Slow Baja - San Juanico Surf Society Jeffrey Westman On Building Community And A Danish-Inspired Dream Retreat

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

Jeffrey Westman arrived in San Juanico as a 19-year-old on a surf trip and fell in love with it. The teen dreamed of finding a surf shack and staying forever. Not surprisingly, college and a career won out, but the dream stayed with him. Thirty years later, he has built the San Juanico Surf Society, a danish infused, Mexican-modern resort for friends and family. Located on a bluff above "Panga Beach," the SJ Surf Society is a gleaming beacon of clean lines, industrial beauty, and humble hospitality. After his career as a photographer and printer led him to Scandanavia, Westman worked his way into a new thing called the internet. He ran Norway, Sweden, and Denmark for Yahoo. His timely exit allowed him the resources to try his hand as a potato farmer in Northern Sweden. Not something that one usually says during a conversation about building a health and wellness retreat in Baja. His return to the San Francisco Bay Area allowed him to combine his business acumen and his love of farming into a career in the non-profit sector, helping organic farmers thrive. In the process, he converted his Sebastopol farm into a retreat property and found that he enjoyed providing hospitality and creating community through being an Airbnb host. Westman says he "drew the short straw and had to look after his mother, who had retired to Baja Sur." A property in Loreto followed as Westman built his Airbnb portfolio. Old memories of that surf trip to San Juanico led him across the peninsula, and the hunt for the next project began. In this conversation, we hear the backstory of building a dream property in Baja. We can't wait to return to the SJ Surf Society and chill out in style. The SJ Surf Society is Slow Baja approved! Follow SJ Surf Society on Instagram here Follow SJ Surf Society on Facebook  here Check out the SJ Surf Society website here

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down, my favorite tequila. Hey, I want to tell you about your new must-have accessory for your next Baja trip. Benchmark Maps has released a beautiful, beautiful Baja California. Road and Recreation Atlas. It's a 72-page large format book of detailed maps and recreation

guides that makes the perfect planning tool for exploring Baja. Pick yours up at Benchmarkmaps.com. Hey, it's Michael Emory in Slow Baja, and I'm in a beautiful San Juanico, Baja, California, and I'm with Jeffrey Westman, who is down here building a beautiful surf dream. I guess that's what I'd call it, and you've just finished telling me it was going to be surf, yoga, wellness, how does this live in your mind um so well partly it lives in my mind as a way for me to get to spend more time in bahia california i don't know anything about that so um it grew out of me actually arriving here in the middle of the night um you know 30 something years ago and waking up as a

19 year old on the edge of the cliff at the first point look or second point and realizing it was the most amazing wave I'd ever seen in my entire life, jumped out of bed and surfed until I couldn't surf anymore. And since that day, I've wanted to be here. I've wanted to own property here and I wanted to do something. And at this stage in my life, you know, just building a house and having a place to come hang out isn't terribly realistic as a dad and a husband and trying to put life together. But if I could turn it into a hospitality business, it made a lot more sense to be able to exert the energy and the investment to make this happen. So, you know, for me right now, it's a big dream coming true.

And I kind of slipped into pseudo-hospitality business through Airbnb and doing Airbnbs over in Laredo and doing Airbnbs in Sonoma County. And this is the next step, taking it beyond Airbnb and being more of a retreat center in a place to bring groups for very curated experience. during very specific times. Yeah, once all that stuff happens again. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be awesome when people can get together with other humans again. Yeah, exactly.

Share a meal be in close proximity, exactly. Well, your vision here looks to me like it's about 89, 90% realized. It's the landscaping's got a little work. You're building a spectacular, you know, 20-foot-long table in the, what would you call that? Your patio with the shower. We're on the outdoor kitchen area. It's stunning. Yeah, under Bloppa.

And we're straightaway views right over the fisherman's beach here. Yeah. You've got un-expected. Yeah, Ponga Beach is called. Yeah, we can literally watch the fresh fish come in and run down and grab them off the boat and bring them up and eat them while they're still flopping. Well, tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get here?

You said he came as a 19-year-old and surf trip. What happened after that, and how did you circle all the way back here? After that, I got out of time. college, worked as a photographer and in the media world for many years. And you were at Brooks and Santa Barbara. Went to school at Brooks and Santa Barbara. Legendary school for photographers to really learn how to take pictures beautifully and technically soundly as well as learn how to some little something about business is the way

I understood it. Yeah, yeah. The business part I probably picked up more through my family. I had two parents who were entrepreneurs. So I didn't know that there was, you were really supposed to get a job. I just thought you were supposed to acquire a skill and go out and sell it. That's how you made a living. So that's pretty much what I've done my whole life.

