Playa Viva is up and running and hosting our first guests. The hard work of construction is done and now the work at Playa Viva is going through its own “changing of the guard”.  The artisans and craftsmen who take local building materials and supplies and turn them into lovely palapas are being replace by artisans and craftsman who take local produce and fish and turn them into delectable meals.

Our team consists of only folks from the local community of Juluchuca, several of whom moved back recently from “el Norte” to be closer to home and family. Some of them are familiar with techniques for more sustainable living but in general we have lots of training ahead of us. Each of you that visit us are part of this process of transformation. We hope you will engage the staff in teaching them your ways and methods for using fewer resources and treading lighter on this earth.

Also, what we hope you can see emitting from this photo is their spirit, their joy, their happiness.  While we  are sure that this team will evolve and change organically over time  like so many other parts of Playa Viva, we are lucky to have such a great team to craft your stay and to insure a joyous and happy visit.

What do you do with a conference full of people interested in solving world poverty? You pack ‘em up on a bus and you take them into the community to talk directly to the people in need. 

That’s exactly what we did last week. As over 200 delegates converged at Club Med Ixtapa for the inaugural Opportunity Collaboration conference, Playa Viva was invited in by conference organizer,  Jonathan Lewis, to lead a group of 30 on a field trip to “Collaborate in the Community”. 

The group first met with the local organic food producers coop called La Costa.  La Costa has been exporting basil to the US and is now adding additional products such as Hawaiian papaya.  The leaders of La Costa spoke to the delegation  about the progress they have made over the years in building their program to support 77 partners and 50 affiliates.  The group presented their needs for funding refrigeration of the processing facility in order not to break the “cold chain”. Additionally, they are interested in additional resources in order to form a store to support local farmers in obtaining organic fertilizers and for selling their organic produce to local hotels, restaurants and private homes.

Our second stop was with the local artisanal salt coop. This group consists of 120 members, about 100 of which are currently active in the process of harvesting salt from the nearby lagoon. Of these, 50 are using traditional “organic” methods of harvesting salt using hand-made ponds. The remaining 50 have abandoned these artisanal means of production and are using plastic liners to speed up the process. The plastic drying beds are leaching into the salt as well as polluting the lagoon creating a health hazard for consumer and producers.  Playa Viva’s goal is to help locals find better markets that will pay the premium such healthy salt deserves - on par with Sal de Mar, Himalayan Pink Salt, etc. – branding the name “Sal Viva”.

Our final stop was at Playa Viva where the members of the turtle sanctuary as waiting for us with a huge surprise - almost 3000 baby turtles waiting to make their run for the ocean. 

Many of the participants told us that this field trip was one of the highlights of the conference.  Jonathan Lewis has invited us back next year to be a more integral part of the agenda.  The presentation by the artisanal salt coop to the group from Opportunity Collaboration was also covered by the local press – Despertar de la Costa.  We look forward to generating results for the community from this visit. Please join us in supporting the economic vitality and health of this community – visit us at Playa Viva.

A recent guest at Casa Viva, our sister property in Troncones, recommended that we provide bags at the gate to the beach so that guests can use them to put trash when they walk the beach. We listened and added our own twist, the bags we are providing for beach clean up are all made in Mexico by cottage industry workers from recycled, canvas billboard material [more on this in future blog].

As part of our continued commitment to regeneration, both in the ecology and the community, we recently invited Laura Kuri, a specialist in community development and environmental engagement, to moderate a group of local leaders. The goal was to address the problem of garbage management and develop a set of concrete commitments from this group. While the bad habits associated with garbage management may take a long time before we see major improvements, it only takes 4 minutes to watch a short video, produced by Carlos Cardenas, about the town of Juluchuca’s commitment to cleaning up. Do you want to get engaged with the local community? Are you the type that feels good about taking an empty bag for a walk on the beach and bringing it back full of waste? Is your idea of travel and living to “tread lightly and leave the place better than how you found it.”?

