We named it Calyxfor what holds the bloom together.

I'm a product designer in New York. I was born in Pakistan. I've spent the last decade learning how to build small homes that hold a moment open. Casa Calyx is the latest, and I think the best.

My partner and I came to Santa Teresa for the surf and stayed for the slowness. We bought the lot because of the wind — a corridor of air that runs from the Pacific to the nature reserve, with our property at the exact pinch where the two breezes meet. When you open every door in the house, the room becomes the jungle. The kitchen smells like salt. The monkeys are louder than the surf, and then the surf is louder than the monkeys, and you start to listen for the half-second of silence between them.

I built the house to do exactly that — hold a moment open. The chef-designed kitchen, the cross-ventilated bedrooms, the office with a desk for two, the pool that's open all twenty-four hours. They're all in service of the same thing: making it easy to stop checking your phone.

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A house, like a calyx, is for holding something open.

I host with my partner Jano, who lives in Santa Teresa and is the person you'll actually meet if you need something on the ground. He knows every surf instructor in town, every chef who'll cook in the villa, every ATV rental that won't rip you off. He'll set you up.

We've hosted for ten years. We're Superhosts. Our reply time is under an hour. But the thing I'm proudest of isn't the numbers. It's how often guests tell us, on the way out, that they didn't do half the things they planned to. They sat on the deck. They read a book. They slept in. They came back from town with groceries and cooked dinner.

Which is, I think, the version of Santa Teresa worth visiting. And the version of any place worth going back to.

Come slow. Stay a while. We'll leave a key in the lockbox.

— Mariel