1. The Myth of Paradise and the Reality Beneath It

When people hear that I live in Galápagos, they smile and say, “Wow, you live in paradise.”
I smile back, but inside another sentence appears: “Yes… but paradise has dirty laundry too.”

Years ago, I stepped onto a small red carpet at TEDxGalápagos to share exactly that feeling in a talk titled “I Live on an Island.” Today, I want to tell that story again, in my own words, the way I live it every day.

2. Moving to the Islands: From Dream to Daily Life

When my family and I moved to Galápagos, we didn’t come as tourists. We came to build a life.
From far away, the islands looked almost perfect: volcanic landscapes, extraordinary wildlife, and the famous statistic everyone loves—most of the territory protected, only a small part inhabited.

But once here, the romantic idea quickly transformed into very practical questions:

• Where does our drinking water actually come from?
• What powers the electricity on Santa Cruz, San Cristóbal, Isabela, and Floreana?
• How far has our food traveled to reach our table?
• And where does all the trash go on a small piece of land with nowhere to hide it?

It felt like lifting the corner of a beautiful carpet and discovering everything underneath that needed attention.

3. The Question That Changed Everything

At one point, an uncomfortable question confronted me:

If staying here means becoming part of the problem, would it be more responsible to leave?

I didn’t like that question—or the answer. Leaving wouldn’t solve anything either.

So I changed the question:
“If I stay, how can I live in a way that actually helps this place?”

That shift became the beginning of a long, imperfect experiment.

4. A Shared Experiment in Living Differently

This experiment was never mine alone. Nothing we’ve built would have been possible without Roberto—my partner in life and in questions. He is a dreamer, an explorer, and someone who shares the same principles, concerns, and commitment to these islands.

Walking this path with him has made every challenge lighter and every dream bigger.

Little by little, our home, work, and daily routines became a kind of laboratory for learning how to live on an island without exhausting it.

Not through dramatic gestures, but through small, stubborn decisions:

• Could we reduce the distance our food travels by choosing more local products?
• Could we grow some of that food ourselves?
• Could we treat water as the most precious resource—because here, it truly is?
• Could we harvest rainwater instead of relying on polluted grid water?
• Could we welcome guests in a way that showed not only the beauty of Galápagos, but the responsibility that comes with that beauty?

Some days we made progress. Some days we made mistakes.
Often, solutions were not comfortable or pretty. Compost isn’t glamorous. Solar panels don’t go viral. Explaining “strange” decisions to guests is harder than simply saying yes.

But through that slow process, something meaningful happened: sustainability stopped being a trend and became part of our identity.

5. The TEDx Realization: We All Live on Some Kind of Island

During my TEDx talk, I realized something unexpected: I wasn’t only talking about Galápagos.
I was talking about all of us.

We all live on some kind of island.

Maybe yours is surrounded by water. Maybe it’s a neighborhood, a city, a social circle, or even your daily routine. Each “island” has:

• Limited resources
• Invisible waste
• Habits we take for granted
• Problems we ignore because “that’s how it is”

Living in Galápagos has trained me to ask questions almost every day:

• Where are we hiding our trash—physical or metaphorical—so we don’t have to see it?
• Which problems have we learned to accept without thinking?
• What would happen if, instead of waiting for big solutions, we treated our own lives as small but real experiments?

We don’t have perfect answers.
What we do have is practice: trying, failing, adjusting, and trying again.

6. What Visitors Don’t See at First (But Should Understand)

If you ever visit the islands, I hope you enjoy everything: the sea turtles, the lava fields, the impossible blues of the ocean. Take photos, relax, disconnect. You deserve that.

But I also hope something else happens: that you land here not as a spectator, but as a temporary resident of this isla.

Because when you travel, you don’t just enter a landscape. You enter:

• Someone’s water system
• Someone’s energy grid
• Someone’s food chain
• Someone’s waste problem
• Someone’s school system
• Someone’s daily worries

You enter a place where real people are trying to live well without destroying what makes the place special.

7. Living on an Island Means Feeling Consequences Faster

Our life here involves all the normal things: bills, roofs to fix, water tanks to clean, meetings to attend, guests to welcome, family to care for.

The difference is that, on an island, you feel the consequences of your decisions much faster.
There is no “somewhere else” for problems to disappear into.

And maybe that’s the real gift of living on a small piece of land surrounded by ocean: it makes visible what the mainland hides.

8. A Commitment, Not a Postcard

When I say “I live on an island,” I’m not describing my address.
I’m making a commitment:

• To treat this place as a living, breathing home
• To design experiences where comfort and conscience coexist
• To ask uncomfortable questions about water, energy, food, and space
• To keep asking them even when it would be easier not to

If you come to Galápagos, we’ll be happy to share this experiment with you.
Not as a perfect model, but as an honest work in progress.

Because in the end, whether you live in the Pacific or in the center of a big city, we all share the same tiny island floating in space.
And learning to care for one island is—perhaps—the best training for caring for them all.