Vlú Hotel Tequesquitengo

What Vlú Hotel is

Vlú is a 17-suite hotel on the shore of Lake Tequesquitengo in Morelos, about ninety minutes from Mexico City, at Calle Lago Salado 10. Every suite faces the lake and has a balcony, split into Suite, Junior Suite and Master Suite.

The architecture is contemporary and industrial, and the piece everyone photographs is the heated pool with a glass bridge across it. There is a restaurant, a bar and a nightclub on site, and the hotel arranges boat trips, water skiing, jet skis, kayaks, spa treatments and private dinners.

The name is an acronym: Vive un Lugar Único, live a unique place, which the hotel spells out on its own booking page. A second property, Vlú Diamante in Acapulco, is listed as coming soon.

The lake, and what is under it

Lake Tequesquitengo has a story worth knowing before you float on it. The valley held a settlement that lived off farming and off extracting tequesquite, a salt-like mineral used both to season food and to make soap, which is where the lake takes its name.

The lake has no natural outlet. It rose through the nineteenth century and covered the village. Local legend blames divine punishment for a fiesta held during Holy Week; the likelier explanation is water draining in from the haciendas nearby, one of which, Hacienda San José Vista Hermosa, was founded in 1529 as a sugar mill and stands three kilometres away as a hotel today. For years the church spire broke the surface. The town is now on the lakebed and divers go down to see it.

How a weekend works

The shape of the trip is decided by the lake rather than by the hotel, and the order matters.

• Water first, and early. The lake is warm all year, and the window for a clean wakesurf wave closes around nine in the morning when the surface turns choppy. Book the boat for the start of the day.
• The boat is separate. It is rented from an operator rather than from the hotel, and it is the one on the lake that makes a wave worth surfing behind.
• Then the pool. The heated pool with the glass bridge is where the afternoon goes, and heated matters more than it sounds on a winter weekend.
• The restaurant runs all day, so you are not tied to a service window, which is the practical argument for eating on site rather than driving into town.
• The rooms are built for sleeping in. Air conditioning, good sound isolation and a balcony on the lake, which is not a given at a property that also runs a nightclub.

What is on the menu

The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch and dinner from one book. It is Mexican with hotel-menu breadth rather than a chef-driven kitchen, and the seafood section is deeper than the setting suggests.

• Breakfast, Platillos Clásicos: chilaquiles verdes or rojos at 120, with chicken or egg 160 and with cecina 220; chicharrón en salsa 120; avocado toast on wholegrain bread with a fried egg 130 or with smoked salmon 180; trilogía de quesadillas 130; molletes 170, with chorizo, ham or bacon for 10 more.
• Breakfast, El Sabor de la Granja: the Omelette VLU with goat cheese, sautéed mushrooms and spinach at 139, eggs any way at 130, egg-white scrambles at 130, and a build-your-own omelette at 130 or 140 with whites only.
• To share: Molcajete de carne VLU at 320 with cecina two ways, chorizo, queso de cincho and nopales in a tatemado chilli salsa, or the Molcajete mar y tierra at 400 with prawns, arrachera and longaniza. A cheese and charcuterie board is 280, sopes tricolores 130.
• Snacks: guacamole with totopos 95, French fries 75, nachos with arrachera 175, twelve wings 230, mozzarella sticks 228, club sandwich 240.
• Soups and pasta: shrimp broth 110, fideo soup 100, chicken consommé 120, fettuccine alfredo or arrabbiata 210, with chicken and ham or prawns for 60 more.
• Salads: Ensalada VLU with Italian lettuce, balsamic reduction, hibiscus dressing, cranberries, goat cheese and apple at 120, or 150 with chicken; honey mustard chicken salad 135; Caesar 160.
• From the grill: burger with cheese 210, cecina de la región 220, arrachera tacos 246, cecina tacos 250, arrachera 285.
• From the sea: tuna tostada 155, fish ceviche 155, octopus tostada 180, cocktail de camarón 200, aguachile 210, fish fillet 220 grilled or breaded and 240 with garlic, tuna sashimi 270, octopus 380 to 390.

A few prices sit outside the frame in the photographs, including the giant hot dog, the crudités, the prepared potatoes and the beef milanesa, so check those on the day.

What I ate

The full-day menu is the practical part of staying here. It means a late breakfast after the water and a long lunch by the pool are both possible without leaving, which is the whole argument for a lakefront hotel over a rental.

What it costs

Item	Price
Chilaquiles or chicharrón en salsa	120 MXN
Avocado toast with egg	130 MXN, with smoked salmon 180
Omelette VLU	139 MXN
Molletes	170 MXN
Guacamole with totopos	95 MXN · fries 75
Enchiladas	198 MXN
Burger with cheese, chicken breast, fettuccine	210 MXN
Cecina de la región	220 MXN · arrachera 285
Molcajete de carne VLU	320 MXN · mar y tierra 400
Octopus, grilled or to taste	380 to 390 MXN
Ensalada VLU	120 MXN, with chicken 150

Breakfast for one comes to around 150 to 220 MXN with a drink. A main at lunch or dinner sits between 200 and 290 for most of the menu, with the molcajetes and the octopus above that. Food is charged separately from the room, which is worth planning for if you are staying a weekend and eating every meal on site.

How to book

• The hotel: Instagram and TikTok are both @vlutequeshotel, and the hotel takes bookings through the usual platforms.
• The boat is booked separately from the hotel, through the operator. Arrange it before you arrive, because the good window is early on Saturday and it is the reason to come.
• Ratings differ sharply by platform, which is worth knowing before you book: Booking.com sits around 8.0 across forty-odd reviews, with staff rated highest and value for money lowest, while Tripadvisor is far lower on a handful of reviews. Read recent ones rather than the average.
• Check restaurant and bar hours on arrival. Guests have reported them closing earlier than expected.

Getting there

• Address: Calle Lago Salado 10, Tequesquitengo, Morelos.
• From Mexico City: about ninety minutes by car, the same bracket as Tepoztlán.
• Driving is the only sensible option, since the point of the trip is the lake and the boat rather than a town centre you can walk.
• Nearby: Hacienda San José Vista Hermosa, three kilometres away, a 1529 sugar mill that is now a hotel, restaurant and museum.

Before you go

• Book the boat before you book the table. The wave is the reason to come and the window is the first hours of the day.
• Set an alarm. On the water before 09:00, or the lake is choppy and the wave is gone.
• Budget for food separately. The room does not include meals and the restaurant is the convenient option rather than the cheap one.
• The pool is heated, which changes what a winter weekend here looks like.
• Ask about the boat and the church. The sunken town is under the lake, and whether a given boat passes over it is worth asking when you arrange the trip.
• Check the hours before you go. The hours on this page come from the venue’s public listings, which drift, so confirm on Google Maps or the venue’s own channels before a special trip.

Watch the visit

The reel above is the short version: the wave, the pool and the lake. For the rest of the area, open my map or browse the Tepoztlán and day trip recommendations.