Three Luxurious Guest Ranches--in Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina--Define Gracious Hospitality in Rural Surroundings

What a pity that most people seem to have their out-of-body experience under near-fatal circumstances, a feeling of being embraced by a mysterious light as they waken from, say, cardiac arrest. In my own case, it comes much more pleasantly, on a sultry night at a hacienda on the Yucatan Peninsula after a meal of sour-orange soup, chicken in green pumpkin-seed sauce and a few shots of tequila.

The dinner conversation is mesmerizing. Aware that I’m vacationing alone, the owners--a woman who grew up on a hacienda elsewhere in Mexico and her Spanish-born husband--have invited me to join them at their table, along with an American naturalist, a Danish anthropologist and a Yucatecan weaver, all of them regular visitors living nearby. Talk of unexplored Mayan ruins and exotic wildlife blends with the mellow, romantic strains of trova, the music of Mexico’s Gulf coast. We part reluctantly hours later in a chorus of yawns.

Heading down the dark, wooded path to my regal guest quarters, I’m surrounded by the blurry shadows of bats--just the right eerie touch. I stop and glance back at the surreal spectacle of the dining room set on a veranda and restored to 17th century splendor. Then I look up at the firmament. It’s ablaze with constellations so vivid that even an amateur can make out dippers and archers and bears. I remember the hacienda owners telling me that the Mayas, such keen astronomers, had chosen this site for an observatory more than a millennium ago.

And that’s the last memory I have of the evening. Whether it was the starlight (as I’d like to believe) or the tequila, I can’t recall undressing and climbing into a hammock. I wake up the following morning to the cries of a great kiskadee and the soft patter of rain. When I open the blue shutters, the sun has parted the clouds and a rainbow arches over the near horizon. Katanchel, the Mayan name of the hacienda, means “Where we consult the rainbow.”

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It isn’t often that I get a spiritual rush on a Latin American vacation. Having grown up in this part of the world, I tend to be less credulous, more demanding, than I would be in Borneo or Bhutan. Sure, there are scores of attractive cities from Mexico to Brazil, but urban vacations aren’t my idea of relaxation (and soaring crime rates in these areas make me even edgier). Coastal resorts can be soothing, but I rarely choose to fly thousands of miles when there are beaches closer to home. And having visited Mexico’s Monte Alban and Peru’s Machu Picchu several times, I can report that many of those enticing postcards and brochures have airbrushed the hordes of tourists from the pyramids’ steps.

Yet when it comes to staying at a well-run guest ranch anywhere in Latin America, from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, I drop my armor of skepticism. The best of these establishments are not dude ranches in the style of the American West, but cattle, forestry and grain-growing haciendas located deep in the hinterlands, with few other people around. They often trace their histories back to an era when rural oligarchies dominated Latin American society. But their emergence as travel destinations is barely a decade old and tied to hard-nosed economics. Low prices for agricultural commodities, rising overhead costs and tight-fisted government policies have forced ranchers to find ways to supplement their incomes. Like the noble owners of British castles, they have chosen to invite paying guests to their ancestral homes.

Among the many Latin American guest ranches in existence, I have visited a dozen during the last few years. These are three of my favorites. All provide high comfort, fine service and delectable food. But each offers a distinct experience and setting. Hacienda Katanchel is a living link between Mexico’s pre-Columbian, colonial and early modern history. In Venezuela, Hato Pinero is a naturalist’s paradise, with a startling concentration of wildlife. And La Portena, near Buenos Aires, is the classic ranch of the pampas, where the greatest novel on gauchos, Argentine cowboys, was written.

