It began, as all great adventures do, not with a bang, but with a whisper. A simple, almost whimsical thought sparked one evening: "What if we just sailed around the world?" For us—a family of five from Belgium—that whisper grew into a roar that we couldn't ignore. We traded our comfortable life for five years of relentless preparation, learning everything from celestial navigation to engine repair, until the day came when we stood on the dock in Martinique, ready to cast off the lines on our new floating home, Let It Be.

Those first two months were a baptism by fire. The boat, our vessel of dreams, demanded everything from us. But with every challenge overcome, our resolve hardened, and finally, we sailed out, leaving the Caribbean in our wake.

Our first major passage to the Galapagos was a brutal, upwind slog that tested our spirits. But our reward was a world that time forgot. We walked among giant tortoises, watched iguanas bask on volcanic rock, and swam with playful sea lions and graceful sharks who regarded us with curious indifference. It was a land of raw, untamed life that felt utterly magical.

When the lush, jagged peaks of French Polynesia finally rose from the horizon, it felt like a homecoming. We spent months living a life we had only dreamed of. In the Gambier islands, we were welcomed with an incredible generosity, learning to live by the rhythm of the supply ship. In the majestic Marquises, we hiked to hidden waterfalls and stood in quiet reverence at the graves of Jacques Brel and Paul Gauguin.

The atolls of the Tuamotus were breathtaking rings of sand in an ocean of impossible blues, where we dove through passes filled with "walls of sharks."

Our journey across the Pacific stretched for five incredible years, each island weaving itself into the fabric of our family. But eventually, the call for solid ground—for a place to put down roots—grew as strong as the call for the open sea had once been.

In 2014, we decided to settle in Costa Rica. We built our life anew: enrolling the children in local school, crafting our home from diverse woods—some from our own land—and adding two bungalows for guests. We replanted forests, traced pathways, and left more than half of our 40 hectares untouched to remain wild.