Ecuador Luxury‏

Note from this Blog: This place is only 30 minutes from our Farm near Pacto!!!!! But trust me.....we are NOT this luxurious. We have been wondering where all those expensive SUVs were headed to out at the farm.

We have seen an uptick in interest in Ecuador luxury.   Rather than looking for a lower cost of living, an increasing number of readers  are interested in affordable luxury.  Industry is responding and luxury resorts are being built.

This photo is from a Forbes article “Entrepreneur Built South America’s Most Luxe Jungle Hotel: Mashpi Lodge”

Here is an excerpt:  Here’s to attempting impossible projects,” says Ecuadorean entrepreneur Roque Sevilla as we clink glasses at the hotel he owns in Quito, talking about his latest “beautiful, impossible project,” Mashpi Lodge in the Andean cloud forest.

With a master’s in public administration from Harvard, Sevilla has a background as colorful as one of the hummingbirds that hover at Mashpi. Since the 1970s he has founded and run several of Ecuador’s largest insurance companies, served as mayor of Quito, been active with the World Wildlife Fund and become the president of Ecuador’s biggest travel company, Metropolitan Touring.

He’s also a passionate orchid cultivator and collector. Twelve years ago, when he learned that deforestation threatened his favorite species, he doubled down on his conservation efforts. With friends, he began buying parcels of land in the Choc? bioregion (about three hours northwest of Quito) that would eventually total more than 3,200 acres.

The 22 rooms and suites occupy a stunning glass-and-steel contemporary building. Virtually every wall is a window, and many guests do little more than soak up the climate-controlled views. But Mashpi also offers a variety of excursions that generally don’t require too much hardship, not to mention a unique “sky bike” that hangs from a cable across a 200-meter-wide gorge.

Sevilla says his goal of preserving the land led him to put, all told, about $10 million into Mashpi, even though he knew it had “all the conditions not to be successful economically.” But the lodge is actually in the black, he says, as guests are proving more than willing to spend about $1,300 per person for two nights to stay at the jungle cocoon. “Sometimes, like this one, an idea is so crazy that it begins having economic success.”

Ecuador still offers a good lifestyle for those on a limited budget… but increasingly those with a big budget Ecuador is a place to visit or invest.

Gary

www.garyascott.com