A new eco-friendly holiday resort

How would you like to live in a tree house sited contiguous to a turtle sanctuary and participate in hands-on community living. This is what the Playa Viva offers for discerning tourists who are particular about sustainability and conscious about the food they eat, the cars they drive, and the clothes they wear.

Playa Viva is one of the latest resort and residence community to be promoted on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. The community offers western families the opportunity to continue their purpose-driven lifestyles while away from home, without sacrificing comfort or style. These eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable vacations are aimed at providing a mind and body rejuvenative experience, while simultaneously regenerating the land.

"Every day we make choices about how we live our lives, raise our children, and better connect with the world around us, and travel should be no different. Sustainability principles and features at Playa Viva help create long-lasting connections to family, friends, and the environment that enrich our lives," says David Leventhal, founder of the project who along with his wife Sandra Kahn was instrumental in promoting Rainforest2Reef, a preserve in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula protecting over 350,000 acres of jaguar habitat.

Playa Viva is sited on 200 acres of ocean-front property on the Pacific Coast of Mexico and a mere 30 minutes drive from the Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa International Airport.

By being near the airport, the environment of Playa Viva doesn't look one bit commercial. In fact the landscape, once a coastal forest was cleared to make way for coconut plantations. But now the plantation has been abandoned and the land rapidly regenerating into a forest. The Playa Viva community's efforts in bringing seeds from local native forests and over 7,000 trees have been planted to speed up restoration work. The existing palm trees are being relocated to the beach to stabilize dunes and serve as living piers for the project's casitas or tree house suites. The Playa Viva is one resort where over 80 percent of land has been protected, and only 20 percent developed to house resort accommodations and facilities. All aspects of Playa Viva's operations are designed to be low-impact and restorative to the land and natural systems.

Activities at Playa Viva range from releasing turtles into the ocean to planting trees to playing in the waves. For further information visit the company website http://www.playaviva.com/.

Pictures from the resort website

Roaming in Dallas

Have been leading quite a stagnant life since the past nearly two weeks. In Dallas, the flat-as-pancake state of US. Have been browsing about various places around here and visiting the city's main and interesting localities. There are hoardes of Spanish speaking people here. Many a time I have been mistaken to be Hispanic and addressed to in Spanish :).


One thing in the cities I have visited, I haven't seen any newspaper shops. The little shop selling odds and ends along with newspapers and magazines which is so common in Indian towns and cities is absent here. Magazines sell in all super markets while daily newspapers are sold through machines. Yes machines sell newspapers, much like the coin telephones in India. There are machines to sell water, coke and newspaper too. Here is the picture of couple of vending machines installed on pavement in a strategic location in downtown Dallas.



Last week my good friend George Dailey took me aroud downtown Dallas showing me how spaces have changed and are being managed by the city administration. George also treated me to a nice Tex-Mex lunch of cheese enchilada and rice at a cool restaurant in downtown known as Meanies. After the meal we made a beeline to Dallas downtown. Among the several landmarks we breezed past was the Dallas Museum of Art.



For the first time since entering US, I saw a railway level crossing where a train was passing through. Surprising thing is that though there is no gates like in India, fast cars, super fast bikes and even walkers and cyclists waited patiently for about 15 minutes before the train actually arrived and crossed over after it had passed. And another surprise, the train didn't blow any whistle. This was a great experience of the discipline that is followed here.




George showed me the major landmarks of Dallas including the place where former US president the flamboyant Kennedy was assasinated, the old museum, the 6th floor museum, the neighbourhood where Dick Cheney lived etc etc. One thing I noticed in US which is very similar to India, polluting creeks and rivers with drainage. There is this water stream known as Turtle Creek which flows right through the town. Authorities have made the surrounding landscape beautiful by planting lawns and builiding walkaways on either sides of the creek but then there are places where I saw huge drain pipes emptying all kinds of water into the creek. I expected better here. At leasts the water should have been treated before being let into the creek....

Anyway a unique feature of this creek is the round dam.. what is this? George said that he would show me a dam that I would have never seen anything similar in my life. I was intrigued and curious. Then he pulled over and showed me this unique well-like round shaped dam. What they have done is to make the creek accumulate at one point and then flow under a bridge they have built a wall and made a lake kind of feature. Then in the middle is a round well like contruction which leads across the bridge into the creek. A unique dam never seen such a feature anywhere during my travels.


Then we went back to downtown where we visited the giant cowboy sculpture. In the middle of a park near the Dallas Convention Center, is installed a life size bronze sculpture series of a herd of cattle being herded by two horse borne cowboys. The sculptures are so well executed and life like it makes a pleasant picture of how life in Texas was before development and industry came into fore.


Here are some pictures of the cowboy memorial.