Cycled through the media business, you know, from photographer to video, to film production, and to internet. You've got to talk with your hands, man. If I'm going to take a picture of me. Oh, okay. You've got to be talking with your hands. All right. So went through Brooks, got out, you know, did architectural photography, did real estate photography, morphed into doing more video stuff, found my way towards film. and actually did a whole long stint of printing.

I moved to Sweden as a 30-year-old or 29-year-old and was in the printing business for a while, which then led me into other kinds of media, which eventually got me to the Internet, which was new and hot. Yeah, and I was the one American in this big media concern, and they go, oh, well, you speak English better than everybody else, so why don't you go to Silicon Valley and find out what we should be doing?

We want to be an Internet company. And so, okay, vague instructions, but that connected us to Yahoo. I built a relationship there. At some point, we were about to do a deal with Yahoo, and Yahoo decided instead they just wanted to hire me and not do a joint venture with another company. So I moved over, was running Yahoo and Norway, Sweden, and Denmark for a good, I don't know, a couple, three years, got it off the ground. We launched it.

had the most traffic of any site. This is back when Yonah was still a thing. And, you know, eventually moved on from that, did well enough with that that I could take some time, have a new baby. I had one son at that point already and bought a farm in the north of Sweden and moved up there and became a potato farmer. And kind of went back to what my roots were, which was my grandparents were, you know, substance farmers in the Bay Area. And I always loved being out in the dirt with grandma so I kind of had the stream of going back to the dirt until about two, three years into it, and I realized I wasn't a really good farmer. It was a lot of work and hard to make any money.

Yeah, yeah, and I gave it my best and had a lot of fun, you know, dragging my little boys around and sitting on tractors. But, yeah, it was at some point I was like, yeah, maybe I should do something more valuable with my time. And what did that lead to? That led us back to the Bay Area, where I got involved with. some farming non-profits and realized my skills as a business person and as a leader were far more valuable working with Marin Organic which I ran for a number of years and California

Farm Link where I was on the board and board president for gosh I don't know probably 12 years putting young farmers young talented farmers who were cut out for the job that I wasn't finding them land and helping and mentor them along worked with a lot of really iconic famous, you know, people like Warren Weber at Starroot Farms and had a really, really fun time, had a career that I could drag my kids around to farms and do gleaning to help, you know, people who were in need and hungry to deliver that food. You know, the best, I think one of the best feelings I've ever had in my life is pulling up to the food bank and with two or three of my boys in the truck

and unloading 1,000 pounds of fresh produce, the stuff you got at Zuni Cafe and, you know, I mean, the same level that all the star chefs in San Francisco were using, we were handing to moms and kids who couldn't afford to eat. Amazing.

And having my, you know, my boys on the back of the truck unloading bags of vegetables was, you know, it was... Amazing. Yeah, yeah, it was epic. So, yeah, but I did that for a long time, somewhere in there, my little farm morphed into an Airbnb, and I started getting introduced to the hospitality industry and away, not just through the food side, but also through hosting. And I just fell in love with it. I thought it was like, this is what I really want to do.

So set up a rental in Laredo just to help me spend more time in Mexico. Yeah, and your mom's there, right? Yeah, my mom has a beautiful place there. And you drew the straw that was going to have to come down and look after mom? Exactly. Yeah. That's what I heard on a baseball diamond in San Francisco. That's the story I heard.

Yeah, that's pretty correct. So anyway, we got that going. And then I found this property over here and decided to build something. And let's give it a shot and see what we can do on the West Coast. As much as I love the Sea of Cortez and being on the East Coast of the Bahia Peninsula, the West Coast to me is still something very, very special. you know, I'd still probably rather spend my days here. I just love the fresh air and the smell of the Pacific and the feel of the Pacific.

It's just in my blood. You've got a spectacular place going and tell me about what it was like when you found it and how that story played out. And how long did you look before you said this is the one? So I pretty early on, and as a matter of fact, I can track it back to being a 19-year-old on the point over there looking across this way. And realizing this area that they call Panga Beach, because all the fishermen have their boats, they're called Pongas, down on the beach here, there was just something about it. It just caught my attention.

