty good condition and we did a return trip without incident.... it's about an hour each way. FWIW the road from Santa Rosa to Uxmal is not in the best condition with potholes that could swallow your car.... again, we traveled without incident. Both destinations are easily reached from Santa Rosa.

Thunderroad

Thanks very much for this info, amaroo. Any impressions/comparisons re the three hacienda hotels at which you stayed?

bhrubin

RafKa

Stayed at San Jose and Temozon over the summer of 2016, so my memories may not be so fresh... Best thing was having Hacienda San Jose all for ourselves.

Pools at both are beautiful, although we felt slightly isolated (i.e. do not expect any poolside service whatsoever, although we eventually managed to flag down a waiter at Hacienda Temozon. The latter also has its own provate cenote, which you can visit on a donkey pulled cart or something similar, but we were a little short on time. Both Haciendas were very beautiful, and we were treated to spectacular, multi-room suite upgrades at both, which included a private plunge pool at San Jose. My only real complaint, and completely outside of the property's controls were the mosquitos in the bar/restaurant at Temozon after dark. Outside their control because it's a completely open veranda so no amount of chemical or mechanic deterrents would have stopped the onslaught. Wear long trousers and socks in the evening + repellent and you should be in a better shape than me!

bhrubin

Thunderroad

Especially since so many folks were so helpful with so many of my questions over the years, I really wanted to do a good trip report in the wake of my wife's and my February trip to Temozon, Santa Rosa and San Jose. However, I forgot about posting until now, when some of the more specific memories (such as our room numbers) have faded. So some basic answers and other info here. Feel free to post more questions, as I'll be subscribing to this thread, or to pm me.

Most generally: Of the three, I'd strongly recommend Santa Rosa and San Jose over Temozon. This is not actually a criticism of Temozon, which is a perfectly fine small hotel. But in comparison to the other two, which are considerably smaller (like 10-15 rooms versus two dozen or so at Temozon?), it just seems less distinctive. The other two are unique in terms of how small they are and how few people were around, at least when we were there. They certainly must be the smallest properties in the Marriott system.

Now, in fairness, we got great Platinum upgrades at the other two and a less impressive one at Temozon. But I think our preference for Santa Rosa and San Jose would be the same, regardless of the rooms.

The nicest pool to hang out at was at San Jose, in terms of its location on the property and size. Temozon's pool was probably bigger, but not as beautiful a location, as San Jose's looked out at the nearby woods. Santa Rosa's was the smallest, but we didn't spend any time there as we hung out at the mini-pool/patio at our room.

If you do hang out at pools, one factor to bear in mind is that because they're such small properties there simply won't be many folks at Santa Rosa's or San Jose's. In fact, I didn't see anyone at all at Santa Rosa's. Temozon's wasn't exactly crowded by any means, but it did have more people, including kids.

Speaking of which, SR and SJ definitely seemed more attuned to couples. T, a bit less so.

I'd call San Jose the prettiest overall property and actually the largest of the three to wander through (not that any of them are huge).

San Jose also stood out by virtue of the "hanging bed" (suspended from the roof by heaving connections) in our room - again, I forgot the room number, but I believe it's category was a casita. Overall, the nicest room, including a pleasant outdoor stone mini-pool (I'm sure there's a better term) to sit in with a glass of wine.

Santa Rosa was the smallest and most informal of all, in a good way - not that any of them are very formal. The room itself was almost as nice as at San Jose, but including the outdoor area it was the best in that it had an even better outdoor area than San Jose. A stone mini-pool that was even nicer, along with a pleasant patio to hang out in under the trees and stars.

Santa Rosa also charmed us in that we had the place to ourselves one night. Instead of having us have dinner in the regular restaurant area (which looks out at a small wooded area, with the town beyond, though you can barely see it), the staff set up our table on the large patio overlooking the very large lawn at the front of the main building. I suppose they actually could do that any evening if someone requested, since both the regular spot and the patio are both pretty close to the kitchen

I vaguely recall not having too much of a bug problem at any of the hotels, but am not absolutely certain - but imagine that I did put on bug repellant. Definitely some mosquitos at night, but I usually really attract them and don't recall being swarmed in general or bothered at dinner.

I'd read reports either here or at Tripadvisor of folks complaining of barking dogs and cars with loudspeakers (perhaps for elections or whatever) disturbing the tranquility of Santa Rosa and Temozon, given the proximity of small towns outside their gates. But we didn't hear any of the former and we didn't hear enough of the latter to bother us much at all - and I'm pretty sensitive to noise.

Speaking of which, San Jose seems to be quite far from town, so that it's the most isolated (in a good way) of the three.

We like to walk through the towns near any place we're staying. But at least when we were there, the towns right near T and SR seemed kind of dead. Could be they're more lively if there's a fiesta, but generally not much going on there or in other towns we passed through in the region - could be that lots of folks from these towns are in the USA doing seasonal or other work.

The one feature of Temozon that was distinctive compared to the other two was a very nice cenote about 30-40 minutes pleasant walk away (though I think you can get a tractor or some other vehicle to take you there). There's also one much closer, but it didn't look as nice.

Food at all three was pretty good but not great, with a vague recollection that Santa Rosa seemed the best of the lot.

Aircon seemed fine at all three.

I don't recall the proximity of the various historic sites offhand. My wife went off to see CI when we were at San Jose and I believe we stopped off at Uxmal (which, between the two, she liked more because it was much less crowded) on the way to Santa Rosa.

Definitely bring a GPS app with you and the phone numbers of the properties. The GPS we had in our rented car was pretty useless and misleading.

Wherever you go, definitely let them know in advance that it's your 50th birthday. They'll try to take account of that in upgrades if the rooms are available.

As part of this trip, we flew in and out of and spent a few nights in Merida. Merida is a nice, smallish city that seems pretty safe, has some good restaurants and some fun street life at night. We had breakfast one day at the upscale, boutique Starwood-affiliated (now Marriott) hotel there. It seemed like a very nice place, though we didn't stay there because it was no longer available on points by the time we finalized our plans.

We also spent a couple of nights at Celestun, a beach town in the area. Not really recommended, but the nature reserve there is fantastic to visit one morning for two or three hours if it's not too far out of your way. So many flamingos, as well as lots of other birds and a mangrove your guided boat can take you through. Very highly recommended.

Now that I have a sense of what these hacienda properties are about, I'd also consider Uayamon if your schedule permits, since it sounds kind of like SR and SJ while still being distinctive in its own right. It is somewhat out of the way compared to the other two, however, though I suppose you could fly into or out of Campeche (which it's much closer to than it is to Merida) to make the trip easier.

If I had to do it over again, I'd try to do U, SR and SJ, flying into Campeche and out of Merida (or vice versa), with a stop at the Celestun nature reserve along the way. And I'd stay at Hacienda Campeche as long as I was visiting that town anyway, though I doubt it's as charming as the other hacienda properties.

In summary, I'd highly recommend San Jose and Santa Rosa, with the property itself at SJ being even nicer than SR but the specific room we had and tiny size of SR standing out. If I had to pick one, it would by SJ by a hair due to its being an even prettier property not bordering right on a town - not that the towns by T or SR were bothersome. In any event, SR and SJ are definitely unique, "get away from it all properties" that I'd highly recommend for just relaxing in beautiful spots.

Hope this helps!