Come stay with us at Playa Viva. The New Year holiday is completely booked, but we still have space Christmas.  For reservations, contact us at info@playaviva.com.

Last week, Suzanne Biegel and Daniel Maskit held a fundraiser at Akasha Restaurant, the acclaimed organic eatery in LA, for the benefit of “La Tortuga Feliz” – the turtle sanctuary at Playa Viva.  A small group of friends of Suzanne, Daniel and Playa Viva gathered for a wonderful dinner and to talk turtles.  The group raised $1,400 in one night for the turtle sanctuary. This amount will be added to the funds already donated by The Norcross Wildlife Foundation, the World Turtle Trust, the Greater Good Network (through CharitiesUSA), The Ocean Foundation, Gente como Nosotros, WildCoast and the donations of individual donors. The amount is sufficient to fund the purchase of a 4×4 ATV vehicle for use by the volunteers in preserving more turtle eggs and baby turtles.  

The turtle sanctuary, La Tortuga Feliz, located at Playa Viva, is staffed by 12-20 volunteers who donate their time to protect baby turtles from predators along an 8km stretch of beach near Juluchuca, Mexico.  The group releases close to 200,000 baby turtles per year including Golfina (Green or Olive Ridley), Laud (Leatherback Turtles) and Prieta turtles.  Playa Viva is supporting the volunteers by providing access to needed resources to allow them to continue their work as well as to develop eco-tourism volunteer programs to bring visitors to the area to work with the local volunteers.

While the only photo taken of the evening is somewhat dark and blurry, the evening was bright, cheerful and delicious.  Akasha executive chef, Akasha Richmond, personally created a menu for the event that included seasonal heirloom tomato salad, choice from three main dishes and two deserts including group favorite, chocolate with sea salt, combining sweet and savory in melt-in your-mouth, bite-size morsels.  Dinner guests inquired about Playa Viva and how it interacts with the turtle sanctuary and local volunteers in promoting eco-tourism. Guests received a parting gift of artisanal salt from Playa Viva as well as coconut macaroons made in the town of Juluchuca.

If you are interested in hosting a fundraising dinner for the turtle sanctuary, please let us know, we are happy to support with materials and, if schedules allow, travel to join you for the event.

The volunteers at the turtle sanctuary have been asking for assistance with a 4×4 ATV as well as funds for gas, food stipends to attract more volunteers and resources to attend training sessions.  The funds raised this evening will be added to those funds already collected and provide the needed cash to purchase the vehicle.

We at Playa Viva cannot thank Suzanne and Daniel enough for their efforts in organizing this event.  If in LA and near Culver City, we highly recommend a visit to Akasha Restaurant. The food is delicious, service attentive but not intrusive and the chocolate dessert is just plain divine. Oh, and did we say that it’s all organic?!  Thank you to all in attendance for their support.

Troncones, home to our sister property, Casa Viva, got a nice write up in the travel section of the Boston Globe. What is most appealing about this article is how it begins with the family, three generations, at a turtle release.  It continues to discuss the charms of getting off the beaten track of the big resort towns in Mexico and how to make the most of small coastal villages like Troncones or Juluchuca, where Playa Viva is located. 

In creating Playa Viva, we took what we liked most about Troncones and then build upon its weaknesses.  We loved the beaches, the local communities, the authenticity, but we wanted some sense of congruity in design and a center to the community, we wanted to insure sustainability in building, commitment to regeneration of natural resources and to bring back the abundance that once dominated this landscape.

The article is a wonderful glimpse into what a family vacation can be like in Troncones and Playa Viva.  These are the moments that make for great family memories. Click here to read the entire article.

This advertisement caught my eye a while back, enough for me to stop and take a picture.  What struck me was how a large hotel chain like Westin was using images that were more appropriate for our use. What was it about this image that Westin wanted to portray about itself? Was it the call of the wild? Was it the serenity of nature? Was it the peacefulness of being one with the path and the woods? Was it just the green, lush vegetation that was so inviting? Or was it the stark contrast between the airport environment in which the ad was placed that would catch the eye of the passerby.  Would the passerby see the image and think, green, lush, peaceful, tranquility, connectivity with nature and then associate it with Westin? Is this what Westin wants its brand to be associated with?

