Rancho la Puerta Sunday Update – Holy Hula Hoops!

Here’s my first update from the tranquil Rancho la Puerta, Mexico, where I’ve been welcomed along with 17 other female bloggers to experience the girlfriend getaway of a lifetime.  First, I need to thank fellow blogger Julie Gallaher and Roma Maxwell from the spa who organized (and graciously gifted) the trip to us. 

I made it to Mexico with little problem. Getting upgraded to First Class on the plane ride helped, but the flight is only two and a half hours from Vancouver and I didn’t want to get off the plane.  It’s not often I get to enjoy first class service on a plane so I wanted to enjoy every single second of it!

But they finally shooed me off the plane in San Diego and the Rancho la Puerta staff had a nice new charter bus ready and waiting along with helpful men to take our luggage off our hands.  The drive to the Mexico border wasn’t long, although it might have just seemed short because the man who sat beside me practically grew up on the ranch and was coming back after five years of being away.  It was great to hear his perspective on the ranch and it’s activities.  More importantly, he also gave me the dirt on where to find diet coke if I go crazy and need it (so far, I haven’t).

The view from the cottage

Although there is no calorie counting here, the food is whole, organic and mostly grown right on their own farm.  It is fresh, light and amazing.  The staff are great and soooo accomodating if we want more (I do!) or have dietary restrictions (I don’t). One thing I’ve learned already is that I really need to learn how to cook like this. Who knew that healthy food could be this good.  Luckily, we’re getting a lesson before we go.

The ranch is quite big and it is a walk of a few minutes to get from building to building. This is a good thing.  The ranch was designed to encourage walking and being outdoors and my cottage happens to be the very last one on the path.  

We’ve been supplied with pedometers to measure our steps and I’ve already logged over 9000 steps, even though we sat in a meeting for 3 hours today and I also spent an hour having the most amazing hot stone massage. 

Being in the last cottage means we have great privacy (although it is private everywhere) and also that we have an unobstructed view of the mountains from our patio.  It’s well worth the walk.

Blogger and figure-competitor Gina Andrews shows me how it's done!

While I didn’t get up early enough to experience any of the wonderful 6am mountain hikes (no surprise there!), I did shadow figure-competitor Gina Andrews as she worked out. She was kind enough to let me photograph her and I’ll be posting about our workout and what she does to train for her bodybuilding competition which takes place in July.

In the afternoon, a handful of us – along with a large group of other ranch visitors – took part in a hula hooping class taught by talented hoopster and instructor Hazel.  It was a ton of fun ducking all the stray hula hoops flying around and at the end she gave us a demonstration of the sort of beautiful dancing-slash-cardio workout you can get from just using a hula hoop.  You know, when we learn how to keep them from flying away and beaning people.

Check out this video of Hazel hooping. I didn’t take it, it’s from a while ago, but it is very similar to the dance she showed us.   Somehow she makes hula hooping look elegant and sensual. I was neither, but I did have a great time. 

Tomorrow we have a striptease lesson. Can’t wait!

Until then,

Hasta la vista

Melanie