Where Water Meets the Land

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The price of real estate in Mexico varies as radically as it does in any country. The Dannuccis paid $35,000 for their 100-acre potrero, but before settling in the Puerto Vallerta area, they found rural real estate for $200 an acre and less, and an ejido in the mountains near Mazatlan offered them a simple house with land for $2,000. As you might imagine, property near the ocean or urban areas or resorts will be more expensive. Thankfully, annual property taxes arc very low.

DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

What happens when one partner, but not the other, has a dream to retreat farther from civilization into the rural countryside of a foreign land, without electricity or telephone, the closest village of any consequence over an hour away by dirt road?

"I came here because of Steve, period," says Camille. "I was a wreck. I didn't know which way was up. Suddenly, I was transported from New Mexico to sea level." She regrets they didn't have a game plan to experiment with living in Mexico for a fixed period of time before deciding whether to purchase. "I've always lived in a place, [whether] in the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico ...or a rural community in northern California, because I loved it." Having married for the first time in her 40s, the independent woman who had been a caregiver and advocate for the critically ill found herself living in a tropical setting for love of a man, not a place. "I left everything behind - work, family, income, gorgeous land I thought I'd live on until the day I died."

Cultural differences compounded her distress. On occasion, during sunrise walks on the beach, Camille encountered a man on horseback, his saddlebags bulging with sea turtle eggs. He patrolled the beach at night, she learned, waiting for the endangered and protected turtles to wing their way through the sand and lay eggs. Also, superstition abounds: Some campesinos attribute birth deformities and other anomalies to eclipses; others believe the Earth is flat. Moreover, animals are mistreated. "I've seen horses and goats tied up all day or beaten," says Camille.

Adding even more stress was the task of rendering a homestead from a tangle of vegetation. They whacked away the jungle and built contoured rock garden hells. They planted coconut palms, papayas, pineapples and bananas and rimmed the property with a New Mexico-style coyote fence, training crimson bougainvillea to grow along and over the enclosure as a living harrier that would replace the posts as they rotted.

Why did Camille stick it out? "I'm always going for ultimate - what my soul longs for in its own evolution," she explains. "1 would check in, and it was always about staying and weathering the fierce, ferocious storm without any support." As she went through it, Camille says, "I felt like a phoenix rising." Today, she is studying Spanish at home, tutoring campesinos in English and gardening. Working with people is important to her. "I know something more is going to Surface," she says.

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