With its Mayan ruins and moonlight raves, Tulum has become Mexico’s hippest holiday destination. But a spate of violent evictions reveals a darker side
Reviews of Uno Astrolodge, a boutique new age-style hotel on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, lean heavily on words such as “magic”, “paradise” and “peace”. When it opened in 2001, Uno Astrolodge was one of the first upscale hotels in the beach town of Tulum. Over the past decade, the once-sleepy town, 75 miles south of Cancún, has become the kind of spiritual oasis particularly favoured by the fashion industry and wealthy New Yorkers. Until recently, guests at Uno Astrolodge, set on an exclusive stretch of white sandy beach, paid up to $300 per night for a room in a candlelit bungalow with a view of the ocean. They showered under the trees in private outdoor bathrooms and ate fresh bread baked on site every morning. They could spend their time detoxing in Native American sweat lodge ceremonies or getting their Mayan astrology charts read. Wednesdays at the Astrolodge featured sound healing ceremonies; a “women’s circle” welcomed every full moon with ecstatic dancing.
But this other-worldly pampering was rudely interrupted on 17 June 2016. That morning Uno Astrolodge’s founder, Nuno Silva, a rangy Portuguese 45-year-old with a soft voice and long bronze dreadlocks, was at home with his wife and daughter. Just after sunrise, the hotel manager ran across the road to alert him to a problem. There were hundreds of men amassing in the street outside Silva’s beachfront property, the manager told him. Some of them were armed with machetes and big sticks. They were coming to seize the hotel.
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Tulum's distinct blend of high design, thatched-roof rusticity and beautiful seascapes looks great on Instagram
No one who had been evicted from a property in the past 15 years had managed to return
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