¨It’s approaching midnight and Genoveva de la Peña, an art teacher turned bee conservationist, is making a toast. “Each of you has been special for me in a lot of ways, and right now it’s important to choose with whom you share your life,” she says, raising a glass of red wine to the mishmash of stylish friends seated around the sturdy farmhouse table: a sculptor from Mexico City, a ceramicist from Germany, an American textile designer who lives in the nearby pueblo of Telchac, a Japanese pianist from Amsterdam, a former New York ad man who did spots for Kodak, and John Powell, our host and Mérida’s unofficial town mayor. “I love that all of us come from so many different backgrounds, but find that we have a lot of interests in common,” she adds. As two of Powell’s dogs—a hairless Xolo and a plump Jack Russell—are running between our legs, we all clink glasses, and I wonder how I can move here and crash parties like this all the time.¨

Read the rest of Paul Brady´s article in Condé Nast Traveler´s May 2017 issue.