The Property Nobody Wanted (Part 4: The Road to Mahai)

I traveled throughout the Yucatán Peninsula looking at small hotels, retreat centers, villas, and estates. Jaime and Gabylu and I were the three musketeers, looking at property after property.

Some places were beautiful.

Some made perfect sense financially.

Some seemed ideal on paper.

But none of them felt like the home that selling our magnificent farm deserved.

By the time we were preparing to fly back to the United States, I felt exhausted — emotionally, spiritually, financially exhausted. I had spent the last two years watching the life I thought I was building slowly dissolve. At that point, I wasn’t looking for an investment property anymore.

I was looking for a place that could hold a completely different way of living.

The night before we were supposed to leave Mexico, I stayed up almost all night searching online listings.

And then I saw a photograph.

It was a property called Balamku in a tiny town near the border of Belize that I had never even heard of before:

Mahahual.

The next morning, Jaime and Gabylu — my teammates from the foundation — drove down with me to see it.

When we arrived, the property looked completely abandoned.

The palapa roofs were many years past needing replacement. Parts of the buildings felt like they were slowly being reclaimed by the jungle and sea air. There were bats living inside some of the structures. Snakes on the property. One room had a termite nest in the roof so large, I could have fit inside of it.

To most people, it would have looked beyond saving.

I could feel Jaime and Gabylu quietly assuming we would take one look around and leave.

Objectively, walking away probably would have made the most sense.

But the moment I stepped onto the property, I felt something.

Not excitement.

Not ambition.

Not the adrenaline of building something big.

Peace.

I could feel the breeze moving through the buildings from the ocean. I could imagine people sitting together under new palapas. Shared meals. Quiet mornings. Conversations. Healing. Simplicity.

I didn’t see the property as it was.

I saw what it could become.

After all of the noise, searching, heartbreak, and uncertainty, something inside me became very still there.

I knew this was the place.