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Katanchel lies on 740 acres hidden off a highway 15 miles east of Merida, a city of remarkable food, handicrafts and architecture. It’s a 2 1/2-hour drive west from the far-more-visited beaches of Cancan. The terrain is tropical scrub forest covering the thin limestone soil typical of western Yucatan, where cenotes, or natural wells, supplied the water that made Mayan agriculture possible. As a hacienda, Katanchel dates to the early 1600s, when Spanish cattlemen built it on the grounds of an ancient Maya settlement. Real prosperity came a century ago with its conversion into a plantation of henequen, or sisal, the agave plant whose fiber is used for rope. The sisal boom created a wealthy Yucatecan aristocracy, popularly called la casta divina (the divine caste), whose members divided their time between residences in Europe, belle epoque mansions in Merida and occasional visits to their plantations. But by the 1950s, the boom and its caste collapsed, victims of nylon and other artificial fibers.

Three years ago, Monica Hernandez and Anbal Gonzalez purchased Katanchel. They are reforesting much of the hacienda with tropical hardwoods whose natural scents are used in fine soaps and lotions. In the meantime, more than 30 derelict bungalows once inhabited by sisal workers have been renovated into guest suites. Typically, the rooms are furnished with romantic cast iron beds, dressers of tropical wood and bathrooms with patterned tiles everywhere. Ceilings are high and well-vented, so that even in this tropical climate, overhead fans substitute perfectly for air conditioners.

Hernandez and Gonzalez bring an unusual combination of talents to the task of turning Katanchel into a luxury guest ranch. Hernandez, in her 40s, is an accomplished landscaper and restorer of art; Gonzalez, a few years older, is a well-known architect.

“I get a laugh when friends on a visit here tell me how lucky we are to have found a property with such lush gardens,” says Hernandez, as she guides me through beds of flowers and shrubs that she had planted. Part of the tour is on foot and the remainder on a horse-drawn cart set on rails--the same method used by workers decades ago to transport sisal leaves to the Casa de Maquinas, the plantation factory, for processing.

Gonzalez converted the Casa de Maquinas into the main indoor common areas for guests. “The furnishings come from local antiquarians and our own family heirlooms,” he explains over an iced tea in the cavernous living room, handsomely appointed with wall tapestries, Spanish colonial-era portraits, carved tables and easy chairs of soft old leather. The adjoining billiard room--a cherished retreat of casta divina men--faces a fishpond.

The other half of the building is taken up by the dining room, with one of its sides fully exposed to the gardens. The secret to the virtual absence of mosquitoes is the abundance of bats and frogs that feed on the flying adults and of fish that devour their waterborne larvae.

In search of seclusion and quiet, I have timed my visit to mid-winter, when the hacienda is more than half vacant. Among the other guests is a professional cook from California (here to learn about Yucatecan recipes) and a young investment banking couple from Wall Street--probably logging more quality time with each other in three days than they have during the last three months. On one day, an extended, local family drops by for lunch.

It’s tempting to confine myself to Katanchel’s pleasures--the expert cuisine, the pool and shady groves, the airy rooms with their king-size beds, the long paths through scrub forest and past henequen fields. But that would mean missing out on isolated archeological ruins, enormous colonial churches and villages painted in bright pastels where Mayan is heard more often than Spanish. In four days, I visit many of them, driven around by one of the guides employed at the hacienda. I even find time to explore Uxmal, the crowning achievement of Mayan architecture, and to meander through the street markets of Merida.

The high point of my Katanchel sojourn, though, is a stopover at the tiny village of Ake, a half-hour drive from the hacienda. On one side of Ake’s plaza are the roofless remains of an early Mayan temple. Wandering alone among its stone pillars, with a view of gnarled scrub forest, I ask myself the same questions a host of other vacationers and archeologists in Yucatan have posed over many decades: How did these poor soils support several million Mayans and such a culturally advanced civilization? And why did it collapse centuries before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores?

The rest of this religious compound was razed by the conquering Spaniards and its masonry used to build a colonial hacienda house and its chapel, themselves now in ruins. Here the culprit of decline is still evident. Across the grassy plaza is a barely operating sisal factory, its creaky British machinery left over from the industrial revolution a century ago. By accident, Ake has become an open-air museum, and one of the most poignant testimonies of Mexico’s--and Latin America’s--layered history.

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If the Yucatan landscape is pockmarked with evidence of successive waves of human settlement, the grassy savanna of central Venezuela, known as the llanos, offers that rare example of a wilderness largely able to blunt human efforts to conquer it.