There's a cemetery here. Cemetery has always been on this side of the village. And just the way the bay wraps around, and I've always been one. I don't like to be in the thick of the action. I don't want to be. There's an area called Gringo Hill, where all the Gringos from San Diego came down in the 70s and all built right. up next to each other and created a really nice little community. But it's not how I want to be.

You know, I've always sort of wanted to be a little more off the beaten path. So even as a 19-year-old, I looked over here and went, wow, I wished I could just figure out how to, you know, set up a tent and be able to hang out over there and just spend my time hanging out here. So anyway, I rediscovered this place once we got, we're frequenting Laredo again on a regular basis and started looking at lots. over here in this area, kind of behind me, and had pretty much settled on two of them and was making offers on them and seemed like those were gonna go through. And then I was looking at one of them.

One day I was actually out here stomping around. And the guy who owned this piece of property happened to be here. They called him Hawaii Tom. And Hawaii Tom stuck his head out through the gate and asked me in Spanish who I was and what I was doing. And I replied to him in Spanish, and then I said, do you know, you wanna speak Spanish?

It was pretty clear that wasn't his first language. So we switched over to English. And he showed me around, showed me his little bodega where we're sitting now, which was just packed shoulder high with stuff. And he had an airstream out here that he spent all his time living in. And we almost on the spot settled on a... He told me what... He mentioned to me, said, oh, don't buy the lot across the street.

I think I'm ready. I've been coming here for 15 years. I come here every August and September. And I'm done. I want to go travel. other places. So I said, okay, you know, what do you want? He told me his price, and I said, okay, I'll buy it from you. And it took us about another three or four months to finally do the deal. But, yeah, we acquired the property and by Easter of that year and got down here and

started working on it. So it's been, you know, it's been an amazingly fun project to work on, to converting this bodega into this living space, adding a much larger living space above. bringing in shipping containers that we're turning into guest rooms, and then eventually acquiring the lot below that's down almost on beach level, that we're just going to develop. We put in some septic systems now and going to do glamping down there. So I have a bunch of big 16-foot diameter canvas tents. We'll set up down there.

We'll be able to put another 12 beds down there. And looking forward to being able to start welcoming people when people are ready to travel again. It's going to be like munkas of San Juanico. Exactly, yeah. That's actually not. A little stuff scattered here and there. Through the hills. Yeah.

And there's a place in Big Surr called Deep Jens, Big Sur Lodge. And that's actually been one of the inspirations. Amazing. As has Chilli Chilo down in Lavantana. Okay. They did the whole glamping thing and they've done it really nicely. And so you're sort of splitting time now between Europe still? You've moved your family recently.

Was that COVID-related that you decided to move there? I guess that was. I guess that was kind of the final catalyst. Okay. My wife's Danish. Again, I spent 13 years of my life living in Scandinavia earlier and then 17 back in California. And I think all of our boys decided they wanted to move back to Europe. So we were feeling the pull that we want to be closer to them.

My wife, I think, was ready to go home. She wanted to go exercise her craft as a Waldorf kindergarten teacher. in her own language. She's been doing it for a long time in English and felt like it would be nice to have some time before retirement hits to do it over there. And I think, yeah, we probably thought it was going to be in another two or three years

that we'd pull the trigger on that. COVID and all the craziness that's just been erupting, you know, the, you know, everything from Q&on to whatever. I think we just felt really alienated. And we were like, you know, is this really where we want to spend our time and our money and our energy? Or is it time to go to someplace else? Well, you know, it's interesting when you do have a little opportunities and funding,

you can make choices and figure out where you want to be. We're very privileged and very lucky that way, that we have access to another country. Not everybody can just pick up and move to Denmark or something. Right. And it obviously makes sense with your wife being from there. So explain how you get. from home now in Denmark to San Juanico.

Explain that process. Are you net jetting yet? No, it almost feels like it because SAS, which I've been critical of in the past, because I just felt like they were a little grumpy and not real service-minded, has stepped up to the occasion and just become, I think, one of the best airlines ever. Jets are beautiful. the people are friendly, maybe because they're real appreciative that there's all of 30 of us on a plane that should have 300. So, you know, I go back and forth every month, and I have a whole road to myself.

