At first, I didn't know what to do with the constant solicitude. But when we later moved to a room without quite so many amenities at the Fairmont Mayakoba, I found myself offended at the sudden lack of attention.

''Has no one drawn a bath?'' I wondered, irked, when turndown service consisted simply of turning down the bedsheets.

At the Maroma Resort and Spa, just up the coast from Fairmont and Rosewood, I snorkeled for my first time, above the world's second-largest coral reef. Too nervous to venture far from our guide, I gradually overcame an as-yet untested fear of sharks and cavorted with schools of neon yellow fish I previously had seen only in Disney movies.

Near dusk, I participated in a sort of spiritual sauna: the temazcal, a traditional Mexican sweat lodge. The ceremony took place in the tiny, pitch-black interior of a clay pyramid facing Maroma's beachfront. It was meant -- according to our shaman, Nancy -- to re-create the comfort and healing power of the womb. For me, the hourlong ritual induced less a sense of comfort than it did paroxysms of claustrophobic panic. But I did feel a certain rush of euphoria when I left the hut, reborn, and plunged into the ocean.

GETTING USED TO IT

Over the course of the week, I got a taste of what it's like to run in the same circles as TomKat or Cherie and Tony Blair, all guests of the same resorts. But it alarmed me to see how quickly I could get accustomed to such a lavish lifestyle.

At our least favorite hotel -- still superior to anything one could afford on a newspaper reporter's salary -- Andrew and I were assigned a small room on a murky lagoon. It seemed to us nearly as dark and cramped as the temazcal. There was no bowl of fresh fruit waiting for us. No one rushed to the beach before us to spread towels across our chairs. No one offered amenities.

Standing under a palapa in the warm moonlight, we waited nearly 10 minutes for a golf cart to pick us up for dinner.

''Well!'' Andrew said, in the same terse tone of voice he had used whenever a mouse scurried across the floor of our old apartment.

''This is horrible,'' I agreed.

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