This is a land of extremes. For six months a year, torrential rains turn most of this Texas-sized region into vast lakes and bloated rivers. Monkeys, ocelots, fox and anteaters flee to dry patches of higher, wooded ground. Infested with crocodile-like caimans, the waters lap over dirt roads, and boats become the only form of transportation. Then from December to May, the llanos are scourged by drought. The savanna grasses turn parched yellow. Vehicles stir up a choking red dust. Mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds in huge numbers congregate around the shrinking water holes. And the llanos become the New World equivalent of Africa’s Serengeti Plain.

The best vantage point to enjoy this cornucopia of wildlife is a stay at Hato Pinero. A hato is what Venezuelans call a cattle ranch. Historically, it took an unusually large ranch to hold enough water supplies to survive the long droughts and enough high pastures to feed cattle during the prolonged floods. Hato Pinero, an estate of about 200,000 acres, is one of the biggest ranches in the llanos.

Pinero is run by Antonio Julio Branger, who owns the hato with his siblings. Now in his mid-70s, Branger came relatively late in life to the conservationist cause. As a young man, he would fly friends into the ranch every weekend to shoot everything in sight--pumas, caimans, deer, game birds. But as the wildlife dwindled, the joy of the llanos vanished for him. So, beginning close to 50 years ago, he prohibited hunting on the property. Within a few years, even the most endangered species, such as jaguars and tapirs, had made dramatic comebacks.

Branger invited zoologists and botanists to visit, and later established a biological research station for them at the ranch. By 1980, Pinero had become an early outpost of ecotourism. Birders came from the United States and Europe, followed by other amateur naturalists, all by word-of-mouth. The numbers rose so sharply that a dozen years ago, Branger decided to build a guest house next to his ranch home. The building has mauve-colored outer walls and red-tile roofs. Rooms have overhead fans and stone floors. There is no hot water; it isn’t needed in this searing heat. The cooking is simple, tasty and typical of the llanos: shredded beef, fried yucca and plantains, and baked piranha, the most abundant local fish.

On my visit, there are a score of guests divided into two tour groups--one from the United States, the other from the Netherlands--united only by their deep love of birding. Not speaking Dutch, I am drawn to my compatriots. They range from a septuagenarian couple (he a retired doctor, she a former lawyer) to a young Omaha couple, both of them high school teachers. But they speak the language of advanced ornithology (“Was that a greater or lesser yellow legs?” “That was my first hoatzin!”)

There is only a glimmer of dawn when I step into the courtyard of the guesthouse with the ranch resident naturalist. He identifies for me the sounds of the first birds to stir: the taro-taro-taro of a sharp-tailed ibis, the chocorocoee-chocorocoee of a stripe-backed wren, and then the earsplitting, raucous call of scarlet macaws. On the dirt road a hundred yards ahead, the llaneros, or cowboys, are already riding toward the pastures. Scampering out of their way is a surprised pack of pig-size capybaras, the world’s largest rodents. A jaguar’s cough sets off a chorus of bellows from the cattle herds that stretch out into the horizon.

Along with a dozen birders, I board a flatbed truck with cushioned side-benches and a canvas roof for an early morning excursion led by a bearded, potbellied ornithologist from a Texas-based bird-watching tour agency. He is a stern guide. “Why are you photographing the caimans when a dozen striated herons are standing by?” he scolds one couple aiming their cameras at a riverbank. He is loaded down with seriously advanced recording equipment to capture the songs of the rarer species.

We pass two entwined anacondas, an act of copulation that can last for 48 hours, according to Pinero’s naturalist, who is sitting next to me. In the fields, egrets and yellow-headed caracaras straddle the backs of the cattle, combing their hides for ticks and fleas.

