10 days at the Dreams Natura resort, Mexico

Dreams Natura is on the Maya Riviera, a 20-minute transfer from Cancun airport. It's a bit of a standalone hotel, in that it's not along a stretch of beach absolutely littered with hotels, at least not yet (see later).

However, this is the best family resort for couples that we've ever been to!

Which sounds like a contradiction but it’s not, at least not in this case. As a European on holiday, “family-friendly” resorts are, by and large, teeming with kids that don’t care about your holiday and will run riot around the pool, splash everyone, not care when their novelty beach ball bounces over you and knocks your drink over, and either won’t listen to or won’t be controlled by their disinterested parents. As such, every resort-based holiday I’ve been on has been filtered by “adults only”.

This was different. Maybe it’s the American attitude (by far the most populous nationality at our resort), maybe it's a better quality of upbringing, but honestly it was more raucous by the adults pool than it was at any of the three other pools available – largely due to the adults doing shots at the swim-up bar. But be early if you want a good sun lounger – the signage says they’ll remove any items left unattended for 45mins but we didn’t see this happen once. We would get down for breakfast by 8am and a lot of the loungers were already claimed by towels by people who had come early and then gone for breakfast.

There were 6 restaurants (seafood, French, Italian, pan-Asian (complete with teppanyaki tables), Mexican, BBQ) and two buffets, and all except the seafood restaurant were exceptional and served delicious food by attentive staff. (The seafood was only the exception because we didn’t go as Rose isn’t a fan!)

The downside of this resort is that it’s pretty isolated. We went on two excursions (Chichen Itza and Tulum) and needed a transfer just to get to the main road, about two miles away. I guess you could walk along the beach to the next resort, which looked a couple of miles along the coast, except as soon as you get to either edge of the resort’s beach there’s a sign warning of crocodiles. Whether that threat is real or imagined is for the reader to decide; we decided it was too real and headed back to the bar.

Don’t be dis-heartened by the journey to the resort and the half-built hotels you pass on the way. The resort itself is beautiful, with the possible exception of the beach which is constantly awash with seaweed, but even then the staff are doing their best to collect it up and move it away! There was one day when we were there that the sea was clear and the seaweed was gone, but I suspect this was due to the time of day and tides rather than the Sisyphean work of the resort staff.

If you weren't paying attention you wouldn't notice any staff at all, other than those bringing and serving drinks - the resort staff just quietly and efficiently go about their work to make our stay as relaxing and enjoyable as possible - I'm not sure we've stayed in a cleaner resort!

I'd love to say we'd go back but in reality, a 10-hour flight means that we're more likely to head somewhere we've not been before for adventures new. But... if we were in the market for a Mexican holiday near Cancun, this would definitely be near the top of the list!