TRAVELER
Rancho La Puerta - World Class Spa by Greg Niemann
spa in North America, the legendary, 75-year old Rancho La Puerta, still going strong and garnering awards in 2015. La Puerta means door or gate in Spanish
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and beautiful bronze gates introduce the 300 serene acres in the hills near the international border. A large parking lot and an employee
nxiously, I turned my car off the Ti- juana highway about three miles before Tecate, heading inside the first fitness
checklist at the adjacent gatehouse give testi- mony that this gringo fitness aspiration pro- vides employment to over 100 local residents. While the fitness trainers are mostly Ameri- cans, all the other employees from groundskeepers to cooks to gift shop workers are local Mexicans. Most of the 160 weekly spa guests arrive
via shuttle bus. It’s busy; as Rancho La Puerta fills up 52 weeks a year. And I noted that the guests that week came from 27 different U.S. states, Canada and the District of Columbia. After displaying my credentials, I was
pointed in the direction of the administration building and walked up the road. What a set- ting! The buildings are all but lost among ma- ture oaks, shrubs and boulders. I was allowed to wander and quickly, willingly became lost in the enchanting grounds. On the slopes of Tecate Peak, called
Deborah Szekely.
Mount Kuchumaa by the indigenous tribes, the 75 guest casitas in several different villages are well interspersed with nature. The casitas are little Mexican Colonial homes each with fireplaces and private patios and garden shel- tered by foliage. Small pools and hot tubs are
Wysteria Lounge.
strategically placed. I walked past four tennis courts and a vol-
leyball court on my way to meet the fitness di- rector, whose comfortable office was anticlimactic after wandering through the grounds. At the south pool a workout session was underway and a fitness instructor was ca- joling her charges in aquatic exercises. The pool is surrounded by several commu-
nity buildings, including a health center com- plete with beauty salon and skin care center, several gyms and weight rooms, a small market, a men’s center, concierge’s office, lounge, and a library.
several gyms, an oval track bordered with rose bushes and grapevines rather than turf, ponds, marshes, statuary and trails. The ornate dining room reminded me of one I’d seen in a Spanish castle. The entire feeling of beauty and serenity at La Puerta left a lingering impression. To the guests who arrive at La Puerta each
week, the idyllic grounds are secondary to a regimen that will rejuvenate them and help them in their personal fitness attempts.
Backstory The Rancho La Puerta was established in 1940 by the Hungarian-born Professor Ed-
Another patio with a view of the mountains. The scent of
herbs and flowers Wandering the well-maintained paths of
La Puerta, I was most impressed with the ol- factory impression. The overwhelming scent of sage, herbs and flowers was more welcome than the pleasant and beautiful visual harmony of its setting with the hillside. Set free to poke my head into gyms and common buildings, I dis- covered small groups here and there with train- ers, practicing yoga, or deep breathing, or stretching, or engaged in more vigorous aero- bics.
The spa also houses another large pool, 62 SANCLEMENTEJOURNAL
mond Szekely and his 17-year-old Brooklyn- born bride Deborah. For $10.00 a month they rented an old one-room stable building in the middle of a vineyard called Rancho La Puerta and began to preach the philosophy of health- ful living. They originally called the enterprise The
Essene Science of Life and charged $17.50 a week for their followers to pitch their tents on the site and share in the west coast’s first or- ganic vegetable garden and the bounty of goat cheese and milk. Added to this was whole grain bread from wheat the Szekelys grew and ger- minated, and wild-sage honey. In the early years all the guests pitched in
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