San Juanico Surf Society Jeffrey Westman On Building Community And A Danish-Inspired Dream Retreat

Slow Baja

Jeffrey Westman arrived in San Juanico as a 19-year-old on a surf trip and fell in love with it. The teen dreamed of finding a surf shack and staying forever. Not surprisingly, college and a career won out, but the dream stayed with him. Thirty years later, he has built the San Juanico Surf Society, a danish infused, Mexican-modern resort for friends and family.

Located on a bluff above "Panga Beach," the SJ Surf Society is a gleaming beacon of clean lines, industrial beauty, and humble hospitality. After his career as a photographer and printer led him to Scandanavia, Westman worked his way into a new thing called the internet. He ran Norway, Sweden, and Denmark for Yahoo. His timely exit allowed him the resources to try his hand as a potato farmer in Northern Sweden. Not something that one usually says during a conversation about building a health and wellness retreat in Baja.

His return to the San Francisco Bay Area allowed him to combine his business acumen and his love of farming into a career in the non-profit sector, helping organic farmers thrive. In the process, he converted his Sebastopol farm into a retreat property and found that he enjoyed providing hospitality and creating community through being an Airbnb host.

Westman says he "drew the short straw and had to look after his mother, who had retired to Baja Sur." A property in Loreto followed as Westman built his Airbnb portfolio. Old memories of that surf trip to San Juanico led him across the peninsula, and the hunt for the next project began.

In this conversation, we hear the backstory of building a dream property in Baja. We can't wait to return to the SJ Surf Society and chill out in style.

The SJ Surf Society is Slow Baja approved!

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