On my last visit to the site, I paid a visit to John Spragge, a farmer on Boca Brava: it’s a fascinating group of people hanging out in this unknown little corner of the world. I don’t know if he’d like the term, but the best way I can think of to describe John Spragge is as a “tropicalized British gentleman farmer.” He’d been in Columbia for a long time, but bought a huge chunk of Boca Brava in the early 1990s and has been living there since. His son Carlos runs a boatyard and small diving operation out of Boca Chica and he took us over to his father’s place for a tour.

Anyway, it was fascinating to see his highly self-sufficient and sustainable operation: bricks made on site, a solar-powered freezer, pond-based water collection, etc. Buying here 15 years ago might have a been a bit too early from a pure investment point of view (things only really took off here in the last 5 years or so), but John definitely seems very prescient right now.

Here’s a photo from the end of our tour. Clockwise from the left: Spragge’s son Carlos (looking like he’s making monkey sounds), John, myself, and Cedar. The cold beers we’re drinking came from John’s solar powered freezer.