With an abundance of glorious private houses for rent, Costa Careyes, on Mexico's Pacific coast, is drawing a new generation of travelers looking for an alternative to traditional luxury resorts.
The english tend to do it in cold places where you need woollies. The French have been doing it on the Riviera for years. The Italians do it with their entire extended families, from bambini to nonne. But Americans have only recently caught on to one of life's great pleasures: renting a house for a holiday. In the past two to three years, just as more Americans have made a habit of chartering jets, so have a growing number taken over private houses for vacation. For those who value seclusion, personal service and lots of space, a house can be a better choice than a hotel. The catch, of course, is finding the right one in the right place with the right people to take care of you.
"A wonderfully run home allows you to spend time with your friends and family in a more intimate way than you can at a hotel, where you are thrown together with strangers," says Los Angeles–based interior designer Michael Smith, who has rented houses in almost a dozen locations for fifteen winters.
One place on Smith's hit list increasingly draws discerning travelers: Costa Careyes, a 4,000-acre resort between Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo in the state of Jalisco. Its wild natural coast, named Careyes for the thousands of turtles that lay their eggs on its deserted stretches of beach, is sprinkled with fifty exceptional houses, fifty casitas (small houses) and a forty-room beachfront hotel. All are painted in the vibrant colors of tropical flowers and wild parrots, so they exude fantasy yet still blend in with their beautifully preserved environment.
The most palatial residences are the three Castles of Careyes, as they are known, which are managed by the Brignones, the family that founded the entire Careyes resort in 1968 and still runs the real estate component and many rental villas and casitas. Two of the castles, Sol de Oriente and Sol de Occidente, crown promontories that drop hundreds of feet to the Pacific; each, painted in the colors of bougainvilleas, is surrounded by a moatlike infinity pool and has six bedrooms, including one in a separate tower with a terrace. Sol de Occidente even has an electric gondola that whisks guests from the castle to the beach and the private jetty. The third castle, Mi Ojo, a cobalt blue eight-bedroom house, features a rope bridge that leads to a wave-battered peninsula—complete with its own botanical garden—where you can practice yoga, throw a dinner party or just fantasize that you're on the set of a James Bond movie.
The history of Careyes is as colorful as its signature architecture. It was developed over the past thirty-six years by Gian Franco Brignone, an eccentric Italian artist from a prominent Turin banking family who dreamed of creating a Sardinia-esque resort, only in a better climate. In the early 1970s, before the hotel and cliff-side houses were built, such well-traveled Europeans as Gianni Agnelli would camp out in Gian Franco's small beach bungalow. "It is so beautiful here; you don't have to do very much," said the late billionaire Sir James Goldsmith, who rented houses at Careyes in the 1980s and then bought a 25,000-acre ranch just south of Careyes (it is now available for rent; see "Beyond Careyes," page 128). Gian Franco's Pacific playground became a magnet for the jet set, who flew in on private planes and proceeded to party for weeklong stretches. The resort back then was as legendary for its revelry as for its brightly colored villas, which Gian Franco designed to be as dramatic as the jagged cliffs on which they sit.
Combining elements of Mediterranean design and Mexican craftsmanship, with an emphasis on outdoor living, Gian Franco worked with various architects to develop a distinct Careyes style. The houses have no front doors, only steps leading to vast open-air living areas. Soaring forty-foot thatched roofs, or palapas, supported by columns made of local tree trunks encased in strangler vines, provide shade without obstructing the breezes or the views. At once theatrical and organic, the architecture sets a casual but celebratory tone that has consistently drawn fashion photographers such as the late Herb Ritts and designers like Giorgio Armani. (A particularly memorable photo shoot featured dozens of supermodels for Sports Illustrated 's 25th-anniversary swimsuit issue.) However, as gorgeous a backdrop as the houses make—the most amazing ones were built in the past eight years by the Brignones—it's the laid-back lifestyle you can enjoy in them that is drawing a new crowd of pleasure-seekers.
"Because there are no restaurants or shops and everyone stays in houses, you never have to carry a wallet, keep to a schedule or worry about reservations," explains New Yorker Marisa Noel Brown, who first came to Careyes three years ago. She found it remarkably similar in spirit to the Caribbean island of Mustique, where her family owns a house. Founded by another eccentric European, Lord Colin Tennant, the Mustique community also revolves around people from many countries who prefer to vacation in efficiently run homes instead of hotels. "Initially everyone is stressed out about staying in a house," Brown continues. "They think a hotel offers more pampering, but in a well-staffed residence you also have turndown service, laundry and fresh flowers. It's the best of both worlds because you have the privacy of your own home and pool but you get all the services of a hotel."
