he modern-day fitness and spa vacation experience began in 1940 in a sheltered valley only an hour’s drive from San Diego, California. Here, in Tecate, Baja California, Mexico, Edmond and Deborah Szekely founded the world’s first destination fitness resort and spa. Soon Rancho La Puerta became the paradigm of all multi-day “destination spa” vacations that encompass health and wellness for mind, body and spirit. An amazing program of fitness activities, healthful cuisine,luxury spa amenities, superb accommodations, and entertainment awaits you.

Our 3,000-acre property (see map) offers world-class landscaped gardens, an organic farm, internationally known cooking school, and mountainsides and meadows of great hiking and walking experiences. Our health resort aims to help you develop a lifetime of healthy habits. Ours is a nature preserve that preserves people! The year-round climate, poised as we are in the mountains between sea and desert, is nearly perfect, with sunshine over 325 days a year. It's even better than San Diego's, because we don't get coastal fog. Approximately 125 guests enjoy our classic one-week program (see sample Activities program), arriving and departing on Saturdays. A few each week stay for three or four nights only, while some may stay multiple weeks. To hear about some of their experiences—in their own words—read their recent letters here. Whatever your preference, we’re here for you.

For more Ranch videos, including interviews with guests, please click here.

In addition, a new program offers a one-day-visit experience (transportation included) to San Diego-area residents: “Saturdays At The Ranch” combines not only a half day of fitness and spa activities, but a long, wonderful afternoon spent in a hands-on class at our new culinary center set in the midst of our organic farm, followed by dinner. We make healthy people healthier! You’ll return home stronger, with the healthful glow and spring in your step that comes from a vacation devoted to relaxation, good eating (our cuisine is vegetarian with a fresh fish dinner option served most days), learning, and exercise.

Find your wellspring of energy in the midst of nature’s beauty, and discover how even one week at Rancho La Puerta can change your life.

"It's quite early in the morning and I'm sitting up in bed in Sol 3, smiling as I contemplate my return home from this enchanted place. This time, it took me an entire week to truly and deeply relax, but I finally did. I so needed to be here. You'd think I had experienced the Ranch's steeping beauty often enough to have become at least a bit blasé. But for me, the place is a lovely example of what's best and most instructive about life itself: Its perpetual freshness and cascade of surprises.

Being here slows me down, stills me enough to see, really see, everything around me: the shimmer of mica in the earth beneath my sneaker, an artfully haphazard arrangement of blossoms or stones, the blessing bestowed by wisteria blossoms spilling from a wooden arch. Seeing these things, loving them, allows me to absorb them, and to in essence to become them. Their beauty and surprise, I realize as if for the first time, are an echo of my own. I understand that this oneness with creation was always there, but hidden by my mind's ceaseless clamor, and by the speed with which I usually dash past the realization. Thanks, once again, for the gift of the Ranch."

— Donna Britt, 2012 guest