Rancho La Puerta: Destination Spa
Godmother of Wellness: Deborah Szekely
By R. Couri Hay
The original story appeared in the July 4 issue of Social Life Magazine. Click here to view
Mother of The Modern Spa Movement
Residences at Rancho La Puerta
The latest innovation could not be timelier. The Residences at Rancho La Puerta, a community of 108 private homes set amid the resort’s 4,000 pristine acres in Tecate, Mexico is only an hour from San Diego. Nestled beside a vineyard and a pond, boasting spectacular mountain views, the village will be separate from the Ranch, yet connected, with access to all the wellness amenities. The two, three, and four-bedroom homes will range from approximately 2,000 to 4,300 square feet, and the first ten residences will be ready in early 2022. Prices range from $725-$1015 a night. Deborah is thrilled to be able to bring private residences to the property. “People have asked for years and years, saying that they would like to retire here,” she says, “and their community will consist of people with common goals and common thoughts coming together”
Integrative Health & Medicine Center
The Residences will also have a state-of-the-art Integrative Health and Medicine Center specializing in personalized, predictive, and proactive interventions to prevent and treat chronic disease. This holistic model not only gets to the underlying cause of health issues but uses a functional and natural medical approach to implement personalized treatment protocols. Each offering blends the best of Western medicine with the wisdom of all global healing traditions. Planned Treatments will include Stem Cell Therapies, personalized IV Nutrients, High dose Vitamin C infusions, Mistletoe Therapy, and more.
The Spa Experience
Rancho, as insiders call it, began as a rustic wellness retreat, $17.50 a week, and bring your tent. The full spa experience— a plethora of exercise classes, include Pilates, stretch, Tai chi, Aerial Yoga to name but a few. Other therapies including massages, reflexology, water therapy, facials, manicures, and pedicures—was not always a part of Rancho la Puerta’s program. “For example, we never offered massage at the Ranch until I started [California spa] the Golden Door, 18 years after the first guests arrived at Rancho la Puerta,” says Deborah. One of the first treatments during the spa’s early days was an herbal wrap, created out of necessity. “Without it many of the guests, because they never exercised at home, were so stiff they literally crawled out of their beds after their first day of hiking and exercise at the Ranch,” Szekely says, laughing. “Herbal wraps were the answer. The heat relaxed the muscles.”
Happier & More Energetic
Later, the Szekelys hired experts to begin programs in skincare at Rancho la Puerta, and they were an immediate hit. “Guests had worked hard all day, and they looked forward to having the soothing attention of facials and massages.” Today, the spa has health centers for both women and men, and Szekely says they are as important a part of each guest’s stay as the hikes, exercise classes, cooking school, and other programs. “We emphasize balance,” she says. “Long ago, I said, “To me, it never has been enough that my spas simply make you better looking. I believe people can be happier and more energetic, and altogether more fulfilled human beings.” The number of spa treatments offered has quadrupled over the past decade, and there is an experienced staff of 75, many of them long-term employees.
Four-tier Healing process
Cleansing: Spa treatments consist of four types, cleansing, restoring, relaxing, and energizing. Cleansing involves getting rid of toxins in the body, and treatments include a detox massage and the original herbal wrap, the Ranch’s signature treatment, which purifies and eliminates toxins. Fresh plants and herbs like eucalyptus, rosemary, or sage grown in the Ranch’s organic garden, or that grow wild in the nearby mountains, are used in treatments. The 30-minute wrap is often combined with a 20-minute massage, which opens up your pores and allows moisturizers to seep into your skin. Rancho’s experts employ a method of cupping using plastic suction cups instead of glass, which don’t leave those horrid red marks on your skin.
Restoring might include a rosemary loofah salt glow, which starts with a loofah glove that helps remove dead skin cells, followed by a scrub, then a shower to wash that off, and ending with a massage. This treatment renews your skin, opening the pores and removing dead skin, leaving your body feeling silky smooth.
Relaxing involves treatments like a head-to-toe candle oil massage, a combination of body treatments using warm oil from a candle poured onto your skin.
Energizing entails healing therapies that activate and strengthen, like reflexology on your hands and feet, and energy balance, a fundamental holistic philosophy including a somatic experience that relieves stress, and craniosacral therapy, acupuncture, and reiki, which remove energy blocks and allow healing energy to flow and harmonize the whole body.
Spa & Fitness Concierges
Rancho la Puerta’s spa offers over 55 treatments, and choosing among so many options may seem overwhelming, but stay calm. There are concierges and other experts on staff to help you figure out what works for you. You are free to consult with experts, ask questions and revise your program at any time during your visit. What you do on any day at the Ranch is entirely up to you, and depends upon what interests you, but most guests enjoy a morning hike followed by breakfast, and then perhaps a meditation class or a visit to the gym. And you can decide when to incorporate spa treatments throughout your day. Some people prefer to take a few classes in the morning, followed by a spa treatment, and then relax for the rest of the afternoon.
And while many guests want to exercise, you don’t need to be huffing and puffing at Rancho La Puerta, unless you want to – you may simply choose to relax and be pampered with therapies like moisturizing scalp treatments for the hair. These treatments are also popular with men.
Visible Results in One Week
You can actually see the results after a week at the Ranch. Photos are taken when you arrive, and at the end of the visit your skin will look different, healthy and glowing, due to the nourishing diet from their organic farm, healing body treatments and exercise routines during the stay.
Heavenly Villas
Rancho accommodations include seveal “Villas Cielo”, or “Heavenly” villas, secluded private residences that offer a den that can be converted into a private gym or an office, with WiFi. You can also receive private spa treatments. These villas were added in recent years as a bow to the modern world for guests who are unable to completely unplug from daily life for a week. At a villa, you get the full resort experience, but you can also work as much as needed.