I can lay down, sleep the entire flight. It's eight and a half hours coming. I fly from Copenhagen to San Francisco, make my way up to Sebastopol where we're in the process of selling our house, but I still have a little farm there. And, you know, decompressed for a couple days there, and then I jump in the trial. and drive down here. So the trips have been incredibly easy because nobody's on the plane and they switch out all the air on the plane every three minutes.

And it's amazing how much better you feel when you get off a long flight when you actually have been breathing good, clean, real air the whole time and not recycled air. And on that drive down, you're doing one shot, but you don't have to like plan on the L.A. traffic anymore. I mean, there is some. Well, you know, I could have... But there's not the crushing traffic that there used to be. that you had to plan your whole day around.

True. And I, though, we only did a couple runs through Tijuana and down Highway 1 before we were really sick of it. And even before Highway 5 was finished and there was still a lot of dirt road, we started going over to Calexico. So we'll drive from the Bay Area to Calexico,

sleep, get up at 435 in the morning, cross the border in May Calee, and then on Highway 5, which today is like a super highway. Yeah, I almost don't want to say. I don't want other people to know. Exactly. Secret.

Secret. Yeah. So we, so literally from crossing at 5 in the morning, at 5.30 in the evening, I'm in Laredo Bay, sitting down, getting my first margarita at the resort. And it's pretty much exactly a 12-hour drive every time. So in 12 hours, you know, after an 11-hour flight, it's really not that big a deal. So, and it's a beautiful drive. Just, you know, I can't, I enjoy it immensely. Yeah, and five really has changed.

Yeah, as soon as... The secret will probably get out, but it really has changed. Oh, it's beautiful. Well, I mean, the good part is there's not a whole lot of development in between. So, you know, it's not like it is with Highway 1. We're getting through all the farm towns south of Vincenada. They just keep growing and getting, you know, bigger and bigger and more congested. Topes and what have you.

Yeah, exactly. Getting through all the Driscolls, big farmlands. So you're here. We've gone from Loretto, which you can talk about if you'd like. Your Airbnb there and whatnot, your place. But tell me about you've bought the place. We've covered that. Hawaii Gym, is that his name?

Hawaii Tom. Hawaii Tom, excuse me. You know I'm bad with names. We've already covered that. Hawaii Tom, you've bought the place. It's got a packed airstream and a single, what is this, 12 by 12 or something? Yeah, 10 by 12.

It was officially in Mexico, it was a bodega. Okay. So it wasn't considered a living space. It was, you know, a storage space. And he stored a lot in there. He was had a packed right to the top. All right. So you went through cleaning that out,

and then you blew out half the wall and got to see the view, which is stunning, right over the beach, put in some big glass and steel doors, and got down a stunning sulteotile, and it's a little white Danish aesthetic here. You've got some very clean lines going.

Yep. I keep getting accused of that, of bringing Scandinavian style to Mexico. It's very clean. I've noticed some, I slept under a beautiful IKEA down comforter last night, which was very, it was lovely. Hopefully it was cozy. Yeah, the beds are great.

The, you know, the accommodations are great. We've got all hand upstairs anyways in our quarters. It's all handmade cement, countertops and sinks and beautiful, straight up rustic pipes. Not rustic pipes, but copper pipes. Yeah, it could expose copper. Industrial. It's very industrial and clean and straight and a beautiful shower. And so how did you get going on that?

What's it like? I know everybody talks God and Mr. Gomez, the famous, you know, how you get stuff done. You've got it right there, exactly. Exactly. So, I mean, did you have a God and Mr. Gomez experience here? Was it a little? You know, no, I actually kind of had a vision of what I wanted to do, whether it was here or somewhere else. I've been looking at some properties in La Paz and have some ideas, you know, being inspired by some places I've seen in Italy and some places I've seen in Tulum and in the Yucatan and this kind of, And in Mexico City, Guadalajara as well, you know, this Mexican modern, a really clean contemporary style that keeps the flavor of Mexico, but doesn't have to take it over the top, you know, that all the tiles don't have to be bright blue and green, which, you know, has its place and it's great, and a lot of people love it. It's just not my thing. And I envision a lot of our guests are going to be Scandinavian. The fact that I live there half of my time, I'll be. marketing heavily. It's a group, particularly the 20-30-somethings, that travel extensively, and that's a really, really important part of their existence. So I wanted to make something

