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Episode 1: Making Moves, A closer look

We just launched “Making Moves,” episode 1 from our 5 part-DocuSeries, “Road to Tiny Village Cartagena.” This episode goes through the origin story of Tiny Village Cartagena, and what led to the creation of the project.  I wanted to take some time to shed a bit more context with you all — some detail that we just couldn’t fit in the documentary. You’ll find some those details/nuances in this post — enjoy!

People always ask me why I moved to Cartagena. They are always so amazed that I ACTUALLY LIVE here (lol), how I got here, and what I am doing here.   I think the answer to the last of those questions  is pretty straight forward — Tiny Village Cartagena! The answer to the other questions of how and why are a bit more complex than people typically think.  Trying to answer those questions  clearly, concisely and completely always seem to give me a bit of anxiety (sigh).  Where do I start? Where do I end? How much of the “in-between” should I explain? The fact is, the almost 5 years I have lived and built a business here (which I’m still building), are a result of a series of pretty substantial, and life changing decisions.

Time to move on

I started working in Apple’s Developer Relations team  as an intern in 2009 — less than 2 weeks after my 21st birthday.  I left a little less 6 months before my 30th birthday.  Yea — I spent almost my entire 20s living, and breathing Apple culture —  the good, bad, ugly, amazing, and not so amazing. My decision to leave was a complicated one, but it was one rooted in the need for change, personal and professional growth, and stretching myself.  So, as I thought about the next step, I surveyed the landscape and decided that neither Apple, nor the tech industry as a whole, nor even the United States was right next landing place for me.  There weren’t any companies in tech at the moment that were doing things that really attracted me, and the polarizing, Donald Trump political environment just created a general distaste for being in the country.

Bye bye America 🇺🇸, HELLO Cartagena 🇨🇴

I began taking canvas of places I could move to take a bit of a sabbatical. One of the places I was hearing a lot about was Cartagena, a small city on Caribbean coast of Colombia.  Cartagena was known for being a beautiful city, rich with culture, Caribbean cuisine and surrounded by some of the most beautiful islands in the world.  I decided to take my first trip down to check it out at the end of 2016 and I had an amazing time.  At that point, a few things happened. 1. I decided that Cartagena was going to be my next move, and 2. I decided that MAYBE my trip to Cartagena wouldn’t JUST be a sabbatical. You see, during my 2 weeks visiting, I tried to see as many parts of the city as I could —  even taking a few trips to the islands.  I fell in love with the city and the unique look of its Spanish Colonial houses which seemed as though they’d been preserved from the 15th century.  In the islands in particular, I noticed something — there was a lot  of land that seemed to me as prime real estate (feet from the beach) that had been either underdeveloped, not developed at all, or abandoned.  My gears started spinning 🤔… I didn’t know it at that point, but  this was beginning stages of what now is Tiny Village Cartagena.

Tiny House obsession + Cartagena = Tiny Village Cartagena

A part of the Tiny Village Cartagena origin story that I rarely talk about  is that at the time of my first visit to Cartagena, I was becoming a bit obsessed with the concept of Tiny Houses.  Tiny Houses are REAL homes, but on a smaller scale, sometimes even smaller than 10 square meters.  The “Tiny House movement” was inspired by a group of people who found that they could limit their expenses by living in small homes and eliminating useless “stuff.”  This decreased their energy consumption and spending because their space was limited.  In 2016, I was in my 20s living in the most expensive real estate markets in the country, and the concept of Tiny Houses really resonated with me.  Why should work hard, save money for 15 years and spend it to buy someone else’s an 1500 sq. ft. house? It seemed like an inefficient use of A LOT of time and money. How could I invest that money more efficiently, and still own something of value?  A “decked out” tiny house seemed like a perfect middle ground to me.

Back to Cartagena. My first visit to Cartagena, serendipitously aligned with a time  that I was really delving specifically  into Tiny house design.  When I returned from my first trip to Cartagena, it clicked.— What if was able to get one of those beachfront properties and build a resort of ALL tiny houses? The average hotel room size in the US was 325 sq. ft., and the average tiny house was 225 sq. ft. — it seemed like a perfect fit, especially since hotel rooms never use their space efficiently and are typically  pretty standard square boxes.   I thought, “if I could build a beach resort using tiny house principles of space and efficiency, I could build  something that gave guest a lot better experiences, a lot more space, and alot more satisfaction.”


.. Aint nothing to it, but to do it….

Over the next year the idea developed, rapidly while I was in the states, and I moved to Cartagena with a few goals for this resort: 1. I wanted it to represent all the things I loved about Cartagena, the spanish colonial architecture, the culture, the islands, and the people. 2. I wanted it to be eco-friendly, 3. I wanted to create a truly unique experience that couldn’t be found in Tierra Bomba, Cartagena, or even the world.  When I finally got down to Cartagena, I was fortunate enough to meet one of the the most well known architects in Colombia who is an expert in restoration architecture and he loved the idea to create a “Tiny House Resort” on the islands that replicated the Spanish Colonial Architecture that made Cartagena so famous.  He also loved the fact that we wanted to make this project truly sustainable and Eco-friendly.  We worked together for almost 2 years on the designs, until we got to something we thought was world class.  During that time, I was also  looking he perfect location (which was easier said than done).  That took me about 1.5 years, a lot of stress, a ton of starts and stops and bumps in the road (we’ll get to that in some of the other episodes of the documentary), but we stayed with it,  and finally found the perfect location.  Once that was done, it took over a year to start construction. Fast-forward 2 years, and a global pandemic later, and Tiny Village Cartagena is just a few short months from becoming a reality.

If you are interested in updates, you can check out www.tinyvillagecartagena.com or our Instagram and Facebook pages.

akil king