THE FACTS ABOUT ZAMAS

Mexico Yucatan

The young crowd at Zamas would not look out of place in a Hoxton bar in London. Daniel Vallejo McGettigan owns and manages Zamas with his partner, Susan Bohlken. After falling in love with the area on their honeymoon 17 years ago, the San Franciscan couple set up the Que Fresco restaurant and slowly added rooms using local building techniques. Today it has 15 one- and two-bedroom cabaņas on either side of Tulum's quiet beach road and more of the colourful wooden furniture seen in the restaurant. Beds are draped in mosquito netting and bathrooms are decorated with shards of brightly coloured tiles. Zamas does not have air conditioning or fans, but there are windows on all sides of the bedrooms to let in the breeze. The menu at the lively beach restaurant is impressively long, choose from shrimp with achiote chilli sauce; red snapper in olive tapenade and a number of vegetarian dishes (rarely an option in Mexico) such as grilled vegetable enchiladas with pumpkin-seed sauce. Being among the first to set up in Tulum, McGettigan has seen a lot of changes since his arrival. In spite of tough building regulations, the hippy haven is slowly growing and modernising, and the type of visitor is changing, too. When a number of hotels introduced generators, some travellers looking for a more authentic rustic experience moved on. CONTACT Zamas, Tulum (00 1 415 387 9806; email: zamashotel@cs.com; www.zamas.com). Doubles from US$60