that they'd feel comfortable with, you know, that they would feel stylish and feel hip and cool, and they'd, you know, they'd look at it online and automatically feel kind of drawn to it because there's some familiarity, yet it's still in this environment that's very different and very exotic for them. And it's just my style. You know, I like clean, simple. I like raw materials. You'll see all over, you know, just big eye beams and steel that hold the place up and hold up the palapa. You know, I like, I like the honesty of the concrete and the copper and the copper is going to, you know, turn green over time. It's already starting to really oxidize. And I just, you know, there's, it's alive somehow. It has a, you know where it, what it is and where it came from. And if this room doesn't have it,

but the rest of this building has something they call yeso, and it's kind of a real fine plaster that they put on by hand. So when you stand and look down the wall, it has this beautiful patina and this nice texture. And sitting here in this windy, dusty place, the patina is, it's just going to get more beautiful over time because it'll, the dust sticks and it kind of goes in. And, you know, so it'll develop this kind of modern Adobe feel. So that's, you know, that was, you know, my sort of overriding philosophy is like, let the materials speak for themselves. Don't try to cover everything up. You know, there's probably a lot of walls.

I would have probably left exposed cinder block except for their, the preciseness and the quality of the placement of the cinder blocks isn't always that beautiful. You can say would have made me crazy every time I came here. looked at those. Yeah. So, yeah, in the end, I was like, yeah, let's, let's yeso over it, and it'll be fine. All right. Well, explain, you've got a couple of shipping containers, and one of them is camelievered over the other, and so you've got some steel work that's been done, and I'm assuming you had a crane in here for a little lift, and so walk me through getting that done here. You've got an American contractor who's a resident here who does a lot of doing. Yeah, for 25 years. Yeah, so he's got to have a lot of those connections, but walk me through that. Well, so that was

actually I knew right from the game as a matter of fact in the beginning I wasn't even going to build the upper floor on this I was going to leave this bodega as a little studio and just plop containers all over the property until I started to realize how hard it was to get containers around here the first two containers I bought from a guy in La Paz they never arrived and he disappeared so I ended up buying two containers that I stole tone on I have a part-toe partner in this, Andreas, who's Mexican, who lives in Constitution, and he was trying to help me sort of retrieve those containers. And in the process, he found a couple containers standing

out in the field somewhere. And he figured out who it was and turned him over to me, and I was able to go in and buy him relatively inexpensively because the guy just wanted him off his property. And lo and behold, he's the guy who also owned the crane in town. So he was able to load him up on a big flatbed truck and drive him up here and drop him in place. After we did, did a fair bit of work on him standing in a field down in Constitution, did all the interior framing, did the insulation and all the electrical, and then sheet rocked them once they got up here. So it started off on a very bumpy path, getting ripped off essentially for two containers.

I'm just, it's fate, you know. I'm trying not to put a negative spin on it. And then, but then, you know, these next two, the guy who sold him to me, this guy won, world sweetest guy, just couldn't ask for a nicer, nicer human being. And then the 40-foot container that's set in the side of the hill down here, when that one popped up in his world, he called me immediately. I said, look, I got a 40-footer. I'll give it to you at a great price.

So I bought it from him immediately. He packed it up and brought it up here. and dropped it into the side of this hill for me, which was a pretty major feat. Did it on a Sunday. Came his son as the crane operator and his grandkids were with so they could go to the beach

and it was, it was awesome. It was like a whole family affair. It was like, it was what made, you know, some way it was almost like getting ripped off by the first guy, made me meet this guy Juan, that then turned the rest of this into such a positive energy. So, yeah, no, it's been,

it's actually been, the story behind it, the containers are awesome. But now knowing one who can, if there's anything I need in Constitution that has to do with construction, steel, whatever, I call him first, he's got it all dialed in. He's become a friend and a really, really key resource. And how's your Spanish? Medium. Okay.

But you're getting by with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I speak Swedish fluently pretty much as good as I speak English. I speak Norwegian relatively well. I understand Danish just fine. So I know actually what it's like to really speak another language. I don't speak Spanish the way I speak those. But it's every day it improves.

You know, Pony, my guy who works here with me, he doesn't speak English. He seems to understand most things, but refuses to utter a word. So, you know, it's just every day, just listening and learning. And, you know, I try to pick up a new word every day and practice it a few times. and then it locks in and take the next one. You know, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser down to Baja, and when we go, we go with Baja Bound Insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use, Baja Bound Insurance,

serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Well, let's pivot a little bit here. Tell you about what it's like just waking up here, living here. We went out and had a nice little tidy breakfast. I'm going to let you give me the name and tell you. me what we ate because I'm going to muffet. Dahlia's, was it Dahlia's? Yeah, Dahlia's.

