Templo Saladita vs Casona Sforza

Two of the most architecturally serious properties on the Mexican Pacific coast — one built by a woman on a longboard point in Guerrero, the other designed by Alberto Kalach for a barrel beach in Oaxaca. The waves they front could not be more different, and neither can the guests they attract.

Where they diverge

The most important difference between Templo Saladita and Casona Sforza is not the architecture — it is the wave. La Saladita is one of the world's premier longboard waves: a left point that peels for 300 meters over sand and cobble, forgiving enough for style but demanding enough to reward decades of practice. Zicatela is something else entirely — a barreling beach break that kills people in September when the south swell is running. The two hotels exist in different surf universes, and the guest who is right for one is almost never right for the other.

On the design axis, both properties are serious, but in opposite ways. Templo was built incrementally by its owner-designer over several years, accumulating five spaces with a consistent material logic — local brick, repurposed containers, the greywater system that runs through the garden. The result feels discovered rather than designed, with the tightness of something that was allowed to find its own geometry. Casona Sforza was designed in a single architectural vision by Alberto Kalach, one of Mexico's most significant architects — the man behind the Biblioteca Vasconcelos — and the building announces that fact immediately. The barrel vaults are the point. They are structurally honest, formally derived from the Oaxacan vernacular, and impossible to ignore. At Templo, the architecture recedes; at Casona Sforza, the architecture is what you came for.

The scale difference matters practically: five spaces at Templo versus twelve rooms at Casona Sforza. At Templo you may be the only guest, or sharing the property with four others at most. At Casona Sforza you are in a small hotel with other guests you may or may not meet. Both are intimate by any conventional standard, but the intimacy is different. Templo's intimacy is physical — the property is a corner lot in a village of 500 people, the owner is present. Casona Sforza's intimacy is architectural — the courtyard concentrates the guest experience around the building itself. The food programs reflect this: Templo's casitas have cooking facilities; Casona Sforza operates a no-menu, no-choices set dinner that is either completely right for you or not at all.

Geography separates them by seven hours. Templo arrives via Zihuatanejo airport (ZIH), 45 minutes north. Casona Sforza is a 20-minute walk from the Puerto Escondido airport (PXM). They are not alternatives within a single trip — they serve different swell windows (May–September for Saladita, September–October for Zicatela) on different stretches of coast.

Who should pick Templo Saladita

The guest who goes to Templo is almost certainly a longboarder — or at minimum a surfer who values the quality of a long, forgiving point break over the adrenaline of a heavy beach break. The Saladita wave rewards patience and style; it is a wave you can surf at 45 as well as you surfed it at 25, possibly better. The treehouse — the glass-walled room suspended in the palm canopy with the copper soaking tub and the barrel sauna — is among the most considered individual surf accommodations in Mexico, and the guest who books it is not booking it because it is convenient. They are booking it because it is specific and earned and unlike anything else on the coast.

Templo also makes sense for couples who want a complete property to themselves (the master casita with full kitchen), for the yoga-focused surfer who wants a real shala rather than a borrowed beach mat, and for anyone whose ideal surf trip involves walking barefoot to the water and back without a car. The village character of La Saladita — small, fishing-based, not yet overwhelmed by surf tourism — is part of the product. If you want Sayulita, Sayulita is four hours north. Templo is what Sayulita used to be before it became Sayulita.

Who should pick Casona Sforza

Casona Sforza is for advanced surfers who want to be within walking distance of one of the world's most serious beach breaks, housed in a building worth looking at between sessions. If you have surfed Zicatela — or have spent enough time studying surf video to understand what September at Puerto Escondido means — and that is the experience you are organizing a trip around, Casona Sforza is the most architecturally serious base available in Puerto. The Grupo Habita properties (Escondido, Humano) are well-designed and more amenity-complete; Casona Sforza is more architecturally demanding and more interesting for guests who engage with buildings.

The set-menu restaurant model is a filter: if no-choice dining sounds liberating, Casona Sforza is correct for you. If it sounds constraining, it will frustrate you, and the Grupo Habita properties offer more flexibility. The twelve-room scale means the building is always present — you are always in the courtyard, always under the vaults. For guests who want that, it is the best version of that experience in Mexico.