Yucatán Haciendas

Why we love it

A hacienda weekend feels like renting a small country. Guests sleep in restored worker houses around the gardens, the ceremony happens under the arches of the old machine house, and the after-party moves to a cenote lit with floating candles. There is nothing else in Mexico like it, and prices sit well below Cabo and Tulum for a comparable level of finish.

Mérida itself is one of the safest, calmest cities in the country, with a food scene that finally gets the recognition it deserves.

What to know

Yucatán is hot and humid; we plan ceremonies for the last hour of daylight and never before November. Most haciendas are 30 to 60 minutes from Mérida, so the weekend is designed around guests staying on the estate or in a single hotel block in town with shuttles.

Haciendas have a finite number of rooms, typically 12 to 40. For larger guest lists we pair the estate with a Mérida hotel.

Signature moments we’ve planned here

• A ceremony in a roofless chapel, the sky as the ceiling, followed by cochinita pibil cooked in a traditional pib in the ground.
• A midnight cenote swim with a string quartet playing from the cavern’s edge.
• A Sunday visit to Uxmal with a private archaeologist, before flights home.