The raiders were accompanied by armed police officers, who were guarding a court official bearing eviction orders. Astrolodge’s anxious staff members gathered in a circle and began to sing the Hanuman Chalisa, a Hindu devotional hymn. After the guests were ushered away, Silva parked a truck against the front gate to block the entrance to the property. They were not going to leave the hotel without a fight. The couple had hoped that their twins – due within months – would be born there too. He had met his wife, Katarina, at one of the Astrolodge’s African dance workshops in 2007, and they had raised their daughter, now seven, there. It was not just Silva’s business, it was his home and the centre of his spiritual practice.
In its 16 years of existence, Astrolodge had developed into an odd fusion of commune and luxury hotel. There were about a dozen guests at Uno Astrolodge, and twice as many residents, masseuses and healers lived at the hotel, offering bodywork sessions and workshops in exchange for room and board. When one property owner refused the armed men entry, he was pepper-sprayed in the face. The mob was moving nearer, working its way down just over a mile of coveted beachfront real estate, forcing people to vacate hotels, private homes and businesses, and padlocking the gates behind them. Silva and his manager woke Astrolodge’s off-season guests and told them to gather their belongings and leave the premises immediately. Some of them were armed with machetes and big sticks. There were hundreds of men amassing in the street outside Silva’s beachfront property, the manager told him. Just after sunrise, the hotel manager ran across the road to alert him to a problem. That morning Uno Astrolodge’s founder, Nuno Silva, a rangy Portuguese 45-year-old with a soft voice and long bronze dreadlocks, was at home with his wife and daughter.
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Wednesdays at the Astrolodge featured sound healing ceremonies a “women’s circle” welcomed every full moon with ecstatic dancing.īut this other-worldly pampering was rudely interrupted on 17 June 2016. They could spend their time detoxing in Native American sweat lodge ceremonies or getting their Mayan astrology charts read. They showered under the trees in private outdoor bathrooms and ate fresh bread baked on site every morning. Until recently, guests at Uno Astrolodge, set on an exclusive stretch of white sandy beach, paid up to $300 per night for a room in a candlelit bungalow with a view of the ocean. Over the past decade, the once-sleepy town, 75 miles south of Cancún, has become the kind of spiritual oasis particularly favoured by the fashion industry and wealthy New Yorkers. When it opened in 2001, Uno Astrolodge was one of the first upscale hotels in the beach town of Tulum. Reviews of Uno Astrolodge, a boutique new age-style hotel on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, lean heavily on words such as “magic”, “paradise” and “peace”.
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