Living la Vivo loca
A Winter Olympian is behind your next stay in sunny southern Mexico
AT age 29, after suffering a nasty third concussion during his decade-long career as a professional skier, two-time Canadian Olympian Cary Mullen quit the national team per doctors’ orders.
He couldn’t even remember the alphabet.
But when your entire life philosophy is based on a single letter, who needs those other pesky 25, anyway? “Oaxaca taught me the five Fs: family, food, faith, fun and fiesta,” muses Mullen — now 48 and founder and president of Vivo Resorts — over dinner at his property’s poolside restaurant.
Oaxaca, a state deep in southern Mexico, is where the Calgary-born, married (and, thankfully, fully recovered) father of three first began his condo project in 2010. Lying in near seclusion right outside the pint-sized town of Puerto Escondido, Vivo is now a fully operational seven-towered, gated community-hotel hybrid (from $140/ night; VivoVacations.com).
Colorful Puerto is a beachy tourist mecca of 45,000 residents packed with shirtless surfers, bauble shoppers, avid nightlifers and a world-renowned farmer’s market (Oaxacans love them some bug-based cuisine — here you’ll find ants and grasshoppers galore).
“Once it was a coffee and fishing port. Surfers discovered it in the ’70s. Then they put a highway in, they filmed an Italian movie here [coincidentally called ‘Puerto Escondido’]. Its Zicatela Beach became a top-20 surf spot in the world,” Mullen says of his second home.
As for the extreme move, the retired park rat explains, “I was tired of living a life of eternal winter, every month chasing snow around the globe — May in Mammoth, Whistler in June, Chile in October.” The newly minted Mexican developer — who, by the by, is a World Cup downhill champion and still holds the world downhill speed record of 97 mph — is better known as a motivational speaker and author of the self-help book “How to Win.”
As a young athlete, Mullen was no fool — however temporarily scrambled his brains got on the job. He knew there would be life after professional skiing, that even if he won a gold medal — i.e., his dream — it wouldn’t shore him up financially forever. There is, after all, only so much gold in those things. So he had a plan B. In the little bit of downtime between training and battling it out on the slopes, Mullen took real estate courses, seminars and Dale Carnegie leadership training.
These days, Mullen oversees Vivo’s 10 private villas and 112 condominium suites. The entire resort is set against 12 miles of divine Pacific shorefront on one side, and the enchantingly pristine Laguna Manialtepec on the other. The first condo tower opened in 2012.
The way the vacation side of the resort t works is fairly Airbnb-ish. Owners have the choice to use or rent their homes as they wish. “Only 3 percent of them are there year-round, and 75 percent opt in to the rental program,” Mullen says.
Did we mention Vivo has a baby sea turtle release program (October through May)? Their cute-yet-perilous shuffles to sea are announced to guests resort-wide by conch shell blows.
And the palapa-crazed resort cut the ribbon on a new 53,000-square-foot, four-floor clubhouse just last Friday, complete with a spa and kids center.
Flight volume to Puerto’s airport has risen by 300 percent over the last five years (coincidence?). And as Vivo reports its annual growth in gross revenue to be up 350 percent from Aug. 1, 2016, to July 31 of this year, at full buildout the resort will have 114 private homes and 400 condominiums.
I suppose the sixth “F” he can live by now is fortune.