Bungalow Riad San Cristóbal

Riad San Cristóbal started with an accident, and it’s still the best thing about it.

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Christine Peters spent decades as a Hollywood costume designer before she traded Los Angeles for a perch on a jungle hillside. She first came to Troncones in 2004 on an emergency get-out-of-L.A. trip. She rented a Jeep in Zihuatanejo, bumped over every tope, dodged every donkey, and arrived hooked. She loved that it rained every day. She loved the orange crabs running through the house.

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When she finally built here, she asked for high ceilings, hillside breezes, a pool that always looks blue, and a wall color she described as a “pink salmon-y desert tan.” Her plasterer made sample after sample, and none was right. She gave up, tried a safe beige on the little bungalow first, and it came out exactly the color she’d wanted all along. It was wrong for the sunny main house, but perfect for the bungalow, which sits in shade among jungle greens.

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The bungalow is where Christine lived for six months while the house went up. Today it’s the one you can book. Trees crowd in, native plants fill the hillside, and breezes arrive from the jungle behind and the ocean below. The beach is only minutes away.

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Troncones has a way of rewarding the unplanned. This is the proof.