Our primary destination is a lake shrunk by the drought. Desperate for water, the plethora of wildlife are trusting, of each other and even of us humans. Howling monkeys descend from the nearby trees. Caimans by the hundreds lie on the water’s edge, oblivious to the capybara and scarlet ibises stepping inches from their snouts. A family of 4-foot-tall jabiruses, the most massive of the storks, wades past a flock of roseate spoonbills, sweeping the shallows with their flat beaks. My companions, standing only 20 to 30 feet away, can’t believe the birds don’t scatter in fright.

By noon we have counted more than 50 bird species. Even our Texan taskmaster, who has enough feathered arias for a New Age opera, doesn’t object when the local naturalist orders a few unscheduled stops to show us some oddities of the llanos on our way back to the ranch compound. He points out a pond that seems to have been brought to a boil. The water’s oxygen levels have dropped so low that the still-abundant fish forsake gills in favor of primitive lungs and poke their mouths through the surface to gulp for air--thus, the bubbling effect.

Just as startling are large cocoon-like growths in a tree cavity. Each is a hibernating frog that, in order to survive the drought, has emitted secretions that harden around it like an insect pupa to reduce its body’s water loss. At the feel of the first raindrops of the wet season, the naturalist explains, the frogs break out of these shells and resume their feeding.

Back at the ranch house over lunch, the birders swap stories about their most satisfying expeditions around the world and agree that Pinero rates near the top of their list. Then they argue whether caimans and piranhas are dangerous to humans--a discussion that I have noticed always breaks out among visitors to the South American tropics. This time, at least, the question is settled by the wife of a Dutch diplomat, who informs us that she fell off her horse while crossing a river that morning. Caimans by the score fled to the banks before the llaneros could reach her--and the piranhas also seemed to have swum away in a panic.

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There is no terrain more different from Venezuela’s llanos than the pampas of Argentina. The loamy plain that radiates for hundreds of miles out from Buenos Aires is among the most fertile agrarian land in the world. Flat, wind-swept and bereft of native trees, the pampas in its natural state is like an empty canvas waiting for a landscape artist to shape it. A century ago, owners of the wealthiest rural estates, or estancias, as the Argentines call them, invited renowned European gardeners and architects to create romantic landscapes, private parks and manor houses--in the style of French chateaux, British castles and Spanish castillos--on their pampas properties.

By these standards, La Portena, a 1,200-acre estancia about 70 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, rates as a minimalist painting. Its ranch house is an unpretentious, whitewashed rectangular building from the 1860s that accommodates only 14 guests. Bowers of wisteria tumble over the terrace. The groves, mainly maple and eucalyptus, aren’t thick enough to hide the unrelentingly flat pampas. The biggest tree on the estancia--an omb--is in fact not even a tree, but rather a monstrous weed native to the pampas. It was in its substantial shade that Argentina’s equivalent of “Huckleberry Finn” was written by the man who once owned La Portena.

The novelist was Ricardo Guiraldes, and his masterpiece, “Don Segundo Sombra” (1926), tells the classic Argentine story of an older, faithful gaucho who becomes mentor to the estancia owner’s son. More than seven decades later, there is still much about La Portena that is recognizable from the novel: the mouthwatering aroma of an asado--the Argentine barbecue in which every conceivable part of a steer is grilled over embers; the melancholic strains of a bandonen, a small Argentine accordion, expertly played by a band member from a nearby town; the European furniture, portrait paintings and other family heirlooms that grace the large guest rooms.

If there is a genuine aura to La Portena, it has much to do with the fact that the man who runs it, Manuel Guiraldes (along with his wife, Keka), is a grandnephew of the novelist and a devotee of the writer’s rustic ideals. Over dinner or drinks, he will recite long passages of gaucho poetry, and one doesn’t have to be fluent in Spanish to appreciate the soulful verses. He is also a councilman in the nearby town of San Antonio de Areco, where shops still sell the sagging leather boots, the billowing pantaloons and silver-studded belts of the gauchos.

For years, Guiraldes, 50, had drifted away from La Portena. He was a gifted player of polo, a sport for which Argentines are world renowned. He often played abroad and taught the sport in Spain before returning to run La Portena for his aging aunt.

