Azucar - Veracruz

Azucar, the sweet creation of hotelier Carlos Couturier, is named for the sugar cane grown in the Mexican Gulf state of Veracruz. It is a mere two hours and 10 minutes away from the sprawling, hectic metropolis that is Mexico City but a whole world away by the hotel’s own private plane, of course. With chauffeur driven car transfers either end of the journey, this allows just enough time to get in touch with your inner movie star before you are encouraged to reconnect with your inner hippy by the hotel’s white-washed, beachside simplicity.

This was the transition I experienced, re-visiting the Veracruz coast after an absence of more than fifteen years. I may have stayed in beachside cabanas way back then, but backpacking was never like this. Although Azucar’s location, on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, helps it to achieve the blurring of boundaries between outdoors and indoors, luxury and simplicity, movie star and beach bum, that make it so special, it is due also in no small part to the skillfull mix of contemporary design with a handmade, local flavour.

“I see my hotel as an ecological, organic project,” explains Couturier, who designed the hotel in collaboration with Elias Adam and Jose Robredo. “It is a design hotel yet it is somehow anti-design. I wanted to recuperate a lifestyle gone by – that of my grandparents – and give guests the pleasure of simple things.” Couturier’s grandparents came to Veracuz from France in the 1930s to grow vanilla, and the chairs in each bungalow are reproductions of those they owned. The red cedar-woodwork that supports many of the beds or acts as beams and door frames was harvested from the beach by Couturier when it was washed up after a major flood in Veracruz in 1999, adding to the ecological, authentic, appeal of Azucar. “I stored the wood away for years until I founded Azucar,” says Couturier.

Azucar’s 20 low-lying palapas (bungalows) are each topped with a thatched roof and have a private, intimate terrace equipped with that Mexican staple, a locally made hammock. The sparse white-on-white interiors are simple to the extreme but not without creature comforts such as air conditioning and flat-screen televisions. The curved walls include bedside alcoves for candles, useful for romance or if the electricity should fail as it did briefly on the first evening of our stay. Two other thoughtful accoutrements, creating the pleasing impression of a painterly still life, are a pair of panama hats and a pink beachball in a string bag.

In the bathrooms, sinks and shower doors are in the same moulded fibreglass that is used for fishermen’s boats, but coloured green, giving them a translucence not unlike the green glass of bottles washed up on the shore. Each palapa has two entrances – one direct into the bedroom and the second into the bathroom, via a curved, walled but roofless ‘outdoor’ rainwater shower, avoiding sandy feet on the monastic stone floor of the sleeping area.

Washed-up green glass bottles are also used in the reception area, where the bases of twenty of them are buried in the wall, as in sand, for room keys. Elsewhere, reclaimed glass water jugs serve as lampshades. Public spaces are largely open-air. There is an open-sided restaurant with its integrated kitchen serving Veracruz specialities with a focus on the catch-of-the-day; a relaxing biblioteca (library) where guests can lounge in wicker chairs or on pink pillows under jug lamps hanging from an open thatched ceiling; or an outdoor spa featuring a yoga space and offering a wide range of holistic spa treatments. Azucar has a small pool, bedecked with sunbleached pink beanbags, but it also has mile upon mile of empty beaches stretching in both directions just a Gulf breeze away.

A little further afield is Couturier’s next project. In a rural inland location, around 30 kilometres from Azucar, the Couturier ancestral home is being transformed into a ‘mini Azucar’. The original ranch style house dates back to the late nineteenth century and was the home of Carlos’ grandparents when they first arrived on the Gulf coast from their native France, and it will be named for them. Famille Couturier will have just nine guestrooms, some with outside private terraces and each furnished with unique period-specific furniture. There will also be a biblioteca, restaurant and dining area, and plunge pool surrounded by a forest of mango trees. Due to open Easter 2009, Famille Couturier will deploy the Azucar alchemy of cutting-edge contemporary design with location-specific nostalgia, although Carlos Couturier is keen to stress that the guiding principal throughout will be simplicity. “We want to keep things simple and as close to the original lifestyle of my family in the late 19th century as possible,” he says. “They used their instinct and ‘savoir faire’ and we thought it would be cool to do the same, so much of Famille Couturier will be designed by local artisans.”

AZUCAR
Km 83.5 Carretera Poza Rica – Nautla, Loocalidad Montegordo Veracruz, Mexico C.P. 93588
Tel: +52 232 321 0678
www.hotelazucar.com

Rooms    20 Bungalows
Dining    Seafood restaurant
Leisure   Outdoor spa
Facilities    ‘Biblioteca’ library, swimming pool