Topless in Tulum

By Susan Crandell

Updated: 5:34 p.m. ET Jan. 11, 2006

It is late December and snowing like crazy, but on the Amansala website the sun is shining brightly. Down in the virtual Yucatýn, on the coast near Tulum, guests are lounging under palm trees and sipping tropical drinks, doing sun salutations on a pristine strip of beach, dipping kayak paddles into glistening blue water--all part of the resort's six-day Bikini Boot Camp. The name is intimidating--mostly the word bikini. I'm fit, but I haven't felt comfortable wearing a two-piece in years.

But the promised means, a drill-sergeant fitness routine, to the lissome end, slipping confidently into a skimpy suit, sounds intriguing--and it just might kick those five pounds I put on power-eating Christmas cookies. I read on: "Bikini Boot Camp is all about feeling good about yourself and having fun while getting into great shape...fresh, healthy meals, and days filled with exercise and interesting excursions, make for a perfect way to get your body bikini-ready."

The price is a reasonable $1,842, which includes meals, three spa treatments, and the excursions, among them touring the Mayan ruins in Tulum. Compare that to $5,700 for a week at Canyon Ranch or $3,000 at spa value Rancho la Puerta. And you get in-the-know bragging rights: Open just three years, Amansala is already a darling of the New York fashion photography crowd, who use it for magazine shoots. "Okay, I'm in," I say to myself and book.

Apparently, a lot of other people have the same thought. Amansala co-owner Melissa Perlman writes back that the early-February week I picked "is really, really full, and we only have a room with shared bath available...really nice, just not as deluxe." I peed under the stars with 14 other climbers when I tackled Kilimanjaro, so how bad can sharing a bathroom with one other guest be? The night before I leave, as I'm tossing T-shirts and shorts into a duffel, I come upon a purple polka-dot bikini I bought ten years ago. When in Rome... I shrug and pack it.

Amansala

Standing in the immigration line at Cancýn International Airport, I fall into conversation with a couple who own a time-share. "You're going down to Tulum?" the man asks me. "Hope you packed plenty of DEET. The mosquitoes are as big as Buicks." This is news to me, but not to my three companions on the 90-minute shuttle ride to Amansala. Susan and Greg, a lawyer and endodontist, respectively, were turned on to Amansala by their son, who just wrapped a photo shoot there. Amy is a 30-something mother of four taking her first-ever vacation alone. Although she looks like she was born on a StairMaster and is a veteran of luxury spas and five-star resorts, Amy says she doesn't work out. She's here to get started on a program.

Amansala is on a hippie-dippy stretch of coast, where resorts are limited to 15 rooms, yoga retreats abound, people practice tai chi on the beach, and everybody's off the grid. (Power is supplied by solar panels, with backup generators kicking in on cloudy days.) It's a delightfully untrafficked backwater of talcum-soft sand and bright blue sea. The only high-profile landowner, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, is long gone, his place a decaying hulk of outsize concrete buildings under moldering thatch.

Amansala

The reception staff at Amansala is gorgeous, enough to make me turn tail: Melissa has not only curly brown hair, a deep tan, and brilliant white teeth but also a flaunt-worthy belly, which she's doing with a brightly colored tube top and pretty skirt. At her side is an equally beautiful, even tauter woman, Erika Halweil, a visiting yoga instructor with the body to prove it.

Given the flat rate, I'm surprised by the short straw-long straw division of rooms. The four on the beach are the pick of the litter: duplexes with stucco walls and cement floors inlaid with tiles in swirling star-shaped designs. The eight others with private baths are nice--Robinson Crusoe nice. Then it's a long step down to the shared-bath rooms, where I'm staying. I'll charitably describe mine as humble: two mosquito-netted double beds separated by built-in concrete shelving, with the only wall adornment a mirror. The bright orange fabric tacked up over a window doesn't quite keep the occupant from being seen from the open-air reception area, and when they say "shared bath," they mean it. A small hut with two toilets, two showers, and a single outdoor sink serves not only a half-dozen guests but also the resort staff, as well as the workers who are converting the second floor of the dining room into a yoga studio and guest room.

And now Melissa informs me that I'll have a roommate for three nights of my stay. "That wasn't part of the deal," I retort. "I'm a terrible insomniac, and I promise you, nobody wants to room with me." She says she'll see what she can do.

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