INTERVIEWS
Ted Koppel
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Chacala, Mexico
By J.D. Lasica
CHACALA, Mexico — There is the kind of Mexico vacation where you sunbathe at poolside, sip pina coladas, then hightail it back to the States without having to utter more than an occasional gracias or por favor. Then there is Chacala. Chacala will never be another Acapulco, and that's just fine with the 200 residents of this sleepy fishing village 60 miles north of Puerto Vallarta. Travelers who have chanced upon it know
Chacala (cha-KAH-la) as one of the great undiscovered pleasures of Mexico
— a rustic slice
of paradise where jungle birds, sand crabs, stingrays and fruit bats all
compete for the senses. A couple of visitors weary of the artificial tourism scene at the usual resort destinations traveled here recently and found a tropical setting that lifted the spirits and fired the imagination. For Chacala offers not only pristine beaches and a thick tropical rain forest but also a cultural voyage into the soul of small-town Mexico. After a 90-minute ride from the airport in Puerto Vallarta, our taxi turned off the main highway and barreled down the bumpiest, most pockmarked road my wife and I had ever seen. Talk about getting away from it all. We pulled into Mar de Jade, a combination vacation retreat, medical training facility and Spanish immersion school that rises from the volcanic rocks at the south end of mile-long Chacala Bay. Dr. Laura del Valle, 48, a former San Franciscan, founded Mar de Jade in 1983 as a place to house American medical students who volunteered their time at a nearby community health clinic as part of a work-study program. Today, Mar de Jade (Spanish for "Sea of Jade") has grown into a multifaceted tourism center that can house up to 50 guests at a time. A spirit of community and volunteerism sweeps through daily life here, giving Mar de Jade the air of a bilingual, consciousness-raising commune. Visitors are invited to help out with dish duty once or twice during a stay, longer-staying guests work off their room and board by helping out around the compound, and Spanish is encouraged (though not required) during the three meals a day on the outside veranda. Visitors can choose the kind of vacation they want. I've been there twice now, and on both occasions I've encountered weekend vacationers who wanted merely to be left alone to wander Chacala's empty beaches or steamy jungle trails. Others readily embraced the family spirit of the place, learning the names of staff members and other guests, then joining in for a midnight bonfire on the beach under a velvet canopy of twitching stars.
Discovering nature and community in a small seaside Mexican village
This article appeared in
the Chicago Tribune in 1998 and the Philadelphia
Inquirer, San Jose Mercury News, Denver's Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle
Times, all in 1997.
Filed Feb. 1, 1997
On the beach at Chacala
Las Cuevas
Mar de Jade contact information
Chacala photo gallery
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