Option 1: Adventure in Mexico and the Desert Southwest

This option is for those who want "to live deep and suck the very marrow out of life."  This is no ordinary vacation.

For several weeks you will stay in a small ejido in Mexico.  It is not a tourist place.  The streets are dirt.  Rarely is there running water.  Your host families will work in agricultural fields or fish for corvina.  Nobody speaks English. It's the real deal.

You will also visit iconic landscapes of the southwest and not just superficially.  If you go into the Dragoons or Dark Canyon or Cedar Mesa or the Grand Canyon, you will backpack in deep, and stay awhile.  You will choose your spots, and go places that ordinary tourists don't. You'll hike long distances, learn and practice outdoor leadership skills, spend nights around campfires.

Finally, part of the trip will be planned by the group.  What will you do?  Make a movie about border issues?  Find a Mexican Gray Wolf?  Work on a reservation? Walk across half of Arizona?  The possibilities are endless.

These 10 weeks are for those who like to be physical, who like to be outdoors, who like to experience the connections of a place.  You will see, for example, where commercial lettuce is grown and meet who picks it.  You will follow  the Colorado River and watch it die before it meets the sea.  You will follow migrating Sandhill cranes.  You will see the Border fences and meet people who pay to cross it. You'll sit on ancient sandstone pondering a pile of thousand year old pottery chards and then climb down a cliff wall to swim in a pool.

Experience the rawness and truth of the Southwest.