Viva Mexico 🇲🇽

Time sure flies down here, I can’t believe that we’ve been in Mexico for almost 2 months already. But while there have been many bumps along the way, Mexico continues to inspire and take our breath away! The landscape has you cranking your head in all directions to see the beauty that surrounds you every single day. Days are so eventful you got to wonder what it has in store for you when you wake up. Definitely no bad days as the saying goes. The pretty colors of the sunset directly over the Pacific Ocean and the auburn skies that light up the Sierra de la Laguna Mountains make us feel so grateful to be here on this sacred land. We seem to encounter more and more wildlife each time as well. When we first arrived, I was always encountering Tarantula’s. Maybe it was a gift for me to get over the spider thing and realize how gentle these guys really are. So finally, not afraid of those big hairy beasts now I’m moving on to face those other fears of mine, but all in good time, I hope. The donkeys and cows live a pretty good life here too. They are free-range animals meaning the ranchers don’t pen up their animals at their farms. They let them roam free and live a pretty natural life. They get to be with their calves and wander the desert free. And then they have just 1 bad day when their owner decides to find one for food or some income. It seems like a pretty good system and they seem quite happy to me except for the odd cholla cactus in the nose. We hear them every morning as the ranchers put bells around their necks. It kind of sounds like how I would imagine Tibet to be, with all the bells ringing from donkeys and cows every morning on the hunt for some food. The dogs do a good job at keeping them away from our plants but we’ll need to do some fencing before we leave again.

The rancho feels so alive and wild, that we just feel so very grateful to be here. I always had this vision since I was a little girl of a vista that I thought was somewhere in Africa. Now, while I haven’t been to Africa yet, I am starting to think this land is the very vision I was having all along. Deep in our hearts we feel like we belong here. Baja is such a mix of both Dane and my upbringing that it just feels like home. Baja feels like an island desert and with Dane growing up on the gulf islands and me in the Okanagan, we couldn’t have asked for a better place where our hearts sing! This place makes you crave more connection with the land as it shows you how wild it can be and how small we truly are here on this earth. The vast expanse of rugged terrain makes you crave it more and the freedoms that come here for us and our family also is what we deeply desire in life beyond almost anything else. To live without freedom for us feels so wrong on many levels and makes us unhappy. Our dogs can be dogs here, they protect us and our family by letting us know when people or other animals are in close proximity. On a Mexican ranch dogs are extremely valuable to your safety and protection. We love our pack, not only do they provide love and snuggles, they also would protect us to the very end even if it meant losing their life to do so. Their loyalty to us makes us loyal to them to ensure they are happy too and can have the lifestyle they desire. I guess you could say we’re all in a deeply committed relationship…

When Dane’s folks were visiting Baja, they decided to stay here for 3 days to get the real Rancho experience. Well the almighty mother earth decided to really give them the true experience. We had every weather pattern thrown to us including torrential rains and hurricane-type winds. The winds were so strong that it awoke Dane and I up from within the tent feeling like it was going to blow the tent and us away with it. So, pitch dark running around in the rain trying to secure everything and get the dogs into what indoor spaces were available aka the truck and the van. Poor Wes and Elaine felt so bad being in our trailer while we clearly were suffering outdoors but it was a humbling experience to say the least and made us feel grateful for our trailer once again rather than annoyed by it. Dane being 6’4”,trailer life is not his cup of tea. A big dude in small spaces is not the best combo that’s for sure but it’s all temporary until we get our own Casita up.

Since we’ve been down here, we’ve had to learn a lot about who to trust. We unfortunately, left our Rancho and its belongings to the wrong caretaker who did far more taking than caring. The deceit and hurt feelings when you think you can trust someone and realize it was all just one big lie is beyond comprehendible. As Canadians, we are learning that we are a very soft breed that are sometimes too trusting. But we have gone through many people and are finding our tribe that has our backs down here, ones we can trust. It just takes time. Finding meth-free workers has been very difficult and although many of them are somehow functioning users we just have a zero policy for it on our Rancho. You just never know when a user might get desperate and then it’s open game for your belongings. The first guy we hired also fooled us and managed to take about $1,000 of ours to build the palapa. We paid some money up front for his labour and materials and after too much time lapsed and him not showing up for work dragged on too long, Dane went to the community looking for answers. What we found out was that all the money was gone and spent on drugs. And there was simply nothing we could do about it but learn and move on. So, we are down to 1 super reliable drug-free guy that is becoming more and more like family to us. We want to show an example to his friends and family the opportunities that can happen when you are a good person and don’t self-sabotage yourself with drugs. We are hoping he will be our guy and maybe move onto the Rancho and take care of it while we are gone this time. We absolutely cannot leave Mexico this year until we have found the right person to stay here.

After picking up the pieces from a broken friendship, a loss of goods and having to rebuild everything we had before, onwards we went. We thought we would come here and actually take a couple weeks off to recuperate from DeCourcy Island but it simply hasn’t happened yet. We tried very hard to get our basic set up done before the boys arrived in early January but with all the crazy stuff that happened it just didn’t work out as planned. So, Dane continued to work for the first week or so when the boys arrived until they begged him to stop so they could spend some time with him. We finally got to spend some quality time with them and enjoy some beach days, puttering around in Todos Santos and they even went on a big fishing trip in La Ventana that was so successful it filled our bellies for 4 days plus filled the freezer. The boys said that was the best time in Mexico they have had yet. And Dane’s streak of not catching any fish has finally been broken!

We had a machine come and do some land work at the end of December to work on levelling our Eco-lots, building swales and a few other odds n ends. In two months, we have successfully installed our solar power, a water tower, shower house, kitchen sink and composting toilet. We also finally finished the palapa and are just finishing up the final details to make it a functioning kitchen and bar/ chill space. We also finally opened up our campground. We had so much demand this year and got tired of turning people away. It turns out that many people in vans and campers just want a safe place to stay and are self-sufficient anyways. We just provide a bano, a hammock and a private place for people to use and don’t charge too much so it has been a nice addition to our life. Meeting new people travelling here and sharing our vision has been wonderful not to mention the added security to the property they bring. We are going to put all the money we raised from the campground back into it by adding another bano, water tower and shower for guests. We want to be able to open up the Rancho for workshops and retreats and we may even set up our first glamping site in time for the spring break rush to bring in a few extra dollars that we need. We have also developed quite the interest in our Eco-Village, and with all the lots we have so far being sold, we are starting our waiting list for any new ones that come up. We have a couple lot locations in mind, so phase 2 may happen sooner than later.

So regardless of our trials and tribulations, we are happy living here and are loving Ranchero life more than ever. This land is magnificent in its beauty and like anywhere the good people are there and our tribe is developing into something very beautiful!