live. work. dream.

Hola, housekeeeping … me name is Jaime. I am here to clean your rooom. Knock, knock. Hello?

OK, I didn’t clean the rooms. And the housekeepers at Riverbend all spoke perfect English. Nonetheless, my workamping job at the hot springs in Truth or Consequences gave me a good taste of resort management.

Good enough to now know that we could easily run some sort of lodging business, someday. And good enough to know that we would hire workampers to do the dirty work.

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The best thing about our Riverbend gig had to be the people. Oh, and the water. Working the desk there, we met the most genuine, caring, open, friendly and interesting people. In the whole time we were there, we only encountered abut three rude individuals, and two of them were from Los Angeles. No wonder.

I admire Jake for pouring his heart and soul into improving the place. His hard work shows, and it must be working. The place was packed almost every day of our stay. I envy Lee for the compound he is developing, and lifestyle he has created for his family. And I love Sylvia for she reminds me of my mother, just kooky enough to be cool and bearing the burden of MS with pride and strength.

Watch this video for a little taste of Riverbend from the perspective of the management and the workampers:

There are are, however, plenty of perks to make workamping at Riverbend and enjoyable must for anyone looking to gain some experience running a resort, or just looking to hang out in the healing waters …

• Free soaks in the hot spring baths!
• Flexible schedule of three days on and three days off allows ample time to explore the area.
• A chance to meet all sorts of friendly and intersting folks.
• Did I mention the water?
• First dibs on leftovers from guests!

Because it was my job to strip the beds when guests checked out, I was the first to see what they might have left behind. We always left the tips for the housekeeping staff, but we did get some good stuff on more than one occasion. Some mornings there would be nothing, or worse, a mess! Others, I would run back to the rig with wine, free beer, fresh bread, still sealed dips, chips, and one time a pack of frozen beef ribs.

To be perfectly honest, the workamper accommodations at Riverbend are – for lack of s better word – basic, with no frills. But the neighbors are great.

Norm and Becky were a hoot. I just wish we could have spent more time with their replacements, Norm and Bobbi. Johnathon is very spiritual. And our new friend Dale is an enlightening individual to say the least …

I ‘m going to miss soaking in the hot springs, and the new friends we met. Some of which we have already hooked up with on our visit to Rancho de las Golandrinas. Others who said we could camp out on their property near Durango for a while to check out the area. Like I said, good people.

So what’s wrong with workamping in Truth or Consequences? Well, it is Truth or Consequences. But to each his own. I for one didn’t mind power washing the tubs as much as Norm did. And the laundry wasn’t too bad, though I have never before done so much for so long, nor do I ever care to again. It was the severe static electricity I couldn’t take!

This was a great learning experience for us. Would I do it again? Perhaps, but I think next time I might see if Ezy needs a hand tending to the goats, or getting that biodiesel operation back into production.

But for now, we’ve had our fill of New Mexico. Before we left, someone asked about what perks we will have at our next workamping gig on the dude ranch in Colorado. We said, uhh … it’s Colorado!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Resort Life, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.