Michele Connor sits in the kitchen of the main house at Rancho Las Palmas, her home about 20 minutes outside the resort town of San Miguel de Allende in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. The space, which she calls the main salon, was designed to feel like the lobby of some tropical retreat, with adobe walls and a thatch roof. The building is the largest of seven on the property and can sleep 10 guests; one of the beds is visible here, atop a staircase made of salvaged wood.