San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
MICHELE CONNOR calls her ranch "a hunting lodge where there's no hunting," 20 acres greened by fields of alfalfa and shared with six dogs, 10 horses, a dozen sheep and a couple of burros, not to mention the chickens, geese and peacocks. It's a scene that reminds Connor of childhood, when she would play with dolls and imagine an escape far from the city.
"I would make little corrals and play with little animals," Connor says. "That was my fantasy. And it has come true."
For anyone who has experienced Connor's Rancho Las Palmas, the place does play out like some sort of daydream. From a quarter-mile away, the hand-built retreat rises as a long, two-story arc of exposed adobe brick topped with a palapa roof, the hundreds of woven palm fronds hauled in from the faraway jungles of the Huastecan tribe.
This is a land of visionary builders, after all. Here, about 20 minutes outside the resort town of San Miguel de Allende, legend has it that the architect behind the landmark 1880s pseudo-Gothic church relied upon postcards of European cathedrals to design the facade and spires. Successive generations of builders, Mexican and foreign, have embarked on their projects with few permits and fewer inspections. Plans, if they exist at all, are just a jumping-off point.
It helps that the local albaniles (masons) are legendary for their ability to create just about anything: the Gaudi-esque, the neo-Colonial, even riffs of Mexican master Luis Barragan.
For former Angelenos such as Connor who have fallen in love with the land -- an estimated 11,000 Americans have relocated here -- it also helps to have a creative vision and a sense for adventure.
"We didn't have an architect," says Connor, an artist who with then-husband Joseph Smith set out to build Rancho Las Palmas in the mid-'90s. "Joseph drew a line in the sand and said, 'This is where the main house will be.' "
The house, called the "main salon," turned out to be the biggest of seven buildings the couple eventually constructed -- and probably the only palapa building of its size for hundreds of miles. Smith, a rare-plant collector and exporter, had seen the Huastecan-style palapas on his trips into the jungles of neighboring San Luis Potosi state.
"We had this group of five men come with palms cut right after the full moon," Connor says. "They had all the transportation permisos lined up weeks in advance so they could rush here and put them on when they were still green, so they would dry on the roof. Joseph loved palapas. To Mexicans it evokes the good life."
