Our Strange & “Perfect” Honeymoon in Cancún’s La Casa Torquesa

To write about La Casa Torquesa honestly, I need to sip slow on Tonamikij Cupreata , German’s mezcal from Guerrero, México. It’s the same smoky, full-bodied mezcal we had left over from the wedding — and it reminds me of gazing over our balcony at the darkness of the Caribbean during the first two days of our honeymoon.

We threw the wedding ourselves, and it had been tough but ultimately a success. Sixty to seventy people from all over the U.S. and Mexico coming together to celebrate an unlikely union (my wife is from Zacatecas, Mexico, and I’m from a small town in New Jersey) in Cheyumil — a tiny town tucked into the jungle about an hour and half south of Cancún. We spoke English, Spanish, Spanglish, and dance. And it turned into a beautiful event.

My experience at the wedding reminded of an Ezra Pound phrase — “Beauty is difficult.” And also, a phrase from the Bible that I first heard in a Bob Marley song — “My cup runneth over.”

I’d never felt so full and joyous, surrounded by friends and the people I love and who love me, and the few moments I’d found myself alone afterwards I couldn’t help but look up at the stars and tear up. Cliché take me away — it was the happiest day of my life. And in the days that followed, I felt a confidence like never before. I felt new power — filled up on love.

Anyway, that was my vibe when we strolled into La Casa Torquesa on a weekday evening in mid-October — low-season in Cancún— with no expectations or desires other than a good night’s rest, a morning dip into the translucent waters, and maybe a Margarita, or mezcalito, or two.

The night before, my mother and law had said to my parents and friends while tipping back a shot of the same mezcal: Uno es nada y dos es uno. I translated it to my parents.: One is nothing and two is one. They loved it. But that’s neither here nor there, and neither was La Casa Torquesa. It was lost — like a misplaced word in a sentence. Like me, when I arrived in Mexico six years ago in love but with no plan.

La Casa Torquesa was lost in time. Lost in the rainy season. Lost in a peninsula dominated by big brands and companies, chains, and conglomerates that specialize in homogenization — the unique ability to make even Paradise itself feel a little like a strip mall, safe and clean, dull and predictable — giving you everything you want and nothing you want at the same time.

But the sand, beach, and sun can snap you out of it —

La Casa Torquesa is starting to fade in my memory. It’s deteriorating the way so much of the hotel — a beachside palace in the 90’s — a white mansion Tony Montana would have proudly called home if he’d lived to see another chapter — was also deteriorating.

Perhaps the hotel doesn’t exist at all — it was so dreamlike, or maybe it exists in a fairytale or song — Mexico’s Hotel California. Two rainy days of honeymoon lounging — surrounded by millions of dollars of eclectic art decorating the lobby and courtyard, bronze sculptures, frescoes and canvases on every wall in every room. Even a statue of the hotel’s owner smoking a cigar gazing at the Caribbean. I thought it was Hemingway, but the statue-man was tiny and my wife laughed at the hubris.

The hotel’s ill-fortune first began to show when we learned the jacuzzi hadn’t worked in a decade. Then, I had to “put my back into it” to move the sliding door that opened to our balcony. Within a day, it was clear that every sliding door in the hotel deserved the same respect. The doors had all been installed on the same date, and that date was somewhere around a-long-fucking-time-ago.

Our time in La Casa Torquesa felt like uncovering a dusty jewel— a remnant of a time passed — a time before 20 story “All-Inclusive’s” started catering to middle-class families and Spring Breakers. Before Tommy Hilfiger, Gucci, Docce & Gabbana, the Gap, Bubba Gump Shrimp, etc. etc., dominated the strip. A time when guests wanted pink and rose marble floors (now every tile is cracked), mirrors that summoned spirits, spiral staircases, art, and space enough in the bathroom for a small party.

A magnificent outdoor staircase leads to a restaurant beside the pool — now understocked — the fajitas are okay but don’t order the ceviche — the bartender at the pool-bar is a ghost and the bottles of Barcardi are the color of the overcast sky —

But still now, beside the beach the water was never so clear — and the sand, the waiters tell us, before the hurricane took it away — was “so soft you could blow it away by whispering a secret.” (Now, even the sand plays a distant second to the past).

In its heyday, my wife and I could never afford a place like this. But now it’s the low-season after years of neglect, and time has been cruel to La Casa Torquesa. We also never would have come to if we’d read the reviews — “creepy,” “Steven King-esque…” They’re a good laugh.

I’d like to describe La Casa Torquesa as enormous, but its 30-suite building is dwarfed by the hotels around it. Hotels that climb 10 or 20 stories — where guests are marked with wristbands, fed buffet food, bused to shows, upsold beach beds and the staff never knows a name. Hotels with high school field trip vibes.

But La Casa Torquesa is no cookie-cutter Disneyland typical Cancun hotel. It’s the vision of one man, and the work and mixed visions of many. It is a place with a past surrounded by the ‘new.’ Like the hotels in the French Quarter of New Orleans, even if a little creepy, it has history.

And my wife and I — exhausted, exhilarated, at peace — welcomed every bit of the hotel’s character as the rain — which had miraculously held off for our wedding in the jungle — rolled in like a blessing.

2.

“Basketball players, politicians, musicians, businessmen, African royalty — they all came here to socialize and party in the 90s. There was a young couple from Miami who would fly in on a private jet with a bag of cash and a bag of cocaine. There were wild parties; it was once a fine establishment.”

I’m chatting with the waiter at the patio restaurant, waiting out the afternoon rain and admiring the ocean. He says he’s been at the hotel the longest, over 30 years, along with the security guard, and he only stays because the newer Cancún hotels don’t hire staff older than 35 years old. When he talks about La Casa Torquesa, he waxes poetic.

Sometime in the 2000’s, the hotel was bought or came under control of man named Mustafah — a wealthy African who earned the nickname Mustafah “El Estafa” (the cheat/fraudster). Over the course of five years, he neglected to pay staff on time, make repairs, and even sold timeshares that he later reneged on, leaving behind a line of unhappy customers, staff, and years of abysmal reviews.

Now, the hotel has been recovered by the original owner who is elderly and has left it to new management. From the looks of it, they are doing what they can to bring it back. Someone is rolling paint in the lobby as we speak. Other things are being fixed, and maybe one day they’ll get to the sliding doors and Jacuzzis.

But ruined reputations aren’t easy to recover from, and the reviews of La Casa are so bad to the point of hilarity. And the hotel is still understaffed and understocked — the bar only has one can of Coca Cola and the kitchen lacks ingredients, to put it lightly. But fortunately for us, it’s also undersold. For less than $100 a night, we are 2 of 6 guests.

And what more could we want than our own strange mansion on the beach for the first two days of our honeymoon? Alone with the waves and a few friendly waiters and weird art and fucked up doors and rain that could’ve arrived on our wedding day when we had no plan B but didn’t.

3.

I don’t write many travel articles these days. When I find a hidden gem, a sleepy beach town — shhhhhhh. I tell a few friends and move on. There’s no need to bring noise to quit places.

But I hope La Casa Torquesa blows up like GameStop stock in 2021. I hope it goes off like Steph Curry in the fourth and has a run at the title. Let adventurous travelers, writers, artists, historians, and folks who like weird shit flock to La Casa Torquesa like geese. I hope we overrun it, flood it with business, respectively, and give it one last chance to return to its glory days, or more likely, to make something new of itself.