Tel. +44 (0)1273 600030 (UK)
We employ just local staff and as nobody has any experience or any knowledge in English I’m going to teach the professional knowledge and give English lessons. They're from San Martin - 5 kilometers away in the mountains and one person is from Llano Grande approximately 1 km away. . Environmental training will be a part of the second step as soon as the professional and language skills are sufficient. We buy part of our goods in Llano and most of the goods in Puerto Escondido at the local market.
We cook local cuisine with local product, produce our own massa for our own tortillas and use the first own fruit and herbs already. Lots of products of the local market are grown by the merchants or local farmers. But we also will extend the use of healthy food: Lots of salads – lots of vegetable and lots of fruit. For most of the construction we use local constructors – some construction material must be bought in Acapulco as there are not always quality products available locally.
We receive water from the mountains and do not use any water from the water company. We’re going to use glass bottles that could be used again – as few as possible plastic. I have already ordered the system to make you get energy in your room only if you plug your key into a box and we’re going to get this delivered in early April and will be equipped with it by May 2008. We actually turn off energy from 10 am till 5 pm in all the guest areas.
We already have a sewerage system for our existing rooms. For the 4 new rooms we’re building a 3-unit sewerage system and will be able to use the water coming out of the 3rd unit to water the garden.
We wash the traditional Mexican way – hand-washing and for hand washing we use the ordinary hand-wash soap However we also recently bought a washing machine which has the "energy star" for very low energy usage. We have changed all light-bulbs into energy savings bulbs.
We replaced 2 water boilers and run warm water with extremely energy efficiant boilers. One of them use 1%gas (on a scale between 1% and 100%) and the second one uses an energy efficiance of just 6%. Our new Sauna and fitness facility will be cooled with solar cooling and the massages will first of all be “Zapotec- massages” with “spiritual ingredients”, with a local Shaman, aroma and meditative ingredients and the sauna will run it’s flavor with our own-grown herbs – we already use our own herbs and are just about to grow more things – other than bananas, plantains and limes and many fruit will grow in our own gardens.
Part of our plans as soon as the project on the hill starts is exclusively renewable energy with solar power, a wind generator and even solar cooling and the only not-green energy will be a back-up diesel generator. The parts close to the fences and right and left of the hotel stay uncut. We feed birds, have mountain faisins on the property that come into the restaurant to get fed. Part of our future support will also go into an own project to re-forest areas where people cut down all the trees (in exchange for getting food).
We're looking for an investor to finance a project on top of the hill with villas, apartments and little houses and as soon as this project starts we're going to take 5% out of all our profit and support social projects in the local community. On Sundays we have a lot of locals at our pool – families with many kids and with lots of fun!
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