And she's open, I guess, I'm not really sure how often she's open. She seems to mostly be closed. Okay. But on Friday, when the little San Juan Eco Farmer's Market's happening, she's always there, and it's always kind of an event. And in general, I don't eat out that much here. I like to cook, and I love this place so much. It's kind of hard for me to drag myself out.

Yeah, you said you've got a regular line on. fish. Yeah, fish and lobster and flying you with more fish than you know what to do with. Yeah, so I got, yeah, my freeze is full. Yeah, we ate sopes, which were delicious. Yes. She does a really good job and they're all crispy and nice around the edges, but still just juicy and creamy and delicious in the middle. Right. So it's some sort of a corn form. Basically in masa. Same masa you used to make a tortilla. Yeah, sort of a shell. Yeah, form it into like a little cup. A little ash tray size.

Right, with a layer of refried beans. And then there's, I had pork, which is phenomenal. Yeah. So sort of a juicy, soupy pork. Yeah. And then topped with lettuce and tomatoes and artisan cheese. Yeah, some soft, beautiful, crumbly cheese. Yeah.

And then topped with really great salsa. Yeah. And it was fabulous. It was. I know. I enjoy it. And thank you very much for treating. I appreciate that.

At least we can do for you for you. That in a bottle of Fortaleza Blanco. So, you know, we're coming out way ahead. We're good. Yeah, so tell me about your life. Do you know how often you walk the beach? You were walking the beach this morning? Well, my morning routine is I usually wake up at sunrise.

It's so beautiful here and it starts getting light and the guys are heading for the boats. So, you know, you hear some trucks moving up and down. And so, you know, my standard routine is get up, make a cup of coffee. I go straight down to the beach. I walk a columbia. or so down the beach and back and drink my coffee and contemplate the day and in all honesty the last couple weeks since I got here I literally have not set foot off of this property for the rest until the next morning we've just been working so hard trying to get the

space you slept in ready getting all those little details little racks for holding towels and hooks and whatnot all finished and cleaned and so it's it's been been a lot it looks all dialed into me. Thank you. Yeah, well that was the point. I'm trying to get in. I appreciate it. It's really good before you got here. That's great. But my son's flying in from Copenhagen tomorrow. So when he gets back over here on Monday with me, we'll play some more. He's he's a hard worker and really, really a driven kid. But at the same time, he likes to have fun. So he forces me to go have fun too. I'm good. So I'm looking forward to having him here because it'll get me out and get some exercise.

How do you explain Baja to people who haven't come here? So it's this funny place which has kind of a weird mixture of Mexican, California. You know, there's a long tradition of explorers heading down here in four-wheel drive vehicles. Like mine. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, and the first time I got here, you know, and the long, dusty track to find this little gem. So it's, you know, it's been like this little hidden oasis to me.

A lot of people go, oh, the desert, you know, I don't want to be out in the desert. realize how beautiful the desert is and you know what what an amazing place this this can be you know my first draw was always the coast you know i came down here to surf and play in the water and then as i got older i started realizing it's about a lot more than that it's you know it's the food it's the cult the cowboy culture up in the mountains it's the um you know the difference in culture between you know here to cabo which is you know turned into this crazy Disneyland atmosphere that, you know, it doesn't look like anything that I recall from when I went there the first time as a college student. So, you know, it's really diverse. And I don't exactly know. One of the things that I do always try to impress on people is overall, compared to a lot of other parts of Mexico, it's safe.

I really feel safe and secure here. I drive hours and hours and hours out in the middle of nowhere down dirt roads. I've had numerous flat tires and never once have I been stuck somewhere that at least two or three Mexican families didn't stop and want to fix my flat tire for me. So can you just unpack that a little bit because that's really Baja in its essence right there. Somebody's going to help you.

Yeah, this place is so friendly. And, you know, people don't have a lot here. They, you know, they's great. I mean, the ingenuity to survive and enjoy and the way, you know, Mexicans can fix things with a stick in Iraq and a stick of gum or whatever. You know, I mean, the amazing ingenuity just blows me away daily. You know, my guy pony, you know, it's like, oh, I got this tool. And he goes, I don't need a tool.

