­­I’m barely over the shock of seeing not one but two white Rolls Royces parked in front of Live Aqua Resort & Spa  in Cancun when an employee, dressed in oddly medical-looking uniform consisting of white capris and a white tunic, guides me into a plush chair in the resort’s enormous lobby and begins giving me a hand massage. A hand massage.

Can this be Cancun? Yes, but a fresh Live Aqua take on Cancun where, despite its size (371 rooms and suites all with ocean view and private balcony), nurturing, personalized touches more commonly associated with a boutique hotel abound.  

­­The two coolest boutique hotels in Playa del Carmen are located within a few blocks of each other. Starting in May they share one more important quality: big beachy bargains.

It’s hard to tell which of these sister hotels is hipper.  

At Deseo [Hotel + Lounge] words like “crisp” and “white” spring to mind. While some of the 15 rooms are on the small side, the suites are certifiably huge loft-like spaces with patios and enough square footage between the king size bed and the enormous bathroom to put in an indoor hammock and a bathtub and still have room to dance around naked if you want to. Sexy.

­­Don’t let the pepto-pink exterior of Rosas y Xocolate fool you. This 17 room boutique hotel in one or Mexico’s most vibrant cities is about more than just a flash of color (though pink and chocolate brown dominate, as the name implies). The hotel’s creator, Carlos Kolozs Fisher, is a hard-driving New Yorker who was in the textile business based in the Southern Mexican city of Merida. When he sold his business he “meditated on what to do next.”

While waiting for an answer, he came across a mansion on Merida’s Paseo de Montejo which is lined with massive homes built in the French style by rich sisal growers during the reign of Porfirio Diaz, Mexico’s Europhile President/dictator from 1876 to 1911.

The  owners of the uber-romantic Hacienda Xcanatun, six miles from the heart and charms of the colonial city of Merida in Mexico’s Yucatan, agree that romance should happen all year long, not just on one designated day—and they’re willing to help.

­­Surprise! Like a pinup girl bounding out of a birthday cake Hotel Boca Chica, part of Grupo Habita, livens up the Acapulco scene with a smile and a shimmy and more than a few tricks up her sleeve.

First opened in the 1950s, the original Hotel Boca Chica became an icon of its time before declining, then finally closing in 1997. Another legend from the fifties, Mexican architect Antonio Peleaz, was contracted to bring the shell back to life.

­Tuna is a complicated word in Mexico. On the one hand, tuna is the Spanish word for a delicious cactus fruit. On the other hand, Tuna is also the name of the newest restaurant from Chef Richard Sandoval  where the food is all about fish (and fusion), not fruit. ­

Opened in September in the Polanco neighborhood (the Beverly Hills/5th Avenue of Mexico City), the concept behind Tuna is to bring together elements of Asian cooking with elements of Mexican cooking. A particularly successful example of this unlikely culinary combination is the restaurant’s Chinese tacos al pastor. This dish takes the traditional Mexican ingredients for this ubiquitous type of taco (pork, pineapple, pickled onion, cilantro and pickled chilies) and ditches the tortilla in favor of a “shell” that has the color, taste and consistency of an Asian steamed pork bun (90 pesos or about US$7).

­Grand Velas All Suites & Spa Resort Riviera Maya, which was just awarded five stars for lodging by AAA, is one of the newer all-inclusives in the region (just shy of two years old). However, it acts like it’s been doing this forever. The resort is all suites (from 1,000 to nearly 2,500 square feet) and it’s all-inclusive. Yeah, yeah. All-inclusive is a term that’s seen its share of abuse. Way too often it means you pay a lot of money for mediocre food, b-list booze, lazy service and predictable décor and amenities. But at Grand Velas they haven’t just given the concept of all-inclusive a new name (dubbing it “Grand All-Inclusive”), they’ve also given it new meaning.  

­Starwood Hotels owns or operates more than 1,000 hotels in more than 100 countries. Fewer than 80 of those are part of the hotel giant’s elite Luxury Collection and only five of those are part of The Haciendas group in southern Mexico. These hotels are housed in what were once the grand homes of the owners of sisal (and sugar and cattle) farms and factories who made fortunes supplying natural plant fibers to the rope and twine making industry in the late 18th and early 19th centuries—not unlike Mexican versions of the southern plantations in the United States.

­The excitement has finally settled down following Mexico’s nationwide mega-fiestas marking the country’s 200th anniversary of independence from Spain which culminated on September 16, Mexico’s Independence Day. Now it’s time to start gearing up for the country’s 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution being marked on November 20 and the place to be is the cosmopolitan city of Santiago de Querétaro.

This UNESCO World Heritage City is where the Mexican constitution was written and signed following the revolution and you can sleep right next to the Teatro de la Republica where that momentous event took place. Just book a room at aptly-named La Casona de la Republica.

­­2­010 marks the 200th anniversary of Mexican Independence which means the country’s Independence Day, September 16, will be even more festive than usual. You can be part of the Independence Day action in Mexico City at substantial savings thanks to rolling specials from the city’s hippest hotel group—Grupo Habita.