I also appreciate the tag line, “This is how it should feel.”  Now Westin may want to emphasize the “feel” part of the sentence, but what caught my eye is the “should” part of the tag line.  When they mean “should”, do they mean, that Westin wants the experience of staying at their hotels to feel like this (green, lush, etc.) . What part of their brand identity is being driven by this image and the prononcement of what they “should” be? Either way, what Westin is telling us, at least Playa Viva, is that Playa Viva “is” what Westin wants to be. We don’t think it “should” feel this way, we know that it does feel this way.   This is who  we are, not who we want to be or what think you “should” be or feel, this is what we know the expereince will b

All this reminds me of a conversation I recently had a with a friend. We were talking about how important it is for our children to engage with the right peer group, get into the right schools and focus on the right activities.  This turned to a discussion about how private schools are now emphasizing public service and a sense of global citizenship as part of what makes up a well rounded applicant.  At this point in the conversation my friend turned to me and reminded me of the importance of  the community service and local engagement component of Playa Viva.  He basically said that coming to Playa Viva would provide an opportunity to have his children engage with the local community and become more well rounded citizens.  So it reminds me of what we “should” do in the community, about how that makes us “feel” about ourselves and our responsibility to give back. 

We welcome our guests opinion about how we should work with our children, the children of our freinds and family, in engaging them with the community and building their character.

Over a recent discussion at brunch in Los Angeles at Akasha Restaurant with some friends of Playa Viva, the discussion turned to some changes we were seeing in the economy.  We were discussing the inefficient use of some resources and the tragedy of these dormant assets. The example used by our friends came in an “aha” moment as they were walking through the boat marina near where they live on the coast. As they walked past pier after pier of gleaming yachts docked and unused over the weekend, the tragedy of these assets laying idle made a significant impact on their ecological psyche. What if each of these boats were not private property but available for use by the commons?   So many assets would not lay idle, less waste, better for the planet. And so they tossed out the the phrase, “The Tragedy of the Privates” which lead a longer discussion.

This is the same concept that drove our decision making early on in Playa Viva, to develop a “fractional” model for vacation homes. Why build a home, sell it to one person and have it sit idle. Sure, we all love the idea of having our own beach home, our own yacht, our own everything. But in the emerging sustainable economy, the real winner is the zip car, the zip home the zip yacht.

Taking this model even further, we have become big fans of freecycle.org.  This further lessens the impact of the tragedy of the private, yet in this case you get all the benefits of private ownership and common benefit.  Freecycle has worked particularly well for us with childrens’ toys.  Our daughter has obtained as much benefit from someone else’s Barbie dolls as they did; and we will sure to pass along this derived value to the next young girl when our daughter grows out of the “Barbie” phase. The same is true for our son and Pokemon cards. Rather than buy all new cards and be a wasteful consumer, which would have helped the local economy through our expenditures at the locally owned independent toy store, instead my wife turned to freecycle where she found a family whose older children came over to our house to personally deliver their once treasured Pokemon cards. I’m not sure who enjoyed the moment more, my son upon receiving the ultimate card collection in one gigantic gesture of charity, or the young man who handed them over and the pleasure he gained in seeing the joy he brought to our son.

In your quest to use less, we encourage you to look for solutions where you can share assets, hand them down, re-use, recycle, freecycle.  This type of behavior will be a large step towards a more sustainable economy. Sure it may reduce the size of key measures such as GDP, with fewer Barbie’s and Pokemon’s, Yachts and Houses being made and sold, but the key measure of human satisfaction, an under-measured and under-appreciated key indicator, will probably go up, significantly.