The estancia makes much of its income by breeding or caring for polo ponies. I take polo classes that Guiraldes since has discontinued, first on a wooden dummy and then out on the polo field. In my case, a single lesson was enough to dissuade me from ever fantasizing about taking up the sport. The mallet is wielded in a variety of motions that sometimes combine a golf and a tennis swing. My horse, almost as tame as the wooden dummy I had practiced upon, is intelligent enough to come to a full stop whenever I lean over to smack the wooden ball.

I retreat to the edge of the field to join some old friends who are also staying at the estancia--a Buenos Aires psychiatrist and a magazine editor and their families. Sipping mate--the bitter hot tea of the gauchos--from metal straws in tiny gourds, we watch two local polo teams play a few chukkers. But we abandon the match well before it’s over because the smell of the asado becomes irresistible. We gorge on beef and wine, listen to a few gaucho verses from Guiraldes, and as night envelops the estancia, it’s easy to conjure up the characters and whole scenes from his granduncle’s novel.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Guidebook: Hacienda Handbook

Prices: Room rates are for a double for one night.

Getting there: Katanchel: Continental, Aeromexico and Mexicana airlines have connecting flights (there is no nonstop service) from Los Angeles to Merida, Mexico, 30 minutes from the hacienda. It may be cheaper to fly from Los Angeles to Cancan, a 2 1/2-hour drive from Katanchel, which will send a car; Mexicana has nonstop service to Cancan, and Aeromexico has a direct flight (no change of plane).

Hato Pinero: Continental offers direct flights to Caracas, Venezuela, from Los Angeles, while American, Delta, United and Mexicana have connecting flights. Reserve Hato Pinero through Biotours, a travel agency specializing in ecotourism; Biotours can arrange for a car and driver for the 225-mile, five-hour journey to the hacienda, about $125 each way. Or rent a car in Caracas (the major companies are represented) and head south, taking the highway marked Route 1. Head west until you reach the town of Tinaco, which is the juncture with Route 13. Take Route 13 east to Galeras, about 22 miles. Then head south along Route 8 to El Baul, about 60 miles, the village closest to Hato Pinero. Or the ranch offers plane service for about $800 round-trip from Caracas.

La Portena: From Los Angeles to Buenos Aires, Argentina, United and Lan Chile fly direct and American, Varig, VASP, Aeroperu and Mexicana have connecting flights. The estancia, which is 70 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, can pick you up at the airport or in the city itself.

Where to stay: Katanchel, Tixkokob, 97470 Yucatan, Mexico; telephone 011-52-99-23-40-38, fax 011-52-99-23-40-00. Or through Design Hotels, (800) 693-3746. There are 39 rooms and suites. Rates: $250 to $350, including breakfast and either lunch or dinner.

Hato Pinero. Reservations must be made through Caracas-based Biotours, which has an exclusive agreement with the ranch. Biotours tel. 011-58-2-991-8935, 991-0079. Ranch 011-58-2-92-45-31, fax 011-58-2-991-6688. The ranch has 11 guest rooms with electricity but no hot water. Only three rooms have air-conditioning, but overhead fans are sufficient even in the hottest weather. Rates: $120 to $150 per person, including meals and two excursions.

La Portena, 69 San Antonio de Areco 2760; tel. 011-54-3-265-3770, or call its Buenos Aires office, tel. 011-54-1-822-1325. Rate: $250 per couple per day, including all meals. No credit cards are accepted.

When to go: For Katanchel, October through May, but the summer months aren’t as hot or rainy as they’re reputed to be. For Hato Pinero, January to April, the dry season (summer in South America). The concentration of visible wildlife is greatest in April. For La Portena, September through May.

For more information: Mexican Government Tourism Office, Mexican Consulate, 2401 W. 6th St., Los Angeles, 90057; (213) 351-2069. Consulate General of Venezuela, 455 Market St., Suite 220, San Francisco, Calif. 94105; (415) 512-8340. Argentine Government Tourism Office, 5055 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 210, Los Angeles, 90036; (213) 930-0681.