37 Postcard from Casa Wabi
Nature and culture find synthesis at Casa Wabi, an art centre on the Oaxaca Coast, writes Neha Kale.
It ripples through my body somewhere beyond my line of vision, the sound of the wave that booms like a thunderclap. The surfers who have flocked here since the 1970s called it the Mexican pipeline, this swell that rises and falls with the insistence of a heartbeat on this golden stretch of Mexico's Oaxacan coast. Last night, I had marvelled at it on our balcony during one of those Fanta-orange sunsets that are synonymous with Puerto Escondido. But now, I am standing inside the 10-metre-tall observatory at Casa Wabi. It leans on a 60-degree angle in the direction of the Pacific, like a temple half-buried in sand.
The acoustics are near-perfect: artists have been known to play their guitars
