Travel Stories | #1: Mauritius – by Paul Corgan

The last line of the email read: “Is there any chance you’d be able to fly to Mauritius this week for the job trial?”

It was the email I’d been hoping for, but I had absolutely no clue where Mauritius was.

Crossing my fingers for somewhere cool, I typed ‘Mauritius’ into Google and immediately saw crystal clear blue waters, palm trees, and sunshine… yes! Mauritius is a small Island country in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar and I couldn’t wait to be there.

It was an easy yes, and I started prepping for my trip. I purchased the flights (not cheap last minute…), got some new warm weather clothes and gear, and told my family and friends I was outta there soon.

If you haven’t ready my 30×30 series, you might not know much about this role so let me briefly explain.

I’d applied to this role called Community Builder and Travel Host several months earlier. I’d been through 3 rounds of interviews and this in-person trial was the final piece.

The job was, as the name implies, about building community among traveling digital nomads. The company hiring for it coordinates 1 month stays in countries around the world that members of the community can attend. The host helps set up the trips, provides info to the members who will be there, and helps to make the month amazing.

On these trips, people are working full time, but are making the most of their ability to work from their laptops by spending there time traveling the world. Why not wrap up work and grab a beer on a tropical beach for sunset rather than sink into your couch at home to binge the latest Netflix show?

As I flew over the Atlantic, I was incredibly excited about this role and my new potential life, but I was also really nervous.

I was headed to this island to be observed. It felt a bit like a reality show. If I didn’t show up in the right ways or said the wrong thing I worried I could still not get the job. In fact, the team mentioned that the hire rate for this role was only about 50% from the in-person trial stage.

But it was obviously worth the risk.

I touched down in Mauritius and made my way over to the west side of the island to the town of Flic en Flac. It was a beautiful, lush island with so much greenery and seemed even more lush in contrast to the bleak winter I had just left back home in Maine.

I checked in at the villa and started to meet all the people already there (it was a week into the trip so I was joining for the last 3 weeks). The people were so welcoming and friendly and I felt surprisingly comfortable for being half way around the world in a new country.

We hiked or kite-surfed in the mornings, worked during the days, and then got dinners together or went to the beach for sunset. On the weekends, we did trips like camping on an island and having an all night dance party with local musicians and a DJ there. It was incredible and I was in awe of this life that was so much more vivid and full than any I’d known back home.

I was struck by the fact that some of these people were doing this full time and this was what their “normal” lives looked like. New horizons, new experiences, so many adventures. I was hooked. How could I ever go back to my “normal” life after this? Why was “normal” life accepted as the way you should do things back home? By comparison, it seemed to be an incredibly boring and mundane way to spend our incredibly limited and precious time here on earth.

I loved getting to know the people on this trip and the people from the company itself were great! Everyone was so full of life and up for anything, they were my people. I had so many fun games and adventures while in Mauritius and I was constantly smiling because this life was awesome.

Another part of my time in Mauritius that further highlighted the contrast between my life back home and my new life was romance.