Playa Viva is working jointly with WildCoast/CostaSalvaje on a summer turtle volunteer program at La Tortuga Feliz, the turtle sanctuary at Playa Viva in Juluchuca, Mexico (30-minutes south of Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa).  We have two options, one upscale staying at the “eco-lux” accommodations of Playa Viva and the second is more modest plan staying in Juluchuca in the homes of local townspeople. Part of the fee for attending will go as a donation to WildCoast to continue their work in turtle conservation throughout the coast of Mexico.  If you have questions about this program and would be interesting to join this September or October, please send us an email to info @ PlayaViva.com.

Just to catch up those of you tracking the progress of the volunteers at La Tortuga Feliz, here are the statistics for last month.  Overall, the results are 27% down from same time last year, so that is why it is so important to have your support in person or through donations to provide the resources necessary to keep the turtle safe.

For a video about La Tortugo Feliz go to the Multimedia section of Playa Viva’s website and click on the video entitled “La Tortuga Feliz“

Playa Viva was recently featured in a book entitled “The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building: Redefining the Practice of Sustainability” by the 7group and Bill Reed.  We highly recommend the book as well as Bill Reed and the team from Regenesis that lead our early design process.

We have been contacted recently by several groups that have been inspired by Playa Viva as a model for sustainable development.  These folks wanted to know how to get started working in a sustainable manner. Many of the early lessons we learned are covered in this book.  A quick look at the table of contents gives a snap shot of the process we underwent over the last three years.  With Playa Viva scheduled to open November of this year, we are about to enter into one of the most important cycles in this regenerative process – Feedback and Evolving in the Field (see Table of Contents of the book below).

In reality, we have constantly maintained a feedback loop and have been evolving in the field. What started as fractional offering now will open as a boutique hotel.  Moving palm trees in order to build tree houses on the beach, evolved to moving the tree houses to were the palm trees are already located. These are just two of so many examples of feedback and evolution in our project. Yet each of these changes remains true to the core values that were agreed upon by the entire development group early in the design process (see Chapter Four).

We congratulate Bill and team for this wonderful book and thank them for including Playa Viva as a case study from which others can learn.

Chapter One: Many Minds.

Chapter Two: Building as an Organism.

Chapter One: Many Minds.

Chapter Two: Building as an Organism.

Chapter Three: Reframing Sustainability.

Chapter Four: Aligning Values, Purpose and Process.

Chapter Five: The Discovery Phase.

Chapter Six: Schematic Design.

Chapter Seven: Design Development and Documentation.

Chapter Eight: Construction, Operations, and Feedback.

Chapter Nine: Epilogue: Evolving the Field.

We have been reticent to report on the most recent influenza virus A(H1N1) until time provided us with some perspective on the topic and allowed us to be more rational and less reactive. We now feel that enough time has past to put this “potential pandemic” into perspective, at least for this season.

 The influenza story is part of the story of place.  Mexico’s reaction to this threat has catapulted Mexico into the middle of the international media and has placed its public health system under the world heath infrastructure’s microscope. Did Mexico react appropriately to this potential pandemic threat?  What will be the repercussions of this event for Mexico over the short-term and long-term both economically and from the perspective of cultural evolution? All questions that will be answered over time.

However, the reason for this post is to share a recent update “For Travelers in Mexico” distributed by the Mexican Department of Tourism (English – Influenza Update paquete 5 May 12 ENG/Spanish – Influenza Update May Paquete 5 12 SPA).  The report is dated May 12 and claims that Mexico has the second largest reported “laboratory confirmed” cases of A(H1N1) influenza of any country with 2,059, second to the US with the largest number of reported and confirmed cases, 2,600.  The schools in Mexico opened officially on Monday, May 11.  Only 3 states in Mexico did not report cases of this flu. Also, no cases have been reported in the resort cities of Puerto Vallarta or Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo.

For more information, visit the CDC (Center for Disease Control) website specific for the A(H1N1) virus or for specific information about Mexico go to the Mexico-Update website managed by the Mexican Department of Tourism.