An adventurer’s south-of-the-border sojourn into the living legacy of Mayan culture adds to his deep appreciation of ancient healing wisdom.I am standing in front of a cenote, or water-filled cavern, called Puerto al Cielo (Door to the Sky), one of the many that honeycomb Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

     Mysterious apertures in the earth that lead down to a vast, watery realm the indigenous Mayan people worshipped and feared as the underworld, these natural catacombs are connected by underground river systems that stretch for miles. I’ve been delivered to this remarkable spot by Marshall, the energetic Dutch driver who is leading this “off-track adventure” I booked through Alltournative, a company that offers custom-designed eco-experiences and adventure travel in Mexico. I am in a small group with visitors from Spain, Argentina, and the United States. I pause, then clamber 20 feet down a primitive ladder to the cavern’s inner sanctum. Once at the bottom, it’s immediately apparent why the Maya believed this was the realm of demons and spirits: It’s eerily quiet and cloaked in darkness save a shaft of sunlight beaming down from the earth’s opening. Beyond the cave’s rocky floor, deep pools of water lie mirror-still.
   The sun, or k’in in a Mayan dialect, takes on powerful significance in this shadowy environment as a living force I have never felt so keenly before. Within a few minutes, I’m drawn back to its welcoming, warm embrace and decide it’s best to leave the cenote. Perhaps the underworld is better left to the spirits, I reason. I had come to the celebrated Caribbean playground of the Riviera Maya in search of living legacies of the 3,000- year-old Mayan culture. What I found was a fascinating tableau that included magnificent ruins, a revived interest in ancient rituals (as well as their modern day spa treatment equivalents that incorporate indigenous botanicals and techniques), and everything from tire shops to T-shirts emblazoned with Mayan words and symbology.

MY QUEST STARTS IN TULUM, a small town a few hours south of Cancún sitting adjacent to a stretch of the Caribbean that radiates with almost hallucinatory colors. It’s also the site of widely renowned ruins that hug a coastal precipice with jaw-dropping majesty. When Spanish conquistadors landed on the powdery beach here in the 16th century and ascended to the main complex, they were astounded by the walled masterwork and its artful designs. Today, structures on the ribbon of coast here include a collection of low-profile hotels with beachfront suites that eschew marble and manicured gardens in favor of thatched palm and a laid-back hippie-chic aesthetic. I check into Azulik, where bathtubs are made of hollowed logs, light is provided solely by candlepower, and sandy pathways brimming with palms and ginger connect rustically rendered casitas made of local wood and palm fronds. The uninterrupted views of the sea here — especially at sunrise — are epic.
      Besides sunrises, Azulik is also notable for a selection of Mayan-influenced spa treatments, such as the Na Lu’um Massage and a temazcal experience offered at its Maya Spa, located a quick walk down the beach at sister property Cabañas Copal. Those accustomed to polished mega-spas are likely to find the rustic nature of the Maya Spa refreshing; its reception area is an open-air palapa with a sandy floor, and treatment rooms are simple wooden beachfront casitas sheltered by canvas screens. But what it lacks in modern accoutrements the four-year-old spa more than makes up for in its offerings: Mayan healers, indigenous treatments, and botanicals as pure and authentic as one is going to find outside in the Yucatán jungles.
     My first night, I meet with a local healer who administers the spa’s temazcal treatment. Part sauna and part centuries-old rite of renewal, the temazcal ceremony (which takes place in what looks like an earthen igloo) has been practiced by Mexico’s indigenous peoples since pre- Columbian times. It functions much the same as the sweat lodge for North American native people — as a cleansing and healing experience from which one emerges with renewed vigor and clarity. As the sun sets, my therapist leads a small group of hotel guests (youngish couples from Spain and Argentina and myself) along a palm-fringed path to the domed temazcal, which is painted with Mayan glyphs. Outside in the waning light, she asks us to chant with her as she invokes the spirits of the four cardinal directions, Mother Earth, and Father Sky. The big city skeptic in me falls away when I see her earnestness. She next lights a stone receptacle full of copal, a local tree resin used as incense by the Maya, then wafts the smoke with its earthy, cinnabar scent over each participant in our small group to purify us before we enter the temazcal. Inside, it is dark and already warm with the moist night air. An assistant drapes the entrance with a heavy cloth, and we sit silently in total darkness.
     Over the next hour or so, chants, prayers, and welcomed splashes of water infused with healing herbs are interspersed with moments of extreme temperature as fire-heated rocks are passed inside by the assistant. The heat radiating from the stones is intense, and so is the accompanying physical (and for some, spiritual) release. As the healer asks, I make some personal affirmations and prayers. When the temazcal ends, she leaves us with a few final words of reverence for the Earth and a prayer before inviting us back into the embrace of the tropical night. I’m feeling magic — or something akin to it — as I walk the candlelit path back to my cabana. It’s as though a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders and rolled off the edge of the earth.

