Ixtapan Rates

Reprinted From

Sunday, March 26, 2000

A Spa That Doesn’t Trim Wallets

The Hotel Spa Ixtapan takes a laid-back approach to fitness in the high-altitude land of the Aztecs

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

   THE Hotel Spa Ixtapan, 65 miles southwest of Mexico City, is not a spa for those who find their pleasure in competitive fitness - or competitive fitness attire.
   This 58-year-old spa, 5,500 feet in the pleasant town of Ixtapan de la Sal (not the better-known Ixtapa, a Mexican beach resort), is also not for those who want a personal trainer or individualized fitness program. There is an aerobics class every other day, alternating with yoga - take it or leave it. There is a gym with various pieces of equipment, but you are on your own there.
   Rather, in the style of Mexican spas, and in contrast to American spas that concentrate on toning body and mind, Hotel Spa Ixtapan is a place to be pampered. The seven-day "spa clásico" package is an amazing bargain at just over $1,000 a person, double occupancy, including food and all services: six massages; six facials, with a different freshly made fruit or vegetable masque every day; two hair treatments, one hot oil and one tomato purée (which, coming a half-hour after my cucumber facial, did make me feel like a bit like a salad); one combination loofah and fango (a salt and almond-oil rub followed by a full-body mudpack); plus a manicure, pedicure and final-day hairstyle.
   To be honest, no one really needs a daily facial, but by the end of my weeklong stay last month, with a group of friends, I was hooked and wondered how I could make it through the rest of the winter without one. My facialist was Paulina. She would announce the specialty of the day with shy pride at the start of each session: "Today is apple!" and then mix the masque in a blender as I lay relaxing in the dark under a warm steam with a compress over my eyes. A comfortable neck massage was part of this service.
   The women's spa itself is an attractive, light-filled area on the hotel's fifth floor, much spruced up since my first visit three years ago. Massages are preceded by a stay in a handsome marble steamroom, the steam enhanced by the aroma of the freshly cut eucalyptus branches on the floor. My masseuse, Irma, gave a good, energetic, basic massage. All the pink-smocked staff are trained in the same technique, and the sound of the final, vigorous pat-down could be heard at the same moment coming from each of the private massage rooms lining the hallways.
   The exercise options are few, which is just as well, because the spa schedule leaves little time and the quality of the exercise classes is only fair, essentially follow-the-leader to loud music, with little instruction.
   My two favorite activities were the 50-minute hike every morning at dawn, with varying routes through the nearby hills and town and the reward of freshly squeezed orange juice beckoning at the end like liquid gold, and the daily water aerobics in a pool fed by a thermal mineral spring. The 100-degree water, said to be “relaxing for the nervous

system” and good for arthritis (I can vouch for the former effect), is the reason people have been drawn to Ixtapan for hundreds of years. The spa package also includes three half-hours that can be filled by tennis or golf lessons or horseback riding. The trail rides earned raves from those who tried them, while others spoke highly of the tennis pro.
   As only a second-time visitor, I barely qualified as a veteran. I met couples who had been coming for decades, a few for more than 50 years. With its low prices and friendly atmosphere, the hotel attracts elderly Americans who otherwise might have wintered at Miami Beach. They usually stay for six to eight weeks, taking only room and board, at about $110 a day a person, double occupancy, and receiving then: occasional massages and other spa services either at the hotel's spa or at the pristine public bathhouse (balneario) that is part of a water park adjoining the hotel grounds.
   Prices at the bathhouse are considerably lower than á la carte prices at the hotel: $22 for a massage compared with $32 at the hotel, for example. Many of the patrons are Mexican tourists. I tried a reflexology treatment, essentially a foot massage, which I found delightfully relaxing even if I remained unpersuaded that pressure points on the foot determine the health of various internal organs.
   The bathhouse, with its surrounding water park, was once part of the hotel, but the founder, Arturo San Román Sanchez, divided his property and left half to each of two sons. The sons are said to be engaged in a long-running feud; in any event, the two adjoining facilities barely acknowledge each other’s presence.
   The elderly long-term visitors were noticeably fewer than during my first visit, and on weekends their numbers are eclipsed by the young families who come from Mexico City. “The old-timers are going the way of all flesh,” one vigorous 89-year-old man told me with a sad smile. As the balance shifted to younger, spa-oriented guests, whom the hotel actively recruited with promotions to travel agents, the small spa dining room tucked away on the fifth floor became more and more crowded. Two years ago it was given pride of place in a separate glass-walled building overlooking the main swimming pool.
   Still, the continued presence of the older guests (typified by a sign on the lobby bulletin board asking "Anyone bring a mah-jongg set?") gives the spa a homey atmosphere. On weekends, the

hotel acquires an entirely different feel as young Mexican families arrive from Mexico City, barely two hours away. (Some 70 percent of the tourism in the town of Ixtapan de la Sal, which has dozens of small hotels and guest houses, is Mexican.) Suddenly, young children are racing in the halls and splashing in the pools, and there are long lines at the water park.
   I suppose we personified the customers the hotel now seeks. We were a group of 17 women, friends or friends of friends; everyone knew someone in the group, but no one knew everyone. We ranged in age from the early 40's to the mid-60's. We were all members of the Women's Travel Club, a Miami-based organization that offers a yearly trip to Ixtapan and many other tours. What we really had in common was a conviction that we had earned the right to indulge and refresh ourselves for a week under a bright sun in a setting that combined familiar comforts with enough exotica to pique our interest.
   Ixtapan means "place over the salt" in the language of the Aztecs, a reference to the mineral springs. The altitude is high enough so that the days are never hot, ranging in the 70's, and the nights are refreshingly cool, in the low 60’s. The area’s history is reflected in the voluptuous statues of Aztec goddesses that dot the hotel’s manicured grounds. Don’t look for postmodern minimalism here. The six-story pink stucco hotel is more in the style of South Beach manqué. The 220 rooms are motel basic, but with firm mattresses and unusually good reading lights. Satellite television brings in many American stations.
   The town itself is on the cusp of major change. That much was clear from the highway billboards announcing the coming of the “promised land - the Ixtapan Country Club. The hotel’s owner is taking the old nine-hole golf course and surrounding countryside and developing a 700-home community, with its own spa and an 18-hole golf course that is expected to be open by the beginning of June. Three bedroom villas, selling for around $200,000, are being marketed to Europeans, Americans and Mexicans. An elegant new hotel, the Del Rey Ixtapan de la Sal, has opened nearby.