The resort with no air conditioning
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The resort with no air conditioning is the property on the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula where John Kiriakou stayed for a month in the autumn of 2025 while filming his first acting role. He returned to the DeProgram studio on 22 October 2025 and was asked how he had survived it.

The design flaw

His first words on the subject were a question rather than an answer. "Who moves into the southernmost tip of the Baja peninsula and builds a resort with no air conditioning?"

He conceded the setting immediately. "It's very beautiful. It truly is. It's very beautiful. Palm trees everywhere. Those big saguaro cactuses with the arms, they're everywhere." The waters offshore, he noted, are where Cousteau did most of his diving, and were christened by him the world's aquarium, "which everybody's very proud of down there."

Who built it

The explanation for the missing air conditioning turned out to be the building's history. "This resort in Baja, it was built by a group of hippies as a commune."

The leader, in Kiriakou's account, was an heiress. "The sort of head of the hippies was the daughter of Thomas Hart Benton, the famous artist from the early to mid twentieth century." Four of the original members were still living there when the film crew arrived, and left shortly afterward, "so the whole place was ours."

They rejected one label to his face. "The guy said: you know, we weren't a cult. People accused us of being a cult. We're just a bunch of like-minded, left-wing, long-haired, freaky people from Los Angeles."

They were also, he stresses, competent. "But they were also very skilled. One of them was an architect. One of them was a builder. And so Thomas Hart Benton's daughter had plenty of money. They built this gorgeous resort. It's got about a dozen different buildings."

The business, and the water

What kept it going was a single clientele. "They just ended up living in it most of the time and renting out rooms to scuba divers otherwise. The thing is, there's literally nothing to do there unless you're a scuba diver."

Even the diving came with warnings. "And then, even if you are a scuba diver, there are signs around like: beware of rockfish. They will sting you through your flippers." Kiriakou's summary of the local marine odds, offered against the host's description of Baja as a place divers go to see whale sharks: "you might see either nothing at all, you won't even see an angelfish, or you'll see a whale shark."

See also

- Kiriakou's acting career
- The Tarantula On The Mini Fridge
- The Fox That Ate The Scraps
- Jeff Fahey