 THE NEXT DAY, I RELUCTANTLY SAY GOOD-BYE to the inviting hammocks, stunning sunrises, and unvarnished mystique of Tulum and head an hour north to one of the Riviera Maya’s current hot spots, Playa del Carmen. Here, trendy shops, restaurants, and bars bustle with tanned and toned visitors from Europe and the States looking for the perfect mojito and tastiest ceviche while electronica wafts through the ubiquitous ceiling fans.
     Instead of empty beaches with the occasional backpacker or tai chi practitioner, in “Playa” I encounter sleek beachside bars featuring DJs and daybeds. Another difference I discover is a much more diverse range of spa services in venues ranging from the super-luxe to those with simple storefronts. Many of the treatments are much like you would find at a U.S. spa, so I focus on locating ones that also honor and promote Mayan traditions. Just a few blocks off the busy main strip, Avenida Quinta, I check into La Tortuga Hotel and Spa. Nondescript from the outside, it turns out to be a wonderful haven with a lush central garden featuring an S-shaped pool. I was looking for the hotel because I was told it is connected by a private walkway to an adjacent day spa featuring Mayan-inspired treatments.
      Deceptively large, the sunlit, three-level Spa Itzá is run by amiable American ex-pat Sharon Sedgwick, a pioneer in the local spa industry who has spent two decades working here. After explaining to her my quest for services influenced by Mayan traditions, Sedgwick recommends a deep tissue massage to help with shoulders fatigued from backpack straps, followed by the Ix Chal-che Pain Relief Bath, a modern iteration of an ancient Mayan healing treatment.
       The deep tissue treatment I receive is unrelenting and dead-on. Knots I never knew existed are reduced to rubber band elasticity, and my shoulders have never felt more relaxed. Deep tissue I’m familiar with, but I really have no idea what to expect from the Ix Chal-che treatment. The bath uses the hand-harvested bark of a tree the Maya have utilized for centuries for its therapeutic value, which sounds great to me. I’m next led to a tile-lined wet room,where I lie down on a platform over a bathtub. After I’m draped in a sheet of muslin and a warm compress is placed over my eyes, ladles of tepid water infused with the native bark are poured over my entire body.
     I stayed awake only 15 minutes. I think I might have been snoring, which would have drowned out the prayers being quietly invoked over me by the therapist as she petitioned for my body’s healing. Nevertheless, as I showered off in the dressing room, my backpack duress was indeed a dim memory.

 THE NEXT STOP ON MY “TOUR DE MAYA” takes a decidedly tony twist at the luxurious Vida Real Spa, located in the Playa Aventuras enclave just south of Playa del Carmen. Here, Mayan metaphors abound, beginning with the spa itself, which is impressively styled like a three-tiered temple. Inside, large murals depicting Mayan priests and lords greet visitors while beyond lies an open-air atrium featuring trees, a garden, a rock climbing wall, and a waterfall. My taste swayed by the surroundings, I decide on the most decadent Mayan-influenced treatment available, the Chocolate Delight. I learn that the word chocolate is derived from the Mayan word xocoatl and that in the Mayan world, cacao beans were believed to have medicinal properties and were once used as currency. As an avowed xocoatl lover, I need little convincing regarding its value.
      I soon find myself in an elegant, oversized treatment room (one of 25), where I am slathered with cacao powder as part of an exfoliating scrub. Next, a hydrating cream that looks tantalizingly similar to chocolate mousse is spread over me before I’m wrapped to allow the endorphins and hydrating oils present in the chocolate to do their work. (It was all I could do to keep from licking my fingers.) Finally, a high-tech Vichy shower apparatus is swung over me, and the whole confection is washed off. Suitably sweetened, relaxed, and with just a hint of mocha about me, I head back to Playa del Carmen to prepare for my last adventure, which won’t take place in a sleek spa but rather in a small Mayan community named Dos Palmas, a half-hour drive into the jungle.

 WHETHER BY SERENDIPITY OR DESTINY, I’ve saved what will be my most authentic experience for last. Many people offer temazcal in the region, but few experiences are as highly regarded — or off the tourist radar — as the one offered by the Mayan families that make up the community here. Driving in at night with my Dos Palmas Ecotours group, we are advised that this is a place where jaguars still roam and the old ways have not been forgotten. Here, the community has decided to remain removed from the modernization taking place along the coastline by practicing traditional medicine, living in communal groups in hand-hewn wooden structures, and adhering to a way of life that has not changed substantially since Spanish explorers first arrived 500 years ago.
     First, our small group moves by torchlight near an altar brimming with shells, feathers, and offerings of fruit and local honey. A shaman in his 30s invokes his ancestors and the spirits of nature around us, asking that our journey in the temazcal be a good one tonight. He then introduces his abuelito, or grandfather, an ancient-looking man who rasps a few blessings to us in Spanish.
      After a conch shell is blown to the four directions, we are ushered inside a sturdy, rustic temazcal; the door is sealed; and heated stones are shoveled in while chants and prayers are offered. Inside, the intense heat, silence, and personal reflection that is inspired are very similar to my previous experience, and I exit with the same feeling of emotional renewal. This time, however, another Mayan tradition is introduced: We are led down a path by torchlight to a beautiful, gaping cenote featuring an enormous natural pool and invited to enter, which is an honor in these native communities.
     During my first cenote experience, I quickly retreated to the sun’s security. But this night (even without the sun’s beaming reassurance), I enthusiastically dive in. Perhaps it was the effect of the healing treatments infused with ancient wisdom that put me at ease. Floating on my back and watching the moon climb in the southern sky, I feel an energetic connection, an easy peace that I couldn’t have even imagined during my previous foray into these mysterious caverns. It’s as if I’ve completed a cycle propitiously guided by the sun and the moon. No matter how I’ve arrived at this epiphany, the one thing I am positive about as I gaze into the night sky is that magic does, indeed, happen in the land of the May

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