A new hospitality vision for Baja California Sur

Happy hours and bucket showers

There are three accommodation options at Rancho Cacachilas. The four Ranch Family Suites have electricity and queen and bunk beds within permanent structures.

Glamping is in the nearby Palapa Casitas, offering double-, triple- and quadruple-occupancy in semipermanent tents; only one has electricity, installed to accommodate guests who rely on an oxygen machine. (The ranch is off the electrical grid and relies 100% on solar energy.)

Toilets for these two accommodation options are not en suite, and showers are taken with warm or cold buckets of water.

There are two WiFi stations, and near the suites and casitas there is a large palapa for group meetings.

Visitors who want to immerse themselves in nature might instead choose Los Pisos Remote Camp. Guests staying there sleep on cots with mattresses in eight safari-style tents, which are also furnished with tables and chairs, including a comfortable reclining chair. Meals are prepared over fire pits.

Los Pisos is slated to be expanded, and a new cluster of accommodations is being planned for the remote Caonas area of the ranch, situated between the mountains and a gully, where stargazing, solitude and hiking will be the main attractions.

All in all, Rancho Cacachilas is an interesting mix of the sophisticated and rustic. Happy hours are held on the roof of the suites to watch the sun set over the mountains and the Sea of Cortes, and not far from the suites and glamping are a bar, a small pool and a clubhouse with a game room.

Accommodations currently cost approximately $420 per night for those age 13 and older, $210 for children. The rate includes meals.

— A.W.

‘Tourism needs water’

As regards iAlumbra’s lack of profitability, Palacios would like to change that, in large measure through tourism. He is the former head of the state tourism board, and as head of iAlumbra’s for-profit division, he sees significant potential not only in a hospitality operation that has been established at Rancho Cacachilas but in attractions in the nearby former mining town of El Triunfo, where a museum and two restaurants have been opened by iAlumbra (the museum operates as a nonprofit).

Palacios sees complementary benefits between the conservation efforts and the tourism projects that can bring visitors to the area. “Tourism needs water,” he said.

And the scenic features on the ranch that have been created by the retained water have become a draw for guests. There are now year-round shallow creeks flowing through the mountainous terrain, some with cascades. Del Valle’s small team of naturalists leads hikes on trails along the banks of the creeks.

There’s a wide range of amenities and activities included in the daily rate, among them mountain biking (guides are provided, though the bikes need to be rented from the ranch or brought by guests). Mule rides can be scheduled, and morning yoga sessions are offered. And among the many hiking trails are ones that lead to the old mine that once operated on the ranch.

A goat cheese farm, apiary and organic vegetable gardens are on the land and can be visited. The products from these as well as from the ranch’s cattle provide some of the ingredients found on the menu of the on-site gourmet restaurant.

In all, there are 31 listed activities, “and we’ll try to accommodate special requests if we can,” Del Valle said. Likewise, the restaurant will work to satisfy special diets.

The ranch also organizes events; recent examples are a three-day camp for bird-watchers, a photography camp, plein-air (outdoor) painting sessions, concerts, holiday celebrations and culinary events.

Under consideration now are writing retreats, bow hunting for wild hogs and horseback riding.

Off-ranch options

Rancho Cacachilas offers daytrips to local attractions, some of which are also iAlumbra enterprises.

In the nearby town of El Triunfo, iAlumbra has brought three tourism projects to fruition. El Triunfo was once the regional center for gold mining, with smelting done right in town; an enormous chimney and other large infrastructure has been preserved. There’s a small gold mining museum nearby.

The Museo del Vaquero de las Californias is a state-of-the-art, interactive museum built by iAlumbra. A vaquero is a cowboy, and the rich tradition of ranching in the area is showcased from the perspective of the people who worked with cattle.  

To say that the museum punches above its weight in the sleepy little town is a great understatement. While costumes and artifacts are on display, the bulk of the focus is on telling the stories of the people who shaped the ranch culture, from ropers and foremen to ranch owners. Visitors can try their hand at roping in the museum’s open courtyard.

There is a restaurant in the museum that serves food associated with the area. iAlumbra also operates a full-service restaurant and bar, El Minero de El Triunfo, which wouldn’t seem out of place in Mexico City, San Diego or Austin, Texas, and Toto Frito, a fast-casual restaurant serving dishes from the company’s fish and oyster farms.

— A.W.

A hotel or research station?

Criollo cattle, which thrive in desert conditions and were the first cattle bred in the region, have been reintroduced on Rancho Cacachilas and are tended under a holistic livestock management program. 

Visitors may come across free-grazing goats just about anywhere on the property (the cheese made from the nanny goats’ milk has won international awards).

The bee workshop offered as an activity visits only one cluster of several hives established across the land, which are monitored by staff to ensure the health of the bees, which in turn help ensure the health of the local flora. Honey produced by the bees is packaged and sold.

All of what’s described above is what’s visible to a guest at Rancho Cacachilas, and in sum it’s an extraordinary amount of offerings for a 54-bed property. But in addition to what can be readily seen, there’s quite a bit more going on that isn’t apparent to visitors.

Research led by the San Diego Natural History Museum, in tandem with Mexican and U.S. universities, is conducted on the fauna, flora and ecology of the land.  

The central focus for research and land stewardship, however, is water conservation. Working with federal and local agencies and universities, the ranch’s water conservation staff explores which practices are most effective in the region.

It is hoped that best practices can be shared with local ranchers, some of whom express interest and some of whom, having heard the same rumors Del Valle had heard, are suspicious of Walton’s intentions. Overgrazing is a serious contributor to soil erosion, but local ranchers may not be keen to embrace recommendations to reduce the size of their herds to give plants an opportunity to regenerate, even if the practice is to their long-term benefit.

Christy Walton’s vision

Walton fell in love with the area around Rancho Cacachilas after she and her husband had sailed their boat to La Paz, the nearest large city. She is keen to “retain the nature of the place, the history of the place and to celebrate the traditions and the environment.”

Her interests and holdings in the state extend beyond the ranch and El Triunfo and include the Sol Azul oyster farm and the Earth Ocean Farms fish hatchery, both in the Sea of Cortes. Their products, too, are served at the hotel’s restaurant.

Walton’s original intention when purchasing Rancho Cacachilas and adjacent ranches was to develop homes in the watershed but designed in such a way that they would contribute more water to the land than they would draw from it.

Her shift to tourism was predicated in part by concerns that the mining concession would present difficulties for the development, though she still would like to see some home development on the periphery of the ranch. She sees tourism as part of a diversified local economy, not the sole basis of it.

She said she believes a regenerative approach makes economic sense. “You can make the same amount of money with less infrastructure, less use of resources and create local employment,” she said.

The goat cheese, the criollo cattle and the organic farm that emphasizes traditional produce is “part of the foundation for creating a food system that is the taste of the place,” Walton said. “One comes here for the food and for this experience. So much of tourism is the same model over and over and has little to do with where one is.

“You don’t need to go everywhere, [traveling] all the time,” she continued. Rather, there are places “you visit to create a memory and a story. And you may only need to visit these places once or twice in a lifetime.”

It is her desire that Rancho Cacachilas be such a place, and apparently she’s willing to spend an extraordinary amount of time, energy and money to make that dream come true.