Edward Giddings’ resort is a testament to his love affair with the real Mexico.

By Terence Loose

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fter half a dozen runs to Baja California’s tip over the past 15 years – by land, air and sea, I might add – I’ve come to realize there are two Cabo San Lucases. The Vegas-like, 24-hour party town ruled by aging rocker Sammy Hagar, where Tequila poppers and buckets of beer fuel a crowd seemingly on permanent spring break. And the serene Cabo San Lucas, the one where nature’s contrasts come together to soothe and rejuvenate, where dry desert meets deep blue sea and time’s pendulum comes in the form of a swaying palm frond. This Cabo exists in calm rebellion against the frantic Americanization blitzing it from the north. And mellow central is the Club Cascadas de Baja.

I escaped to this laid back oasis with my wife and nine-month-old daughter just after the National Retailers Holiday (formerly known as Christmas). Not yet saddled with the credit card bills that ring in my new year, we took the easy flight south of the border and within five hours of leaving our chilly doorstep, we were kicking back under a private Cascadas palapa doing a fair imitation of the Corona cervesa “Change Your Latitude” commercial. Since we’d arrived well before check-in time, we had dropped our bags at the front desk and followed the gray stone pathways, rimmed with lush foliage, past the two large pools toward the perfect bay that is now one of the west’s most famous postcards. Even our daughter couldn’t complain.

The reason was clear enough. Club Cascadas is not a resort that overwhelms you with grandeur; it doesn’t announce its presence in monumental proportions, demanding respect by drowning out its own setting. With its round, whitewashed adobe structures hidden by aged palms and roofed with dried palm fronds, Cascadas is as subtle as the land it inhabits. We enjoyed our drinks, and gazed across the bay to El Arco, the natural rock arch formation at Land’s End, and felt the cool breeze come in off the Pacific.

An hour later, when our villa was ready, we were not. After all, it meant climbing stairs, and our latitude was lowering with every sip. We hesitated, but then our new friend, Gary, from Reno, chimed in. Gary had a long ponytail and wore a black tank top, which complemented his cowboy hat and thick mustache. He owns a place in Cascadas and has been coming here for over a decade. Gary smiled, but this I would soon discover was his permanent expression, a result, I supposed, of months of his life spent lying under one of these very palapas. He had overheard our villa’s name, he told me. “That’s a good one, it has its own Jacuzzi,” he said.

That got us moving, and sure enough, on our villa’s expansive third-floor patio waited our private tiled hot tub, complete with bar and margarita glassware.

Hours later, our girl rested from a nap and our latitudes rested thanks to the Jacuzzi-margarita combo, we strolled the grounds to check Cascadas’ architecture. On my very first trip to Cabo, with a Corona del Mar High School friend and on a shoe string budget, I had slept a night in a hammock on this sand. It was 1985 and Cascadas was just a construction site, notable only because it was that of CdM architect Edward Paul Giddings, now deceased. I didn’t know the man and figured Cascadas was merely another Cabo resort, designed more for the pocketbook than the aesthetic.

Now, as we circled the Tortuga Pool, discovered a dozen different sculptures and searched in vain for a straight line among the many villas that make up Cascadas, I started to think I might have been wrong. I wrote a few notes: “Raw, whimsical, authentic,” and finally, “find out more about this guy Giddings…”

In the Cascadas gift shop I found a book about Giddings, the man and his work. I flipped it open, saw his picture and instantly thought, Hemingway. Giddings had the same round but defiantly strong face, skin weathered from a life outdoors, and the stare of a man ready to wrestle life into submission. I brought the book back to our villa and it replaced the Grisham novel I had on deck. The more I read about Giddings, the more I saw that the resemblance to Papa H. was more than just skin deep. The only difference seemed to be that where Hemingway created literature, Giddings’ art of choice was architecture.

In 1959, at age 30, Giddings left a comfortable desk at a San Francisco architecture firm to chase adventure on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. There he studied the architecture and construction of the Mayan ruins but also embraced the natural rawness of the area. He spent four months exploring and pursuing one of his lifelong loves: free diving (no tanks, just hold your breath and go deep) and big game spearfishing, known as blue water hunting. Soon, he became known as the “loco gringo” because of his fearless diving in the shark-filled waters off Isla Mujeras, and once he was asked to leave because of his daring. Why? asked Giddings. “Because you will be eaten by a shark and give our island terrible publicity,” said the port captain.

When Giddings did leave, it was only for bigger game. He crossed Mainland Mexico and landed in Puerto Vallarta, then a little-known fishing village in the heart of Banderas Bay, one of the West Coast’s grandest. Puerto Vallarta only brought out a bolder Giddings, it seems. His adventures there included jumping into a bull ring during a bullfight, and spearing a 14-foot-long, 350-pound sawfish, the largest sawfish ever speared while freediving.

