Off-Grid Cenote Sanctuary & Daily Skill Stays
Room in Mérida, Mexico
- 1 bunk bed
- Shared bathroom
Rated 4.67 out of 5 stars.3 reviews
Hosted by Paul
- 9 years hosting
Listing highlights
Outdoor entertainment
The outdoor kitchen, firepit, pool, and bbq area are great for summer trips.
Dedicated workspace
A common area with wifi that’s well-suited for working.
Shared bathroom
You’ll share the bathroom with others.
Where you’ll sleep
What this place offers
Kitchen
Wifi
Dedicated workspace
Free parking on premises
Shared outdoor pool - available all year, open specific hours
Unavailable: Carbon monoxide alarm
Unavailable: Smoke alarm
1 night in Mérida
Mar 25, 2026 - Mar 26, 2026
4.67 out of 5 stars from 3 reviews
Overall rating
- 5 stars, 67% of reviews
- 4 stars, 33% of reviews
- 3 stars, 0% of reviews
- 2 stars, 0% of reviews
- 1 stars, 0% of reviews
Rated 4.7 out of 5 stars for cleanliness
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars for accuracy
Rated 4.3 out of 5 stars for check-in
Rated 4.0 out of 5 stars for communication
Rated 4.7 out of 5 stars for location
Rated 4.7 out of 5 stars for value
Where you’ll be
Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico
Exact location will be provided after booking.
Neighborhood highlights
Meet your host
Born in the 60s
My work: Restoration Ecologist
Why am I doing this?
As a child my grandfather and father would take me out into the woods to do landscape painting. During these times I developed a deep connection with the natural world. They would oil paint and I would paint my masterpiece for a few minutes and then go explore the woods. We would be there for hours and I would just go off and watch the ants, play in the creeks, smell the flowers, the soil and the pine needles under my feet. To me it was visceral and sensual, the feeling of the textures of the soil, the roughness of the bark. My grandfather would tell me how to paint and how to see the world, to look at the details, the curve of a branch and the colours. To see things as they are.
My grandfather and father painted with oils like the great landscape painters in the group of seven. I paint landscapes and my colours are the trees and wildflowers. They are more expressive like a Polock painting with its random yet precise raw beauty allowing for the “paints” to have a life of their own and flow where they need to go. It’s the reason that for my native plant business in Canada I named the website ecologyart. There is head knowledge of the ecology and the needs of the plants and then there is beyond that, a subtler knowing that takes it to an art.
No one talks about the energy of the land. The subtle way all of nature “talks” to you, that sense of knowing what a plant needs and where it will grow best. It’s not words that speak but a subtle sense that you feel. You have to go beyond words and just be with the world. I’ve only found one other person who understood what I was saying when I told him my plants talk to me. Jan called it drala, the life force in all living creatures and he created a beautiful garden of vegetables and flowers at a retreat center in the green mountains of Vermont.
As a youth I spent much of my time outside. I remember that my father let me use a pile of old boards. I would use those boards again and again building forts of many shapes. I would make one and play in it and then have another idea and take it down and build another one. I learned a lot about carpentry doing that, how to hammer and not hit your thumb, how to reuse nails again and again, what makes a strong structure. It was an experimentation, curiosity and innovation playground.
These are some of the things that we want to offer at the center to people, young and old.
When I was 27 years old, right after doing my masters degree, I bought a farm and started growing native plants to restore habitat. I had studied biology in university and my thesis had me looking at a community of rare plants and how disturbance allowed them to exist in a narrow band along the shores of some lakes in Nova Scotia. Ice scour killed off shoreline shrubs and opening up a space for the rare plants to grow. I could also see that human disturbance differed from natural disturbance in that it occurred during the growing season and killed the rare plants.
Likewise, for my honours thesis for my undergraduate degree I studied how the city of Waterloo affected the biodiversity of aquatic insects in Laurel Creek that flowed through the city. Before the city there was high biodiversity of species and as the stream flowed through the city the biodiversity was heavily impacted, going down to mostly blood worms that can survive in toxic, low oxygen conditions, and as it flowed out of the city it took kilometers for the diversity to slowly recover, never fully recovering. With every rain, all of the things we put in our gardens, on roads and lawns end up in our waterways.
I worked for an environmental consulting firm right after my masters was completed. They had me researching native plants and their propagation techniques. At the time there were no growers of native plants in Ontario and I thought, “I can do that!” I had grown many native wetland plants as part of my thesis so that is where I started. I quickly became the biggest suppler of wetland plants and then when that wasn’t a challenge anymore I moved on to growing trees and shrubs and then Tallgrass prairie species and then woodland ephemerals. I could grow the plants and restore any habitat in Ontario. My overriding goal was always to restore as much habitat as I could.
It was obvious to me from the start that we were destroying the biodiversity of the planet. So much so that as I was finishing my masters thesis and my son was about to be born, I wrote the dedication in my thesis, “To this great world of ours, may our children forgive us for our inaction.” I could see that by the time my children grew up that many species would be extinct. I realized that all the lions, tigers and elephants that fired the imagination of my youth could be gone in my lifetime. The dedication in my thesis became the dedication of my life.
I was asked why I do this? I do it for love. Love of all species on this planet. Love of life in its infinite potential. I offer hope. Hope that we will live in a more balanced way with the planet. We can do it. When we move past fear we will see the way. And I am offering that hope by demonstrating that we are able to do things differently. As we learn together we share everything.
I am a protector of biodiversity, a steward of the land. I stand for those that have no voice. I not only think like the mountain, I am the mountain. There is no separation. What we do to ourselves affects all creatures.
The idea of one over another is not possible if you understand the reality of no-separation. One must not put oneself above or below another. Once you realize that then the idea of nations, races and boundaries of all kinds seems foolish. Once one realizes that putting oneself below another is not right and putting oneself above another is also not right only then can one come to another as equals. This applies in the human realm but also when one is ready one will extend it out to all creatures. Just as at some point one will realize that to love fully and unconditionally one has to love all and not just select whom you love.
The greatest thing that we are losing on this planet is resilience, the ability for species to recover from a disturbance. When populations of creatures are limited, their genetic makeup changes. In small populations they lose the genetic variation that allows them to survive variations in the environment.
Host details
Response rate: 100%
Responds within a few hours
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Things to know
Cancellation policy
House rules
Check-in: 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Checkout before 12:00 PM
6 guests maximum
Safety & property
No carbon monoxide alarm
No smoke alarm
Pool/hot tub without a gate or lock