MAYAKOBA, MEXICO -- The iced cucumbers sent an arctic jolt pulsing down to my eye sockets -- not an altogether unpleasant sensation -- and temporarily blotted out the Caribbean Sea.

They were as bracing as the frozen grapes delivered to our chaises in the sand that morning; as refreshing as the mango sorbet served poolside later that afternoon.

At a high-end resort in the Riviera Maya, they don't let you sit around and sweat.

The longer you linger at the pool, the beach or the spa, the more you are surprised with ''amenities,'' as in, ``Hello, Ms. Latson, may I offer you this amenity?''

You get used to it.

I made the trip with my friend Andrew to Mayakoba -- the newly developed cluster of luxury resorts on the Yucatan Peninsula, about an hour south of Cancun. Andrew was there on business; I tagged along for a vacation I otherwise could not have afforded.

At these resorts, where rooms average from $500 to well over $1,000 a night, we had people to spray us with insect repellent and taxi us by golf cart from spa to restaurant to beach to suite.

At Rosewood Mayakoba, we were shuttled by boat through a network of canals to our suite, a two-story limestone structure with a full wall of glass jutting out over the clear water.

The region is carved by mangrove-lined lagoons, and the resorts have incorporated the waterways into their designs, largely preserving their natural states. Rosewood's staff biologist and a team of workers prevent the lagoons from becoming too swampy -- they're part of what seems to be a cast of thousands who keep the resort pristine and running smoothly.

DEDICATED STAFF

Our room alone came with five people dedicated to our comfort. Besides the cleaning crew, we had two butlers: one for the morning and one for the evening. The staff anticipated our needs in a way that eventually prompted the eerie realization that they were watching our every move and communicating it to each other by two-way radio.

On our first day at the resort, while Andrew was hip-deep in a two-hour traditional Maya spa treatment, I got a pedicure. Midway through a lengthy process of sloughing, buffing, moisturizing and polishing, I thought about how I might enjoy a snack. Suddenly a uniformed waiter appeared with a tray, bearing a delicate kiwi-and-strawberry salsa and a champagne flute of chaya juice.

``Hello, Ms. Latson, may I offer you this amenity?''

I ran into our evening butler, J.C., on the path back from the spa. He had just taken the liberty, he said, of drawing me a bubble bath. He had set the mood just so, with low lighting and aromatherapy. I instantly regretted having left my sweaty sports bra on the bathroom doorknob to dry out.

We bumped into J.C. again on our way back from dinner, when he casually hailed us a golf cart as if our encounter on a jungle path had been a lucky coincidence. When we got back, we realized he had just left the suite, timing the rendezvous perfectly.

Inside our suite, the clothes we had strewn about were folded and hung. J.C. had set a dish of chocolate truffles (inexplicably resting on a bed of margarita salt) on the table in the front hall. He had drawn another bubble bath, which was still warm. He organized my sunblock, moisturizer and bug spray in a tidy row by the sink. He closed the bedroom curtains and set slippers on either side of the bed.

J.C. left bottles of Fiji on the bedside tables and tucked a lavender sachet in among the pillows. Downstairs, he had replaced our fruit bowl, organized the sections of the newspaper I had tossed on the couch, and even inserted a Rosewood bookmark in my book -- next to my old bookmark.

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