Today I bought a nice glass bottle to drink from. The goal of these nicely designed little bottles is to reduce the use of plastic bottles in the area. Local businesses have water filling stations. We should totally do this on Haida Gwaii! Check out their site to learn more.
Something else that has caught my attention between the two main beaches here is the Hotel Nosara, a Gaudi/Hundertvaser-esque structure that is by far my favourite landmark and also a total curiosity. I dug a little and found some info on another guy's blog. He found out that The Hotel Nosara was the first hotel built here about 30 years ago. It’s owned by John Frazier, a reclusive Greek businessman, who also owns a few other businesses in town and still lives on the top floor. Apparently in it’s heyday, Hotel Nosara was quite impressive, but, for the past 10 or 15 years, hasn’t been open because the beaches in Nosara, Costa Rica, are part of a National Wildlife Refuge. The Nosara beaches are spawning grounds for sea turtles so no construction is allowed within a certain distance from the shoreline. I suppose John decided to build it anyways and paid the price. The Hotel Playas de Nosara was forced to close for violating this law. It now sits empty except for a pack of wild dogs, a groundskeeper and the owner, John, who occupies the rooms directly below the minaret. It appears that John has transformed the building into a gigantic Hookah (see the hand at the top loading it with tobacco or pot – which I hear he smokes a lot of).
While the Hotel appears empty, the grounds and pool are immaculate. I also heard a rumor that John lives below the pool which, if true, would be a tragedy as the view from the tower looks quite impressive.
This is a mural on one of the walls that seems to show a man guiding a donkey loaded up with the various parts of the building. Very interesting.
Here is a view of it from the beach, this was taken before the scaffoling went up around the top. Apparently the scaffolding has been there for years now, but before you could see the sculptural "hand of god" loading the top of the hotel as one might load a hookah.... Pretty crazy. Then there is a pic of the hotel as it is now, with the scaffolding.
