So I Slept in... a Snake
At Quetzacoatl’s Nest — a snake-shaped Airbnb home just outside of Mexico City — I entered the belly of the beast and lived to tell the tale.
“I think this might be it,” I tell my friend Laura as our car slows in front of a hulking snake’s rattle studded with colorful circular tiles, its tip jutting out into the street — a curved contrast to the dozens of square houses we’d passed on the way here. We didn’t know it then, but we’d made a pact to leave the world of right angles behind when we signed up to sleep in Quetzalcoatl’s Nest, the Airbnb home tucked in the coils of a serpentine structure in the hills of Naucalpan, a quick and winding half-hour ride out of Mexico City.
Neither of us can really wrap our heads around the reality of being here. Last year, we’d watched the now-infamous snake house start to wriggle its way onto “wildest Airbnb” roundups, and added it to our respective bucket lists. Our reasons for wanting to see it were admittedly shallow — chasing that OMG factor and hoping it might be an introvert’s Disneyland, with all sorts of interesting crannies to tuck ourselves into with a book or notepad.
The pure scale of the place from our vantage point here at the literal tail end of the property showed us we were in for more than we’d bargained for. Things were about to get wonderfully weird, and we mentally prepared to use every snake pun possible.
The Snake
We roll our bags down the bumpy hill below the rattle, round a corner, and slither onto the smooth, glittering walkway above our sleeping quarters, walking along the backbone of the snake. The structure, which wraps around a small pond at its base, rises and dips into the earth, culminating in an enormous tile-covered head whose eager maw leads down into a series of caves.
Our host, snake house resident and guardian Patricia Castillo (known lovingly as “Pato” to friends and family, which we quickly decide includes us), greets us. And before we have a chance to settle into our apartment, we’re swept off to explore the grounds, listening to her rattle off well-practiced facts about the property.
Architect Javier Senosiain, a prolific builder and organic architecture champion, believes in working with the land instead of fighting it, Pato tells us. The idea to bring Quetzalcoatl — the Mesoamerican feathered serpent god; mediator between heaven and earth — to life was secondary to building a shape that could be structurally sound on the irregular parcel of land on which it stands.
Quetzalcoatl’s Nest holds 10 apartments; seven house long-term renters, two are for Airbnb guests, and one is a museum showcasing Senosiain’s prototypes, including a scaled-down model of the snake itself. The serpent’s coils are painted in flecks of light green, lilac, orange, and blue, meant to represent feathers. It works surprisingly well — more fantastical than garish — against the endless green of the landscape.
A central theme of the nest is the idea of returning to one’s origin. Senosiain’s decision to fashion his apartment complex into the shape of Quetzalcoatl was a tribute to his Mexican roots. Pato’s decision to come back to Naucalpan was her way of returning to hers. She grew up in the hills beyond the nest, and was the architect’s neighbor as a child. A marriage took her south of Mexico City for 16 years, and a divorce took her back to the neighborhood of her youth. An unassuming “for rent” sign brought Quetzalcoatl’s Nest into her life, and though she isn’t a fan of snakes, she’s now lived in one for around eight years.
We decide to tour the property in two parts: a hour-long jaunt around the snake house proper today, and a three-hour amble through the larger grounds tomorrow. Plan set, we hike up into the hills after Pato, following her down twisting staircases with snake-shaped handrails, hopping across the five round stones at the center of the pond, and somehow willingly climbing into Quetzalcoatl’s waiting jaws.
The Snake’s Keeper
Pato wears many hats at Quetzalcoatl’s Nest: Airbnb host, tour guide, property spokesperson, and transcendental meditation coach. She offers to give us a taste of the seminars she leads when we find ourselves deep in the belly of the beast, in a cave below Quetzalcoatl’s head. We lay thin leather cushions on the cold ground and settle in as she kills the lights, steeping us in darkness.
“Imagine the place you felt the safest in your entire life,” she says. “Imagine yourself a tiny baby, with everything you need; safe and secure in your mother’s womb. You want for nothing.”
Laura and I close our eyes and take deep breaths until Pato commands us to be born, heeding the call to follow the light out of the womb and toward growth. We open our eyes and notice a strategic sliver of light peeking at us from the far end of the tunnel. Pato says she likes to use it for effect when leading guests through this particular meditation. We’re not really surprised that the woman who resides in a snake has a flair for the theatrical.
The womb is a recurring metaphor in our conversations with Pato. “The architect likes to say: ‘We were created in a round womb, so we shouldn’t be in a square space,’” she says. “If you observe nature, there is no animal that lives in a square. The animals adapt their nest to their body, not their body to their nest.”
