Whichever way you cut it, the Mexican tourism industry has been battling stiff odds lately: the depressed economy, the drug war, swine flu ... it all amounted to a perfect storm of bad business throughout a disastrous month of May, during which the lusty metropolis of Mexico City took on the pallor of the ghost town, with hotels and tour operators hit by a wave of cancellations. From the sound of things, all Mexico needed was a particularly bad hurricane season (still a possibility) to rub salt into its wounds, and the pitiful scenario would be complete.
So how was the country actually handling its multifaceted crisis? To find out, I planned a road trip taking in town, country and coast, starting out and concluding in Guadalajara, the country's second-largest city. News of President Felipe Calderón's 1.2bn peso "Vive México" tourism campaign, with its promise of discounts, was – for the traveller at least – encouraging, and a cursory surf of the web revealed a spate of special offers and slashed rates: "Get up to 70% off!" promised Expedia; "Pay half price for paradise" announced Travelocity. Evidently, there was value to be had in the ether, but how would things feel on the ground?
My week began at Café Madrid on Avenida Juarez, downtown Guadalajara. I hadn't given even half a thought to the swine flu until an old man in a grey suit, who had been breakfasting next to me, unloaded the contents of his nose into a napkin, which the waitress casually picked up and discarded, before serving coffee elsewhere. For an instant, my sinuses started to twitch, sensing the inevitable onslaught of H1N1 germs ... which never arrived. Clearly, the sane approach was to rebuff the flu with nonchalance, so I breezed into the mid-morning along the city's main corridor of cultural buildings, the Plaza Tapatía.
At the eastern end of the plaza is the Instituto Cultural Cabañas, a former hospice built at the start of the 19th century. It's now an arts centre, with an unmissable series of murals by José Clemente Orozco. Painted on to the roof and walls of the capilla mayor, a sepulchral building at the heart of the complex, are gangs of masked demons, people crushed by machines, a hellish conquistador on a two-headed horse and other stark representations of Mexico's brutal past. In the middle of the structure, on the central dome, there's the unforgettable image of a man on fire, floating in a sea of infernal lava, giving the disorientating impression we're looking heavenwards into the flames of damnation. I cooled off with some bottled water.
The molten intensity of Orozco's work turned out to be a preparation – of sorts – for the supremely relaxing Rio Caliente Hot Springs Spa, an hour west of the city off the Avenida Vallarta, not far from Mount Tequila. Bordered by a literally steaming "hot river", the property is set into the sides of an ancient volcanic crater in Primavera Forest National Park (Guadalajara's "lungs"), and attracts an international assortment of health-seekers, rat-race-refugees and nature-lovers.
The resort's English owner-manager, Caroline Durston, first arrived in Guadalajara in the late 60s. After five years teaching English, followed by a six-month sideline drawing up astrological charts for Mexican government officials (which ended when "they began to send for me privately, in the middle of the night, in armoured cars"), she was asked to run Rio Caliente full-time, and has never left. In a gesture of defiance against the threat of H1N1, Durston has prominently displayed the photoshopped image of an airborne piglet riding a micro-scooter Evel Knievel-style, captioned "The swine flew".
Rio Caliente is likely to appeal to those who would never normally consider a spa holiday. The price includes three vegetarian meals a day in a communal dining room that feels like a tree house: exotically coloured birds (the dazzling Vermillion Flycatcher; the bright orange Bullock's Oriole; the Golden Vireo) frequent eye-level branches almost within touching distance while you eat. Since it's all about the hot water at Rio Caliente, guests tend to spend a lot of time in the naturally heated swimming pools and plunge pools, as well as the subterranean steam room, built over an aquifer, in a variation on the temazcal sweat lodge tradition practised in the Americas for around 4,500 years. Eucalyptus leaves are laid over hot rocks, and the therapeutic effects of a brief, pore-draining session are almost immediately self-evident.
Make no mistake – this is not a spa aimed at anyone who feels bereft without all the mod cons. The rooms don't have TVs or telephones, and there are some signs of wear around the edges, but if you want to get close to nature (guided forest hikes for all levels of fitness can be arranged) and soak up some time-tested volcanic goodness, Rio Caliente is well worth the price of admission: between $135-147 (£80-90) per night.
For around the same amount – one of the special offers introduced to boost business during the current slump – you can book a stay at the altogether more extravagant Grand Bay Hotel at Isla Navidad Resort in Manzanillo on the Pacific coast, four hours due south of Guadalajara on the fast-moving toll road. It rises up from its natural surroundings – a large, gated, semi-tropical peninsula – with little concession to modesty. If future archeologists were to analyse its ruins, they might conclude it was no mere hotel, but a self-contained citystate whose inhabitants worshipped the gods of golf, jet-skiing and agave-based spirits.
Opened in 1997, the hotel has taken some of its cues from Vegas. The lobby leads to a spectacularly appointed bar (with ocean and lagoon views) via a white grand piano; some of the rooms have square pillars that swivel to reveal televisions; and there's a bar stocking 204 different types of tequila. If you like the sound of six Gran Turismo stars (a Mexican government classification) and four American Automobile Association diamonds, then there's definitely value to be had until the economy rights itself and the usual tariffs for luxury and exclusivity are restored.
The return to Guadalajara, past the spectacular Colima volcano (the most active in Mexico), delivered a couple of days in one of the city's most likable, attractive and mellow areas, Tlaquepaque. Known for some time by interior designers as a place to source arts and crafts, the colonial neighbourhood has really come into its own over the past decade, and boasts a handful of modestly priced boutique hotels, including the excellent Quinta Don Jose.
Music is played everywhere in Tlaquepaque, but it's best enjoyed at El Parian, a colonnaded square of bars surrounding a bandstand, where roving mariachi will offer to sell you a song or two over beers and snacks. Here, Guadalajara's nightly summer thunder rumbles away behind happy-sad harmonies and pristine blasts of silver trumpet – a commingling of sounds that mixes the joyful with the ominous, and fittingly underscores the tension between the best and worst of scenarios for Mexico's tourism industry.
Getting there
There are more than 100 flights a week from London to Guadalajara, across 15 airlines, but all involve at least one stop. Mexicana offers good value online via Chicago.
Holiday Autos car rental at Guadalajara airport and downtown.
Accommodation
Rio Caliente, Bosca Primavera, Jalisco. Booking contact in the US: +1 650 615 9543. Nightly rates from $135 (£83) per person
Grand Bay Hotel, Circuito de los Marinos S/N, Fraccionamiento Isla Navidad Manzanillo, Colima, Mexico 28830; +52 31 4331 0500. Special rates from $149.20 (£91) per night are available online.
Quinta Don Jose Hotel, Calle Reforma No 139 Tlaquepaque; +52 33 3635 7522. Rates from $75 (£46) single to $150 (£91) master suite, per night.
Visiting
Cafe Madrid, Av Juarez 264, Between Corona and 16 de Septiembre, downtown; +52 33 3614 9504.
Instituto Cultural Cabañas, Calle Cabañas 8, Plaza Tapatia, Colonia Centro; +52 33 3668 1640.
More cut-price places to stay in Mexico
In the Yucatan, Hotel Hacienda Merida, a converted colonial building dating back to 1840, has a special rate of $99 (£60) until the end of October.
The mellow fishing village of Sayluita on the Pacific Coast of Nayarit is offering up to 50% discounts at a variety of properties.
Hacienda Jalisco, in the throwback mountain village of San Sebastian del Oeste (Jalisco), has no electricity, just oil lamps and candles. The guest list has included Richard Burton and Peter O' Toole. Rooms start at just $55.
