Part 5 of a series
From the land, the cryptic entrance sign says it all: a question mark, followed by an exclamation point.
From the sea, the first thing I noticed was a strange inverted dome perched atop a narrow tongue of land, a crystal-studded cup opening skyward upon a bridge of wave-pounded cliffs. La Copa del Sol, it’s called, and it’s the brainchild of the same visionary who created the lavish dwellings tucked along this 22-kilometer stretch of coast known as Costa Careyes.
Like Cuixmala, Costa Careyes began as the private preserve of a foreign investor who made his millions in the world of high finance. Gian Franco Brignone, an Italian banker with an artistic sensibility and a love of nature, became enamored of this coast in the late 1960s and bought some 12 km of coastline, together with more than 5,000 hectares of coastal forestland. His vision for these lands would be to develop them slowly and carefully, creating a restful and spectacularly beautiful space for an international community of equally artistic jet-setters, folks who wanted a quiet retreat in these spectacular surroundings.
We were invited to spend the night in a vibrant pink-and-blue casita just paces from a precious crescent of cliff-sheltered beach known as Playa Rosa, where our hostess, Viviana Dean, would emerge like a siren from the sea to greet us after her daily swim. Viviana is the multifaceted Argentine communications director here as well as the administrator of ArteCareyes, the foundation that Brignone created to nurture the development of his passions here. She works to bring high-level artistic talent here to Careyes and to promote creative development within the community.
One of the activities offered to the residents and visitors of this resort is to visit the sea turtle sanctuary and, if the timing is right, witness the release of the baby sea turtles. The stars lined up for us.
Viviana had made arrangements for biologist Alejandro to pick us up and take us for a moonlight ride to the turtle sanctuary. Here by the dim infrared light of his special lamp we played turtle biologists too, seeking the newly hatched babies stretching and clambering to life, picking their soft sandy bodies up one by one and counting them, one by one, before carrying them down to the beach to set them free.
Never have I been a witness to a scene more demonstrative of the majesty and mystery of nature’s rhythms. Just above the tide line we set them free and watched in awe as the tiny newborns oriented themselves by the position of the stars, imprinting on their internal mapping devices the exact location of this beach, where they would one day return to lay their eggs. Slowly, feeling their way, they made their way toward the constantly shifting, foaming, glistening edge of the sea.
Suddenly Alejandro startled me from my reverie. “Want to go for a ride?” Victor, the student volunteer on duty that night, was about to make a foray along the beach on the ATV and I was invited to accompany him. He was looking for signs of new turtle nests so that he could dig up the new eggs and protect them in the sheltered refuge – an activity that had promoted the comeback of these turtles, just a decade ago on the brink of extinction due to widespread poaching and habitat destruction.
This was to be my lucky night. Not five minutes into the ride, fresh wind in my hair and glistening sea in my eyes, Victor came to an abrupt halt. “Mira, es una mamá,” he pointed into the darkness. “Look, it’s a mother.”
He’d spotted the fresh tracks of a mother turtle that had made its way up the beach and we arrived just as she began depositing the glistening white eggs into the sandy underground cavity she’d created with her flippers. We watched in silence as she dropped two, four, five, seven, one after another until nearly 50 leathery pockets of life had gently dropped from her body. Victor quickly gathered them and stashed them in a plastic bucket as the mother, apparently unaware of the theft, carefully covered the hole with her flippers and began to make her way toward the sea.
Alejandro had come to join us, and it was a good thing, as something was not right. The mother’s course had shifted and she was veering landward, making her way toward a huge mansion in the distance. Lit up like a Christmas tree, the establishment was disorienting the turtle, who misinterpreted the glow as the light of the moon on the waves. Alejandro redirected the mother seaward time and time again, to no avail; she was determined to head uphill, into the scrubby thicket toward the bright lights. Finally he summoned all his strength and hefted the enormous turtle seaward, far enough below the rise that the brightness of the sea began to call to her. Finally she began to lumber her way seaward and Alejandro relaxed.
On the way home he explained to me, visibly frustrated, that this was the private party house of a Danish film crew that had ignored all requests to keep the lights dimmed during turtle breeding season. I wondered what happened to the turtles who came up and laid their eggs here when Alejandro wasn’t around.
“We’ll convince them,” he reassured me. “I’m going back to tell them about this tomorrow.”
Even in paradise, it seems, nothing is perfect.
Finally it was time to bid our farewells and head back to our casita, enthralled with what we’d seen.
Morning brought a rosy sunrise swim and tai chi, followed by a leisurely and sumptuous breakfast at the well-appointed open-air beachfront restaurant right next door.
Viviana came by to pick us up and take us on a tour. The first stop was a curiosity I’d spotted from the plane two days before: the Copa del Sol, an enormous cement chalice inset with glistening glass windows, the copa was an inexplicable creation of Brignone, a hyperbolic parabola perched on the edge of paradise. We climbed a staircase up to its rim and surveyed the Pacific Coast in all its glory; then we descended into its depths and lay spread-eagled on the warm slant of its walls, watching the thin pale shell of the moon rise over its brim.
Viviana shared with us a glimpse of the good life here at Careyes, where brilliantly hued, tastefully appointed Mexican modern castles, like the Casa Oriente, each commanded their own cliff and an exclusive view of sea and stars. We laughingly entertained the fantasy of a family reunion here; at only $15,000 a night, we’d probably only be able to stay a week, we joked.
Also a part of the tour was the curious Plaza Careyes, an ultramodern take on the old Mexican plaza theme, with an art gallery, a gourmet pizza parlor and an outdoor theater screening Winged Migration at the time of our visit.
All too soon, it was time again to take our leave and head north for our last stop on the Jalisco Coast – Puerto Vallarta.
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