Mexico offers culture, cuisine that will lure you again and again
nod to Mexican culture.
We started each morning with a surf session just out front, where waves pitched well overhead.
Between lazy days of naps and double surf sessions, the time passed as it should — without a care in the world. The internet was down, meaning we couldn’t stream Netflix or even text.
Our routine was surf, eat, sleep, repeat. Other than a rogue surf session at famed K-38 — followed by a sushi lunch — we didn’t venture far from our compound. All our meals were cooked in-house. We started with ceviche and moved onto fish tacos, poke bowls and ocean-to-table sushi.
The next day during the drive across the border, I couldn’t take my mind off Mexico.
So, back into the car we went, this time to Valle de Guadalupe, 30 minutes northeast of Ensenada. From
San Diego, we took the main artery of the Baja Peninsula: Highway 1. This legendary coastal road winds down from Tijuana to Los Cabos through deserts and bluffs.
Seven years earlier, we fell madly in love with “Valle,” wooed by her endless vineyards, olive groves and architectural masterpieces along the Ruta del Vino. It instantly replaced the Tijuana grit with Mexico’s finest wines, alongside country inns, luxurious haciendas, container hotels, glamping tents and romantic B&Bs. Setting down roots in the fertile land are prodigy chefs who transform old world charm into a rebellious vision gone right, with table-to-farm menus plunked right in the middle of dreamy ranches.
Balancing the mixed blessings that accompany such discoveries, many locals are fighting to keep this area from becoming the next Napa Valley.
Nearly 90% of the country’s wine production comes straight from the Valle, meaning numbers are still on the rise. In 2004, there were five wineries in production; today there are more than 120. Designers, architects and hoteliers are getting in on the action with eco-properties built beside lavender and bougainvillea hillsides.
Despite these perks, it’s the impressive blends that keep visitor count high. This time, we traveled past world-class boutique wineries to celebrate the 8year anniversary of our favorite property, El Cielo (meaning “heaven”). Considered a giant among the region’s vineyards, this winery produces 15,000 cases of wine per year and 24 labels.
Most visitors pause for the day to sample El Cielo’s blends named after constellations. Behind the barrel is winemaker Jesus Rivera, responsible for country. Nevertheless, travelers can easily arrange visits to the site.
TULA MONUMENT, CURACAO
much of the success of neighboring wineries where he previously consulted.
During our first visit to El Cielo, we were charmed by the elegant Chardonnay, Capricornius and the Italian grape blend of Nebbiolo and Sangiovese. The Perseus, aged 24 months in French oak barrels, and the Orion — their most popular reds — are both worth emptying your luggage for.
Latitude 32, El Cielo’s restaurant named for its location on the map, is an upscale eatery specializing in grilled cuts like pork belly tacos and cast-iron octopus.
That evening, we settled into our villa, a 473-squarefoot suite overlooking El Cielo’s vineyards. Luxury doesn’t come cheap, however, with rates starting at $400 a night for a slice of heaven. It truly is the closest thing to a Riviera Maya resort experience without all the traffic. In their place are 33 two-story villas framing two lakes that feed a 74-acre vineyard.
By Valle standards, rooms are enormous, with Thomas Cottle, an English colonial planter and owner of the Round Hill estate, built his church in 1824 as a Christian house of worship where his family and slaves could worship together. With slavery in effect and interracial worship unheard of, an outraged Anglican Church refused to recognize the house of worship.
Today, the hand-built structure features an archetypal Anglican crossshaped layout. Attached to the rear wall is a plaque inscribed with the names and ages of enslaved congregation members. The names African-born members noted with an asterisk; enslaved members with two names carried the last names of their owners.
Nevis native Greg Phillip, a former CEO of the Nevis Tourism Authority and now operator of Nevis Sun Tours, said the structure has become a setting for destination weddings. The location is particularly appropriate for interracial couples, he added. rich woods, slate floors, granite bathrooms and décor in muted grays and beige. In addition to a private terrace, we had our own Jacuzzi, kitchen, lounge and fireplace. Unlike many hotels in this area, El Cielo offered a shuttle, a wedding chapel, a concierge, 24-hour room service and personal butlers to schedule wine tastings, bike tours and beyond.
If the 5-star digs weren’t enough, El Cielo is pedaling toward becoming the first carbon-neutral hotel
LA SAVANE DES ESCLAVES, MARTINIQUE
La Savane des Esclaves in the resort town of Trois
Ilets on Martinique is a 2-hectare farm and museum owned and operated by native Gilbert Larose. The working farm replicates a post-slavery indigenous village with traditional houses built of palisades wood with beaten earth floors and cane-leaf roofs.
La Savane’s lush and hilly grounds are filled with native trees and plants. Yams, sweet potatoes, manioc, corn, pineapple, guava and bananas are cultivated using traditional manner without chemicals or pesticides. Gardens also feature medicinal plants used for hundreds of years by Caribbean natives to treat illnesses and injuries.
Other exhibits document traditional construction techniques and the manufacturing processes used to fashion cacao sticks, cassava with manioc flour and sugarcane juice. La Savane is open daily except for Sundays.
Unlike some present-day in Valle, setting up an infrastructure for solar, gray water and organic certification. In the works are a spa, gym, new pool and additional culinary services.
Until then, we would drink wine.
Oh, and pluck grapes, and hold a falcon, and stomp grapes, and join a cooking class, and then drink wine again. It was all part of our afternoon tour that was buttoned up with a visit to the wine cellar where we made our own blend.
American and Caribbean plantations which sparingly (if at all) reference the reality of slavery for all of the inhabitants, La Savane’s museum offers a frank and brutally accurate documentation of slavery in Martinique.
Paintings, sculptures and historical drawings document the incredible cruelty and violence of the slavebased agricultural economy, depicting Africans’ capture and transport across the Atlantic Ocean and their sale on auction blocks into lives of bondage. The exhibits also include chilling scenes of slave insurrections and revolts.
Nevertheless, La Savane is surprisingly uplifting as it also chronicles the Caribbean slave population’s transition to free people following slavery’s end in Martinique. The institution’s harsh reality led men including French abolitionist writer Victor Schoelcher to press for slavery’s end, and in 1848 the institution was abolished in Martinique.