It started with a donkey in a ditch.
Mexican born and Guelph raised Arturo Ruiz dreamed of owning a house by the beach. Specifically in Mazunte, a small town in southern Mexico, where he was staying with a friend.
He wanted to buy land there, but didn’t know where to begin – until a few years ago when he stumbled across a man whose donkey had fallen into a ditch.
“We pulled the donkey out of this hole, and he asked me what I was doing walking around his land,” Ruiz said.
When he expressed interest in owning land there, the man offered to sell him some for an affordable price.
Now, he and partner Theresa Kretsch have said goodbye to their Cardigan Street apartment to build their own permaculture paradise by the ocean.
“It was a crazy adventure to get here,” Ruiz said.
Kretsch is a textile artist and dance instructor originally from Germany. The pair spent the last two years, though, working in roofing.
Saving money in Canada was difficult because housing and food are so expensive.
“Canada (is) out of control. People… just can’t afford anything anymore,” she said.
“We had to work our asses off. We were working, without exaggerating, almost every single day for two years,” Ruiz said.
The house, though not finished yet, was built in the traditional palapa fashion with palm fronds and a thatched roof. The wood used to build it is from trees that fell during storms.
Ruiz met Theresa in Mexico when he was collecting the lumber, which needed to be dried out and cured. Once he was finished, a construction team took over to build the house while they worked in Guelph.
Now, they’ve taken over the project themselves to create a permaculture paradise for others to enjoy, and are documenting their journey with their dog, Nick, on social media.
“We’ve been adding to it little by little. It was a lot of work to do roofing in Canada, and it’s a lot of work to live here. But you just kind of choose what hard work you want to do, and this suits our life more,” he said.
During Mexico’s wet season, Ruiz said the land looks like a rain forest, incredibly dense with lush plants.
“Right now our place here is really basic,” Kretsch said. “We have a kitchen and a place where we can sleep and a washroom, but there’s not really a structure.”
The plan is to build a permaculture farm where they live sustainably, growing their own food. They also hope to build little huts along the hill and some tree houses to rent out, as well as platforms for people to camp on.
“It’s a mix of tourism, but more like adventure tourism, where people can also see the way we live and learn from it,” she said.
But first, they need to get a water system that works for at least the two of them.
“It’s really difficult to get water up here. If you wash your hands, you’re going to want to catch every single drop of water so you can give it to plants (afterward). You don’t use hard soap,” he said.
Right now they have a water tank connected to a line that gets turned on once a week, so their access to water is extremely limited.
They’ve launched a GoFundMe to help build their water system, which will also support six nearby families with water. Currently, any additional water is only available through rain or delivered by trucks.
They hope to develop a system to collect rainwater that will sustain the area all through the dry season.
It’s not just water: without easily accessible water or electricity, they have to think of everything, right down to how their compostable toilet will impact the land.
“It sounds a bit dreamy, but we’re learning to work with nature to make our life a little easier,” he said.
“It’s also a way of respecting nature,” Kretsch said. “You lose the connection to how precious the water is, because it’s always available.”
That’s part of the reason Ruiz was attracted to the place.
“A lot of the people that live around us live the same way,” he said. “We all have problems with water. We all have problems with electricity, because there are no power lines around here. It’s a very touristy town, but at the same time, there’s not a lot of infrastructure.”
A lot of their neighbours have solar panels and recycle “practically everything they use.”
“It makes a really close community,” he said.
“We lived in an apartment for two years and we didn’t really know our neighbours. I think we saw our next door neighbour come out of his house to pick up his Uber Eats from the hallway,” he said.
“We need each other, and that’s a nice thing, because you almost never feel alone. The people you know and the friends you make help you out a lot; you can’t really do this on your own.”