Investors bought Coffee Caye island, located in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Belize City, to create own nation, 'Principality of Islandia.'
BELIZE --"Who wouldn't want to buy an island?" Marshall Mayer asks above the roar of the engine as the boat cuts through the still waters of the Caribbean Sea. Belize City is fast disappearing behind, as a group of mangrove-covered islands grows larger on the horizon.Mayer is co-founder of Let's Buy an Island, an ambitious project that in 2018 set out to crowdfund the purchase of an island.
Coffee Caye is long, thin and vaguely shaped like a coffee bean. One side of the island, where a clearing overlooks a small beach that leads down into a shallow bay, had been taken over as a campsite for the night. The other half of Coffee Caye is thick with scrub and bounded by mangroves. With a hardcore customer base dedicated to visiting politically disputed destinations, the notion of buying an island in order to start a micronation was one that would resurface again and again on Johnson's tours to far-flung locations.
A shortlist of islands in the Philippines, Malaysia, Ireland, Panama and Belize was drawn up after extensive research, and the investors voted on Coffee Caye as a typical tropical island that was also reasonably easy to reach, and that they could afford to buy outright. For Johnson, turning Coffee Caye into a micronation is a form of escapism and experimentation."Who hasn't dreamed of making their own country?" he says."Particularly in a post-Trump, post-Brexit, Covid world. If a bunch of regular people can make this work, perhaps it can be a force for good."
Mayer sees it as more of a quirky marketing tool. Mayer emphasizes that the micronation should be seen as"tongue in cheek," and that while they might bring in their own rules when they are on the island , Coffee Caye still falls squarely within the laws and borders of Belize. Investors like Rice can visit the island at cost, and they'll also receive a percentage of any profits that might be made in the future, or if the island is sold."You might think I'm trying to sell you a timeshare," says Rice,"but I'm the one paying to be here on my own island."
Potential investors will have questions to ask, though, including concerns about hurricanes and rising sea levels that could affect the island.
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