White sand, turquoise seas and relatively cheap prices may tempt investors to a newly-developing spot on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, writes Kevin O'Conor
ON THE WAY through The rain forest to Cancun, in the Gulf of Mexico, our coach broke down on a highway where the tarmac blisters in the 30-something heat of high noon. As we disgorged, there was a concerted lunge for newspapers to whack mosquitoes, whose radar targets a pale skin at 100 metres.
Ducking and diving, it became clear that apart from working for them, newspapers instantly assumed another primal role, rolled up as batons. Alas, Mexican "mossies" are probably tutored in their mothers' sacs to dive-bomb European journalists, especially those stranded on the Yucatan highway. "Hah, propagandist gringos - get 'em!" The mossies scored a lot of hits.
Which provoked a running banter, given Mexico's reputation for kidnapping. The heat, too, had something to do with the mild hysteria. If the bandidos came upon us, what would our respective employers do? We agreed the following: Daily Mailwants a picture in exchange for a ransom, the Sunday Timesalso a pic feature "Our girl in the jungle" (exclusive) and deny paying ransom. The Guardianwill urge the Mexican government to make concessions to the kidnappers' (just) demands. Accompanied, of course, by an essay on Mexican history, from the Mayan civilisation 500BC, through the Spanish Inquisition 1540s, to the anti-religious revolution of the 1920s and the current economic boom. The bandidos, we felt sure, would read all this and release us.
The Irish Timesoffer to discover the Irish ancestry of their leader, while not particularly wanting me back. As for the tabloids, once the kidnappers found exactly whom they had to accommodate in the bush for weeks, there would be no more highway kidnappings.
All this is by way of light introduction to the property possibilities of a tiny bit of this Central American republic. Pitched below the US, but above Guatemala and Columbia, across from Cuba, one can see why millions of American retirees dribble out their pensions along the white sands of the Gulf of Mexico.
With the dollar as currency, service geared to American tastes, the Yucatan peninsula lagoons are favoured by the baby boomers - that coming-into-pensions generation who were babies after the second World War. For them and their now adult offspring, this is about as close as it gets to a man-made paradise of health and safety, of good food and beautiful seascapes - and where the dollar is king.
Along these miles and miles of lagoons, of gently ebbing surf lapping along vistas of white sands, are the white hotels dipping their toes and infinity pools into the warm Caribbean. The overnight rates are better value than Europe. Given the facilities, the quality of the food, the sheer difference of it all, it's not surprising that tourism is Mexico's third biggest earner, raking in about $12 billion (over €8bn) in 2006. The local papers report daily on visitor ratios, like ours do race results.
With current occupancy rates 90 per cent, the product is protected. Each hotel has its own section of embracing Caribbean to swim in, covertly patrolled. Swim early or late, and you are being watched, for your own safety. Within the magnificent hotels, some modelled on indigenous Mayan temples and pyramids, staffs are cheerful and attentive, with that American twang which can so sound sooo . . . Hollywood, sir!
Speaka Da Americana is the passport to working in the tourist and leisure industry, as they like to call it; indeed, the country offers degrees in tourism and leisure, as well as Americanese. Tourism and associated property is a prime employer and every year thousands of trained young people come into the business. It shows in the way they handle themselves and the product. As for property, well, here's the deal.
For those who invested early in Yucatan, the profit returns came in multiples. Bought here, say 12 years ago for less than $100 (€68) per sq m ($9/€6.30 per sq ft), building land now costs upwards of $6,000 (€4,000) per sq m ($557/€371 per sq ft).
But the Cancun side of the Yucatan peninsula is now over-developed, and the regional government and local politicians are pressured to provide similar job opportunities for its population on the other side, close to the city of Merida.
Like all exotic destinations, the contrast with home makes for the buzz. The city of Merida, for instance, has a mayor who is a poet, meets you in jackets and jeans and is a stark contrast to the corpulent Irish equivalent. The city, of about a million, bops with a throbbing Mardi Gras at weekends, yet manages to sustain a steady stream of students into the university on Monday morning.
Merida owes its strategic existence to the Spanish town of the same name, two oceans away in old Europe, from whence voyaged the conquistadors of the 16th century, to pillage, rape and breed with the beaten Mayans. What is held to be the oldest Catholic cathedral in the Americas is here, built from the stones of the plundered Mayan temples.
Four hundred years on, one side of the magnificent city square is occupied by the palatial house built by the son of the Spanish conquistador, whose tribute to his adopted colony shows his armoured soldiery booted upon the heads of the Mayans.
"What we have, we hold!" Where have we heard that before? But before answering, it's salutary to hear how proud Mexicans are of their Spanish heritage.
As for current relations with Spain, a regional minister says they are "cordial and fraternal" while maintaining the Spanish government still owes, in hard cash, for the ravages of half-a-millennium ago.
Against all that, enter Neil Baines, a property entrepreneur with an eye for undeveloped stretches of coastline.
Knowing how the concept of the "country club resort" had swept America and Europe, his syndicate bought 2,350 acres of coastal stretch, at what he terms "a competitive price" - decode as dirt cheap - compared to Cancun.
The resort is called Flamingo Lakes, taking its name from acres of shallow lakes stretching to the coast, a human wilderness which is home to generations of flamingos and assorted wildlife that probably preceded the Spanish.
With 840 acres of that kept as nature reserve, Baines's intention is to rival Cancun, starting modestly enough with a first phase of villas and apartments around a 27-hole championship golf course, which seems a necessary staple of the country club concept. As do the boating marinas, the gyms and bars, the hot-glow restaurants and wildlife reserves.
I suppose those millions of American retirees want to keep fit while having conscience salved.
Knowing too how eco-friendly is now so politically correct, the built environment will be solar-powered and ground-pump heated: the grand designs of the villas are orchestrated by architect Neldy Granja, who will adapt to purchasers' requirements.
She was at the launch earlier this year, with the state governor Ivonne Ortego Pacheco and other local politicians, many of them women. Indeed, so is one of the earlier purchasers, bullfighter Lupita Lopez, who entered the Corrida aged 17, 20 years ago. So much for Mexico's macho image.
Clearly Baines has got the local political and tourist establishment onside, with his clear potential for employment and building and a fallout of prosperity.
If they get it right, in about five years, they will have the benefit of another Cancun-like boom of prosperity in what was marshland. Without making a big deal of it, some of the poor barrios we passed might benefit from access to this kind of uplift.
As of this month, Flamingo Lakes is marketing plots in Europe, on the claim they will never be as cheap again. Unless the world falls in, Baines is probably right. For those who cannot stand the heat and mosquitoes, there is an investment package, starting with purchase of a "lot" (building plot) at around $60,000 (€41,000) and going on from there to many possibilities of finished villas and homes.
For those who might want to dip their toes in the turquoise Caribbean (has to be done to be understood) and taste the lure of Hispanic-America, from the sanitised safety of a country-club, villas and homes start at around $220,000 (€150,000).
www.flamingolakes.com
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