Adventurers in a land of adventure…your hosts and the proprietors of Quinta Kookix, Marjorie Skouras and Bruno Bardavid, first met on the island of Corfu, Greece in July of 1975 at the ages of 15 and 16, a foretelling of a future in an exotic land.  It took 32 years for them to reconnect, and another 15 years for them to wend their way to this life in the Yucatan.  In the interim, Marjie, who is a fourth generation San Franciscan,  led her life in Los Angeles, working in the film industry for 18 years, then moving into interior and product design, a career in which she remains actively involved -  you can see what she is up to when not wearing one of her many Qunita Kookix hats here:

https://marjorieskourasdesign.com

Bruno, meanwhile, forged a life in London in the financial world after graduating business school in Lausanne.  When they reunited, they married (finally, with both of their mothers lamenting that it had not been sooner…) and lived in Los Angeles.  After the youngest of their four children from previous marriages had graduated from high school and left for college, they were able to pursue their dream of a life in Mexico.  

In 2015 they purchased a semi ruined house in the historic center of Merida, an historical monument which had been owned by the Canton family, descendants of the former governor of the Yucatan Francisco Cantón Rosado.  The next year and a half were spent restoring this splendid casona, which they moved into in late 2017, living there for the next 6 years.  The house was featured in Architectural Digest, take a tour here:

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/tour-a-designers-vibrant-19th-century-mansion-in-merida-mexico

After spending hours driving around the state of the Yucatan on the beautiful country roads, they began to yearn for the magic of their time in Corfu and realized that much of that could be attained by living a life on a piece of land in the northern Yucatan, close to the coast.  Quinta Kookix was acquired in late 2020, and work on the former cattle and sheep ranch began.  Initially, it was quite simple, a small bungalow where they could get away for the weekend from now bustling Merida, but gradually they came to realize that they wanted to build a new kind of life for themselves, and the work began in earnest.  The mostly wild land was slowly transformed, and they found that they had become farmers.  A revolving menagerie – Albert the Terrier, Elsa the Chihuahua, Tina the pig, Griff the Opossum, Donkijoti the miniature donkey, many cats and two goats so far – joined in, and then there was the music school…guided by the inspiration that Frank Lloyd Wright did not hit his full stride until he was in his seventies, they have embarked wholeheartedly on this new venture, and would be delighted to have you come and share some of the magic that they have discovered in this magical land, along with all of their friends who would like to share their magical talents with you as well.