You know, I got this little stick and, you know, I'll just fix it. But, you know, everybody's so generous. You know, there's been so many times out in the middle of the desert all pull up to someplace. I have no idea where I am or where I should. be going. I'll find some loan, some cowboy out there in the middle of nowhere. And he always offers me something. You know, you want to have something to eat? You know, I'll pull out a couple beers out of the cooler. And, you know, and I used to always say, no, no, no, it's okay. And now I've realized I'm missing out on a lot of great flavors, you know, being a food guy. You know, I just, you know,

oh, you've got some dried beef. Yeah, I'd love to try that. Or dried fish or machaca or whatever it happens to be. Tortillas that they made that morning. you know, over a fire somewhere. You know, I guess to some degree I feel bad taking somebody else's food who probably doesn't have a whole lot. But it also feels wrong, you know, not accepting the hospitality.

And I just find, yeah, I mean, people of Baja are amazingly hospitable. And so do you think you change when you come here from the Jeffrey Westman you are in Sebastopol or in Europe? Do you think you change? and you're more open or more accepting just because this wide open harsh environment, you're, you know, you would help somebody on the side of the road and they're going to help you

and he's going to offer you this and you're going to give him that. I don't know. Are you that guy in other places as well? I am. Well, and I think partly just because I'm getting old. And, you know, I don't know that I have, you know, I think it's also, the amalgam has come together, that I am who I am. And I think I've always had a pretty generous giving 10, and wanted to be that person, maybe sometimes not been because I felt like, oh, I'm a business man, I'm supposed to be a certain way and forge out my piece. And not necessarily I've felt great about that. But I feel like I've learned a lot.

And I think over the last, you know, at least 15 years being down here more and experiencing a level of hospitality, I feel like I've taken that deeper in back home with me. So yeah, I do, you know, I feel like I've learned a lot. And, you know, I'm, yeah, if I see somebody on the side of the road with the flat tire and their bicycle in Denmark, I'll always stop and ask them, you know, you need some help. You want to call somebody, you know, and they usually just shoe me off. He's like, what's wrong with you? I know how to fix a tire. Leave me alone.

Hey, so do you want to interact with people on the internet? How would people find you if you want to be found? So I just launched the website. I preface that with it's far from finished, but I just felt like I needed to get something up there. So it's SJSurf Society.com. SJ. Surf Society, like San JuanicoSurf Society.com. SJ.Surf Society.com.

So the site's up there and running and will be slowly evolving. I'm really bad about working on it when I'm here. I should be like maybe more focused, but I spend all my time outside putting in plants and trying to do other things. Instagram, you have the same thing, SJ Surf Society. And, you know, right now,

if they want to fire off a message, it's going to come to me and I'll answer as quickly as possible. You know, love to start, you know, if there's people out there that have some dream about, you know, we've spoken to a number of retreat planners and people who produce various types of retreats, particularly retreats for older adults,

A lot of, you know, the third. You mean older adults like us? Yeah, pretty much. You know, the third act adults. Older adults who still want to go do something fun but come back to a nice bed at night and a shower that works? Exactly. And that's kind of the, even when, you know, people come to stay in the glamping tents,

we're going to have very comfortable beds, private showers, private bathrooms. You'll just be in a big tent. Awesome. But, yeah, you know, for people looking for adventure, particularly people, looking for venues to bring groups. There's going to be a day when we can all gather again. I can't wait for it. And S.J. Surf Society is Slow Baja approved.

And I just wish we could stay another night or another night or another night. Love the thing for a week. It was really lovely. But we got in very late last night and we're going to be out of here at about noon today. And the sun's shining. I'm going to throw on my Birdwell beach bridges and run into the surf and try not to get stung by a stingray. So from beautiful. SJ Surf Society, the San Juan EcoSurf Society with Jeffrey Westman,

Slow Baja signing off. Excellent. Thank you. No, thank you. That's great. Slow Baja's wardrobe is provided by Taylor Stitch. Responsibly built for the long haul, Taylor Stitch makes clothes that wear in, not out. Wherever your adventure takes you, Taylor Stitch has you covered. Check them out at tailorstitch.com. Hey, you guys know what to do. Please help us by subscribing,

sharing, rating, all that stuff. And if you missed anything, you can find the links in the show notes at slowbaha.com. I'll be back before you know it. And if you want to receive notices on new episodes, please follow Slow Baja on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for you old folks.