After several months of customizing tours and team building retreats, we started to set focus on the management of a destination. A vision for a paradise village emerged, where we could showcase all the amazing sustainable solutions in one place - and close to Jakarta.
When charting out an evolutionary path, it's good to pick a destination. That destination in this case is 'evolved living.' How can we live awesome lives, doing what we love and what we're genius at while making the world more awesome? It just so happened that a friend's father was looking after a beautiful island out in the Java Sea, about 60 km from the mainland. We started arranging trips to the island, where facilities were super basic, but the vibe was super sweet. It soon became clear that we were destined to manage the island, and we took over stewardship in November 2017, and signed our first contract in March, 2008.
How could we build an eco resort village that exemplified intelligent energy, rain water harvesting, organic gardening, coral reef protection and rehabilitation, delicious vegetarian foods, beautiful natural building, an exciting start up culture and an inspired team? How could we host guests and demonstrate that sustainable living is not a sacrifice but indeed a great pleasure? How could we help nourish stressed out friends and activists in Jakarta to re-connect to nature, and to take time to reflect on life and purpose? How could we make the enterprise successful so we could compensate our teams handsomely, and use profits to expand our enterprise? These were the questions we asked.
The website is at www.pulaumacan.com - and you can find a lot of videos online by typing in 'Pulau Macan' - and read blogs about it too. Soon after we launched, we had no need to do marketing - word of mouth got around, and by 2010, every weekend was full and our enterprise was humming along.
It was fun. And it worked. 20,000 guests later, it has become one of Jakarta's best known examples of sustainability, and a favorite weekend destination.