But it was in Puerto Vallarta that Giddings began his life as an architectural artist as well. With his pioneering spirit and his American architecture pedigree, Giddings was soon designing and building grand villas for wealthy Americans. His designs were unlike any that had come before, built with a strong combination of historic and cultural influence and a trailblazer’s audacity. He frustrated foremen by refusing to take the easy way, demanded the best in craftsmanship and never designed by the rules. His mission was to blend his creations into the land – a unique style in the 60s and 70s – and utilize local materials. The residences he created attracted attention and praise, both for their form and function, and by the mid-60s he had met and married Patricia Cropsey, a model, and was settled, as much as he could be, in Newport Beach. Patricia’s love affair with Mexico, where the two met, was equally passionate, and they commuted between Newport and Puerto Vallarta.

But Giddings was not content building other people’s dreams, even if it did pay well, so in the late 70s the couple bought a piece of land, a hillside, in Banderas Bay, that seemed to defy development. Measuring 100 feet from the road above to the road below, it was so steep Patricia Giddings dared not even go near the edge. But her husband had seen only possibilities. In fact, by touchdown of the plane ride back to Newport after the sale, Giddings had already worked out his architectural concept. Ocho Cascadas (Eight Waterfalls) would be an 11-story building, holding expansive villas. It would be free-form, curvilinear, and each level would be aesthetically connected through a series of waterfalls spilling from pool to pool, top floor to bottom. Also, there would be no enclosing walls; Giddings wanted the villas open to the sea breezes and the spot’s natural silence, the very qualities that drew him to the site in the first place.

Most called Giddings crazy, claiming this time his plan was too bold. Even his longtime construction supervisor claimed Ocho Cascadas was Giddings’ windmill, the project that would finally bring him to his knees. But Giddings was not a man to listen to criticism; if anything, it only spurred him on.

It took three years of intense physical and financial commitment, during which he and Patricia risked everything for their dream, but in 1979, Ocho Cascadas became reality and proved the critics wrong. The boutique timeshare resort was an instant success, as well as an architectural and engineering marvel. Most important to Giddings, it fit the land. With its open plan, undulating façade and cascading waterfalls, it celebrated nature and paid homage to Giddings’ love for Mexico.

This same respect dominates Cabo’s Cascadas de Baja, a project that Giddings started a dozen years after buying the property. In the early 70s, during a trip to Baja’s tip in search of clear water for diving, Ed and Patricia discovered the site, bought it soon after and began designing a resort. But financial responsibilities, mostly related to Ochos Cascadas, and a Cabo San Lucas old-guard that resisted gringo development (remember, this was the 70s) got in the way. Finally, in 1985, Giddings had won over the local community and was ready to build his second club membership resort.

Ironically, though the land was flat, Giddings found he faced some of the same challenges in design as he had in his vertical Puerto Vallarta resort. With only 230 feet of beach frontage for a five-and-a-half-acre property, the challenge was attaining both views and privacy. Again, many were skeptical.

But again, Giddings proved the critics wrong, and stayed true to his love of local influences. Cascadas de Baja became a “village” of 24 round buildings, most three story, connected by meandering stone pathways, hidden by lush foliage and topped by thatched palapa roofs. In them are housed 110 villas, from one- to four-bedroom, all totally private, none exactly alike. The overall atmosphere is reminiscent of the rural beachside villages of Southern Mexico.

The freedom Giddings felt in Mexico – he could design in broad strokes, unhampered by intrusive regulation – shows in every detail of Cascadas. Touches like the sculpted cement animals that mark each villa entrance and stairwell; the intricate radial patterns in ceilings and walls, attained by placing a stripped palm frond in the cement molding; or the palm trunks wrapped in the roots of higuera trees, all keep the design alive and give the visitor something to discover with every step.

Back in our villa the discoveries continued. The floorplan was totally open, with an upstairs master bedroom, bath and balcony, reached by spiraling stone steps. Downstairs, the kitchen and living area were one, with a front wall of windows and glass doors leading to the large patio and Jacuzzi. But again, the whimsy and art came in the details: the glass jugs set in the stone walls that radiate with the morning sun, the sculptures of clam shells and animal faces in whitewashed walls. It all made me feel that I was in fact in another country – a magic much of Cabo has lost.

As I closed the book on Giddings’ life, I thought, yes, there really are two Cabos. And I like Giddings’ version best.

Villa sizes range from 800 sq.ft. one bedrooms to a 5,000 sq. ft. residence; prices range from $250 per night to $2,000. Club memberships are also available. Call Leslie at (949) 640-8740 for information. þ

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