At a Billionaire’s Dream Resort on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, Zebras and Sea Turtles Roam Free
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- On a remote stretch of Jalisco’s Costalegre, Cuixmala is a 30,000-acre nature reserve where wild jungle, cinematic architecture and seclusion redefine what a luxury getaway can be.
- Conceived in the late 1980s as Sir James Goldsmith’s private retreat, the estate was built to shield biodiversity, marrying terracotta domes, ocean views and breezy rooms with understated comfort.
- Three hard-to-reach beaches and a menagerie of iguanas, deer, nesting sea turtles and improbably roaming zebras make Cuixmala feel less like a resort than a self-contained, wild escape.
Tucked along a remote stretch of Jalisco’s Pacific coast, in the region known as the Costalegre, roughly four and a half hours south of Puerto Vallarta, sits an estate that doesn’t fit the usual mold. Cuixmala isn’t really a resort in the traditional sense — it’s a 30,000-acre nature reserve where wild landscape, cinematic architecture and a bit of fantasy all bump up against each other. The property stretches across tropical forest, coconut groves, coastal lagoons and wetlands, and the sheer time it takes to get there ends up being part of the point. That distance is what protects the quiet.
The Vision of Sir James Goldsmith
Cuixmala was never meant to be a hotel. British socialite and conservationist Sir James Goldsmith built it in the late 1980s as a private family retreat inside a wildlife reserve he’d set aside himself. It was an unusual idea for the time — a home built to work with its landscape rather than dominate it, more a shield for the surrounding biodiversity than a display of wealth sitting on top of it. That founding idea has held up. Guests still get a rare look at a place where luxury isn’t about excess so much as space, privacy and a true commitment to the land around it.
Architecture of Earth, Light and Stone
Casa Cuixmala, the main residence, sits high on a bluff over the Pacific and has the feel of an actual home rather than a hotel — warm terracotta tones mixed with Mexican, Moroccan and Moorish influences. Domes, soft archways and hand-carved details all frame views of the jungle canopy and ocean below.
Inside, the materials bring much to life: terracotta tile, woven textiles, custom woodwork and rooms built to catch the coastal breeze. Walk into the main living room and the pace simply slows down — it’s built for conversation, for reading, for watching the light change at sunset, even among its immense scale.
The four main suites in Casa Cuixmala each have their own character, though they share the same understated sensibility. Guests wanting more privacy can stay in one of the villas or casitas scattered through the hillsides and coconut groves, each with generous open-air living space. Below the main house, stone steps wind down the cliffside to a pool that feels expansive without trying too hard to impress. Meals follow the same rhythm as everything else here — built around produce pulled daily from the estate’s own biodynamic farm.
Encounter whales (and whale sharks, too) in quiet, relaxing destinations like the Maldives, Sri Lanka, the ice caps and Baja California Sur.
Isolated Shorelines and Unpaved Paths
Three private beaches make up Cuixmala’s coastline, and none of them are easy to reach. There’s no paved road down to the sand — just rough dirt tracks cutting through jungle and palm groves. That’s not a downside; it’s part of what makes the arrival feel like something. Reaching the water feels like finding a shoreline nobody else knows about, with no towers or crowds in sight. Whether you’re on the wild sand at Playa Cuixmala or paddling the calm turquoise water at Playa Caleta Blanca, the coast is yours alone.
Where Zebras Roam the Jungle
The wildlife sets Cuixmala apart. Iguanas sunning themselves, white-tailed deer moving through the brush, more than 270 bird species overhead in the wetlands. Endangered sea turtles still nest along the protected beaches. But the herd of wild zebras grazing on the coastal grasslands is the thing people remember most. There’s something wonderfully strange about spotting them against a backdrop of palm trees and jungle, a leftover flourish from Goldsmith himself, and still one of the clearest signs of the eccentric-yet-unified vision that shaped Cuixmala.
The Ultimate Escape
Luxury hospitality can often seem homogenized. Cuixmala pushes back against that just by being what it is — vast, private, unhurried and genuinely tied to the land it sits on. It does not compete with anywhere else. Its ethos is it does not need to.