Natural Organic Dining
Chef Reyna Venegas
Executive Chef Reyna Venegas is also local, raised in Baja California, and at the beginning of her career worked as a hostess at Rancho’s Dining Hall. She later traveled to Lyon, France, to intern at a two-Michelin star restaurant under chef Philippe Gauvreau, and after graduating from the Culinary Art School in Tijuana earned a scholarship and was a pastry major in Monte-Carlo. Venegas honed her skills at acclaimed restaurants and eventually came full circle, back to Rancho La Puerta where she combines French techniques with local ingredients for delicious, healthy meals.
Cooking Classes at La Cocina Que Canta
Cooking classes are offered at La Cocina que Canta – “the kitchen that sings” – which is set in the resort’s six-acre organic garden. Chef Venegas teaches classes, as do world-renowned visiting chefs and cookbook authors who regularly come to offer lessons. The “singing kitchen” is a reference to the sensory experience, the aromas, colors, and sounds, and the energy of a lively group of people cooking together with just-picked ingredients. It all comes together in an explosion of taste – you dine on the meal you have just created.
State of Mind: Healthy Way of Life
Dubbed the “Godmother of Wellness,” by the media, Deborah calls herself a health nut. “To me, that’s a favorable term,” says the nearly 100-year-old wellness warrior. The most important key to leading a healthy life, Deborah believes, is a state of mind. “It’s more than just positivity, people should enjoy what they do,” she says. “Whatever they work at should be a joy or pleasure, not work,” Deborah says. “Delight in the little things in nature and life. I think it’s hard to be truly healthy without that. I think the psychological aspects are very important, and that’s why the ranch is so successful because there’s a spirit here and that spirit is so important.” These are the basic tenets with which she started Rancho la Puerta in the forties, and they still are today, although the resort has evolved from a barebones summer camp to a full-fledged luxury spa resort with every conceivable amenity in the foothills of the sacred Kuuchamaa Peak.
World War II Summer Camp to Luxury Spa
The original no-frills camp had its origins in World War II, when Szekely and her husband, a native of Hungary, were living in southern California, and because of his refusal to return to Europe to serve in the military, an order was issued for his arrest as a deserter. “We got a letter from U.S. Immigration and Naturalization saying that if he was found in our country on June 1st, 1940, he would be arrested and shipped back to his country. So, we went to Mexico.” Her husband, a renowned scholar, had planned to teach a summer school session in Oslo. “We knew we would have to hold the summer school because we were counting on the money from the students, and they had already signed up. So, we just wrote them and said the summer school instead of being in Oslo is going to be in Tecate. And we had to make it cheap because they had to bring their tents.”
Hollywood elite
What they started as a summer health camp was so successful that several participants wanted to come back and spend the winter, because of the perfect weather. Soon, Rancho La Puerta became popular with Hollywood stars. “Burt Lancaster practically lived here between pictures,” Deborah says. “We built exercise bars for him; he came that often. He designed them and we built them.” The movie star worked out on those bars every morning. Bill Holden was also a regular, and Kim Novak and Barbra Streisand visited
Pillars of Tecate
The Szekelys rented the land for many years before buying some, and gradually added more and more. “We acquired a lot of land because little old ladies would come and say, ‘My daughter married and lives in Los Angeles and we want to move there, won’t you buy our land?’” says Deborah. Although the locals originally thought the spa folks were somewhat odd, eventually several young women in town sought jobs at the Ranch, and today the resort is one of Tecate’s largest employers. “So naturally we contribute to the community,” Szekely says. A few years ago, when a serious fire destroyed over 100 houses in town, they reached out to spa guests and raised over $100,000 in aid within a week. They help to educate Tecate’s children on the environment and sustainability and offer summer classes at the resort’s organic garden. They built the first public park in Tecate and bought the town’s first school bus. The children had to walk to school and often skipped classes when the weather was inclement. Deborah decided to buy a bus to bring her workers to work in the mornings, and on the way, it also picks up the kids and takes them to school. “It’s been sort of a double blessing,” she laughs. “The ranch has a very long, blessed history,” she says, “and I really do believe that doing good is rewarding, and we’ve been beautifully rewarded.
Meant to Be Here
“I had no dreams for the ranch,” Deborah says, adding that once the war ended, they expected to move to England. “We had no intention of staying. So – and I say this all the time – we were meant to be here. It was nothing that we planned, created, plotted, none of that.” Local lore held that Kuuchamaa was a sacred mountain. “Kuuchama was a sacred mountain to the Native Americans for generations,” she says. “And I do believe that the mountain has had a great influence on us. And you can believe, take it or leave it, I took it and kept it.” Today, Deborah’s husband is buried on the mountain, as is her late son, Alexander. “That’s their home,” she says firmly. “We have a family cemetery. I’ll be buried there too eventually. No rush.”
Sarah Livia Szekely Brightwood
Deborah’s daughter, landscape architect Sarah Livia Szekely Brightwood who created the Rancho’ world class gardens now runs the resort full time. But “mother “is still at the ranch at least once a week. She says her daughter is doing a terrific job. “Sarah is gifted, and I think in some ways it reflects her personality,” says Deborah. “She is very spiritual. She’s very musical. She’s an artist, and I think most of the classes reflect more of her.”
A Paradise
But there are other forces at work than just human endeavor, she insists. “I know that we’re here because we were meant to be here. I believe that. And the reason it’s so successful is that we’re on the path that we’re supposed to be on.” Recently, Deborah roamed around the entire ranch, into every nook and cranny. “If you were trying to describe – I’m not kidding – paradise, I don’t think a paradise could be much lovelier, honestly.”
800-443-7565