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Sitting in the back of a well-worn pickup truck, my shoulders sore from the 65-liter backpack I’d been living out of, I struggled to keep the provisions I’d stashed for the next two days from rolling on the floor: gnarled-skinned avocados, a large perfectly ripe papaya, El Cafe de la Mancha’s paper packet of freshly ground coffee, homemade pecan and cashew granola, Chilean Malbec, and the ingredients for a very un-Mexican spaghetti bolognese.
As the 4x4 navigated unpaved rough roads, one of the Airbnb’s perks was free shuttle service to and from San Miguel on your check-in and check-out days, I was struck by the beauty of nopal cacti and the blueish-green agave plants that punctuated the Mexican landscape. After two years of anticipation, I was nervous that the mirrored off-grid cabin I’d booked on Airbnb wouldn’t live up to the enchanting images I’d seen online.
And then from a distance, I caught my first glimpse.
The cabin glowed in the mid-day November sun, reflecting the bright blue expanse of cloudless sky above. It looked almost extraterrestrial, as though it had been dropped down from an unknown land.
Inside, it’s equally astounding. The property is a self-proclaimed “livable art instillation” thanks to the mottled stand-alone copper bathtub, black and white photography that adds local flair to the polished concrete walls, and a king bed flanked by low-hanging wicker pendant lights and facing the slopes of the extinct volcano known as Palo Huérfano.
As soon as the cabin’s caretakers Maria and Oscar left, I delighted in the luxury of solitude, sliding open the huge floor-to-ceiling glass doors and plunging straight into the outdoor solar-heated pool surrounded by whimsical fountain grass, senita cacti, and incredible varieties of yucca.
High on life, I relaxed to a soundtrack of cicadas, distant barking dogs, the uptempo crow of cockerels, and that unmistakable buzz of tiny hummingbird wings. After making a bowl of guacamole in the high-shine marble kitchen, I perused the proffered books before settling on Tony Cohan’s On Mexican Time which happily provided the perfect companion for my two days at Casa Etérea.
Later, while out hiking the Airbnb’s surrounding scrubland, I came across hundreds upon hundreds of crickets and grasshoppers, some with chirps as loud as lawnmowers, some in shades of bold red, mustard yellow, and iridescent green. After following a dry riverbed for some time, the blazing sun started to dip behind nearby mountains so I returned to the casa in a euphoric mood to find it had magically turned to a tin can shade of silver.
With no restaurants or shops nearby (San Miguel Centro is about a 20-minute drive away), I spent the first blissful evening cooking in the well-stocked kitchen, drinking wine, and listening to the Spotify playlist curated by Prashant Ashoka, the Airbnb’s owner and designer. Thousands of stars appeared after dark and I slept with the drapes open, excited to see how the light would play on the nearby volcanic slopes at sunrise.
The sustainably-minded studio uses solar energy to power the open floor plan as well as a rainwater harvesting system and a UV coating on the exterior to make it visible to birds. If you don't want to take advantage of the copper tub, there is also an exposed glass shower. Keep in mind that while the toilet is separated from the bedroom and common areas by a wall, it is not fully enclosed and has no doors.
The next day, enamored with the natural beauty of the casa’s surroundings, I drank in the views alongside my morning coffee, interrupted only by a curious wild rabbit. The visitors continued at dusk when I heard loud footsteps outside the front of the house. Afraid at first, I finally plucked up the courage to open the front door to see who, or what, was out there and was stunned to find seven wild horses. I dashed out just in time to capture a photograph of one particularly brave chestnut and dappled gray pony passing right by the casa’s front door.
That ephemeral moment in time, of course, can’t be guaranteed for every Airbnb guest, but it sure is worth the gamble.
