Casa Valhalla

Casa Valhalla stands on the cliffs of El Farallón, on Punta Mita's gated peninsula on the Riviera Nayarit, above the Pacific. The rock formations below are the first thing you notice from the house and the last thing you stop looking at. The setting is private, and the architecture answers it directly: the house was built for this particular stretch of coast and would not make sense anywhere else.

Six bedrooms and seven bathrooms hold twelve guests. The interiors keep the attention pointed outward, which is the right instinct in a house like this one. The gourmet kitchen handles whatever a group of twelve decides it wants, and the rooms around it are made for drifting through rather than sitting still. There is space to gather and space to disappear, and over a week people use both.

The infinity pool reads as though it runs straight into the ocean, and most of the day happens within a few metres of it. Mornings are long here. Afternoons are longer. The light works across the water and the rock for hours, and by the time it goes the evening has already organised itself without anyone deciding anything. From November to March the humpback whales move along this coast, and a clifftop is a good place to wait for them.

Air conditioning and high-speed WiFi are both in place, for whatever the outside world still needs from you. This far above the water, it tends to ask for less.

Nothing here requires a plan. The view supplies most of the day's structure on its own.