We go from that round womb “to a square house, then we’re handed a square iPad, and one day we are buried in a square box,” she says, making our lives up until this moment sound sadly contrived.
Sleeping in the Snake
After Pato returns us to the nest, we are left to our own devices inside our Airbnb apartment for the first time. We giddily inspect each room before plopping onto the plush corner sofa in the living room. Laura has proven to be the most patient travel partner, and does not seem to be phased by me singing “We’re in a sna-ake!” to the tune of The Lonely Island’s “I’m on a Boat” every 15 minutes.
The nest’s interior is surprisingly minimal, striking what feels like a necessary balance between the over-the-top embellishments outdoors. The rooms have a muted palette, with midcentury modern elements, including tasteful built-ins that curve to match the snake’s shape. There are round windows in each room, and each feels like a porthole (or portal) to another world.
We decide to take turns sleeping in the massive master bedroom, easily the coolest of the five sleeping spaces in the apartment with its bulbous reading nook, mirrored wall, and a bed more than twice the size of any of the other rooms (there are monastery-worthy singles, a pull-out couch, and bunk beds).
The highlight of our two-night residency was the decision to hire a chef through Pato’s twin sister, Georgina, who works as a hospitality coordinator for multiple luxury properties. We had assumed, correctly, that we wouldn’t want to leave the snake house for a second to forage for food in the small town below.
Our chef is also named Laura, and she quickly establishes herself as our surrogate grandmother, feeding us elaborate meals that start with appetizer platters and mezcal cocktails, and end with cake or homemade parfaits. She’s not shy about scolding us when we don’t polish off portions that could easily feed four people, and promises to make sure there’s a carafe of cucumber-infused water waiting for us when we get back from the three-hour walk of the land Pato has promised us tomorrow. We feel looked after and terribly spoiled.
Land with a Plan
The tour of the grounds is a generous one that can eat up an entire afternoon — it’s a circuit Pato makes at least twice a week with guests in tow. The property is private, and tours are a rare and precious thing (two lucky gatecrashers managed to join our party simply by showing up at the right time), but Pato says the plan is to open up the land up to the public once a visitor’s center and other infrastructure is built. She leads us down a series of curved paths, around some manmade lakes with white, swan-like floats of Senosiain’s design, and into a lush grassy amphitheater, where we sprawl on our backs and stare at the sky. At the top of the property, she introduces us to Nico, Heladio, and Saul Jimenez, a trio of brothers working on the elaborate mosaic visitors will see when the gate next to it opens. There are 12 to 15 people maintaining the grounds at any given time, Pato says, and another 15 dedicated to new construction.
The land is divided up into three “kingdoms” — animal, plant, and mineral — and while there are many ’grammable moments, the showstopper is the shell-shaped greenhouse, which is fashioned with hand-cut stained-glass panels and took four years to build. Plants in various stages of growth look almost alien cast in primary colors from the panels above. Guests local to the region will sometimes take plant cuttings home with them, says Pato, while most will find a home on the grounds.
We spend the rest of the afternoon in introvert mode, reading, writing, and drawing in separate parts of the estate, our brains working hard to process the psychedelic stimuli of the day.
Shedding Our Skin
It is hard to leave our new lives as snake women the next day, as we prepare to head back to the world of boxy buildings and square iPads. Chef Laura brings us our last breakfast, apologetic that she couldn’t source the sausages I’d requested, saying that the tense relations at the U.S.-Mexico border have started to affect her cooking supply chain. It’s the first time politics has cracked the idyllic spell cast on Quetzalcoatl’s Nest since we arrived, and it puts sadness in my heart as I pack my suitcase.
We stand below the snake’s rattle with Pato and Georgina and call a car, only to have the twins frantically dialing their local cab company when it doesn’t arrive half an hour later. When the cab comes, they instruct the driver in rapid Spanish, begging him to get us to the airport in record time. There are tight heart-to-heart hugs and promises to return, and then we’re on our way, rolling through the rows of square houses with Quetzalcoatl’s tail disappearing behind us.
Snake House by the Numbers:
- 10 apartments; 2 Airbnb homes
- 98 acres
- 3 lakes
- 3 kingdoms
- 14 snakes
About the Author: Janine Kahn is the Editorial Manager for the Airbnb Design team’s central projects and strategic incubations. Prior to Airbnb, she spent over a decade building digital editorial programs at Say Media, Village Voice Media, and the Los Angeles Times. She was named a Top Woman in Media by Folio, and a branded content innovator by Adweek.
