“This is not a hotel where you’re paying for a bed for the night,” my guide Sebastian explains as we’re digging into some vegetables picked from the garden that day with sprinkles of cheese from the resident goats of Rancho Cacachilas. “You stay here to get a full Baja nature experience.”
A stay at Rancho Cacachilas in Mexico is far more memorable than your typical lodging stay away from home, partly because of the nature focus, partly because it’s so different than what you can experience anywhere else. This is a working ranch that allows guests, but it’s one where the main goal is to restore the land to its natural state. They go way beyond “sustainable.” They want to be “regenerative.”
Fortunately, the person who bought all this land—more than 40,000 acres in southern Baja, most of it wild—had deep pockets. The lodging aspect is part of the business, not the business. It’s clear that everything was built with care and is impeccably maintained, from the mule barn to the goat pens to the kitchen and sleeping quarters.
To get here you drive a bit more than two hours north from Los Cabos or drive about 45 minutes south from La Paz. Both of those have international airports.
Bunking Down at the Ranch
Where there are a few remote camps that are part of the Rancho Cacachilas complex, most guests will spend their nights at the El Chivato section. This area has one building with rather standard rooms and a roof observation area, then a series of large tents on platforms with a cement and stone floor and deck, fully furnished inside and quite comfortable.
These are called “palapa casitas” because while they’re tents, there’s a full covering over both the tent and the deck area. You use zipper flaps to control the temperature and to go in and out. This is the view I woke up to in the morning:
You give up a few modern comforts staying here, but you gain in other areas. Rechargeable lanterns provide light and there’s no electricity, which means no Wi-Fi or other electronics. This means you hear the birds instead, however, and your body gets onto a more natural circadian rhythm geared around night and day.
The spaces are quite roomy though and I slept soundly on the comfy platform bed. The bathroom situation is like you have in a campground, two communal areas that you walk to down a path. To limit the water usage in this desert landscape, however, the washing areas use a cup and bucket system, like the mandi baths you see in a lot of budget hotels in Asia. The water is as hot as you want it though and the bathhouses are clean and nice.
Each guest gets a walkie-talkie to use for emergencies and a flashlight to find their way in the dark. It’s not just any flashlight though: it has a black light function we used to hunt for little scorpions at night: they would glow blue in the dark! I’m sure that’s a big hit with the kids who stay here.
Dining at Rancho Cacachilas
I honestly wasn’t expecting anything great at mealtimes. I figured it would be filling farmer food that was fresh, but not memorable. This is the area where my expectations were really blown away. The executive chef worked at high-end places before coming here and it shows. That experience combined with an extensive on-site garden meant complex, delicious meals where my only complaint was that there was too much food. And then would come dessert, often incorporating honey from the farm’s bees…
One night’s dinner started with a cocktail and an appetizer before we sat down, with a crispy thick corn tortilla topped with fresh herbs, a seed-covered goat cheese ball, fig slice, peppers, and a mild house-made salsa. Then dinner was chicken from the farm and mole sauce, accompanied by a salad of greens and tomatoes just picked that afternoon.
Another night’s dinner also had a salad, baked bread, and home-made green pasta, while one lunch was a burger from the farm’s beef and cheese from the ranch’s goats. (I toured the goat area one day with my guide and saw where they made the cheese.)
The ranch has wines on offer and also, to my delight, craft beer from Baja on tap. Coffee is ready early in the morning and while coffee doesn’t grow in this environment, the beans do come from Mexico. Here are the sinks with a view where you wash up before meals.
Just off the dining area is an indoor-outdoor lounge for reading, playing games or—if you must—getting some work done. There’s a Wi-Fi connection in the public areas and a place to charge your gadgets.
Rancho Cacachilas Activities
The comment at the beginning about this being more than a place to stay applies to the activities offered as part of the lodging package. Most guests come here to be active and get into nature, far away from any urban environment, into a place where they can really see the stars. (Yes, there’s a guided constellation viewing when the moon is not too bright.)
There was a whole group of mountain bikers staying at the ranch when I was there and it looked like they were having a blast on the challenging trails through the hills and riverbeds. I’ve busted my butt doing that too often to keep at it though, so I opted for two other activities: a mule ride tour and a three-hour hike.
The mule ride sounded kind of comical, but these are big mules so it basically feels like horseback riding. After we saddled up we went down paths through the cacti and trees, down dry riverbeds, and to the top of a cliff where a big horny owl was watching us.
The hike the next day covered different terrain, heading to the top of a crest for a view of the whole area out to the sea. There are some 60 kilometers of trails here, so you could go out riding, walking, or biking for days and not repeat any of them.
During both activities I got an education on the local flora and fauna, from elephant trees to ironwood to hooded orioles. I also learned about the extensive efforts the ranch workers were taking to restore the area to its natural state with a nudge, building rock-filled river gabions where the flood rivers flow. These create stairsteps down the incline to slow down the water and allow more native plants grow back. As more plants grow in, they capture more of the water and hold the soil in place.
“You can tell how healthy the land is by how many small bushes and trees you see,” Sebastian told me. “If you let the cows and goats graze anywhere they want, they will eat the young plants and shoots before they have time to develop.” Here the grazing areas for the cows are controlled and rotated. As part of the water conservation efforts, they even use the cattle to break up the crusty soil before the rainy season so the dirt will absorb more.
Although they like to say they go beyond sustainable, this ranch just might be the most eco-friendly place to stay in Mexico. Solar power covers the energy needs, you can drink the water, and there’s not much to throw away: no single-use plastics and all food scraps get turned into compost. There’s just one nod to comfort over conservation: a nice swimming pool with a view to cool off in.
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Booking a Stay
Rancho Cacachilas sells its stays as “Adventure Camp” packages, so the rates include guided activities and three full meals a day with your accommodation. Rates are 7,140 pesos per person, which comes out to between $400 and $420 depending on the exchange rate, with kids staying for half price.
See the official website for more information about the mission, the activities, and the location, then book a stay at this page.
Article and photos by editor Tim Leffel. He stayed at Rancho Cacachilas as a guest of the ranch and Go La Paz while working on a story for another publication.
