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How Jardín Became My Favorite Office in the World

I want to be completely honest: I came to Jardín because I was burned out. Not the cute, "I need a vacation" kind of burned out. The real kind. The kind where you stare at Figma for six hours and produce absolutely nothing, then feel guilty about it until 2 AM, then do it all again the next morning with a mate that tastes like disappointment.

I'd been freelancing from my apartment in Palermo for two years straight. My clients were happy. My portfolio was growing. My creativity was dead. Every design I made looked the same — clean, minimal, functional, soulless. I needed something to shake me loose.

A friend who had been backpacking through Colombia mentioned Jardín casually. "It's this tiny town in the mountains," she said. "Everything is painted in colors that shouldn't work together but somehow do." That sentence lodged in my brain like a splinter.

Three weeks later, I was on a bus from Medellín with my laptop, a portable monitor, and enough yerba mate to survive a month.

First Impressions: A Designer's Sensory Overload

The bus ride from Medellín takes about four hours, and the journey itself is gorgeous. But nothing prepares you for the moment you walk into Jardín's main plaza. The Basilica rises up like a cathedral from a dream — all Gothic spires and intricate stonework — and surrounding it, every building is painted in a different saturated hue. Turquoise next to tangerine. Mustard yellow beside deep violet. Coral pink against forest green.

As a designer, my first instinct was to photograph everything. My second instinct was to question every color palette I'd ever created. My careful, muted gradients suddenly looked cowardly next to a town that paints its pharmacy lime green and makes it look elegant.

I checked into Isla de Pascua hostel and immediately knew I'd made the right choice. The common area had good WiFi, comfortable workspaces, and — crucially — a view of those mountains that made me want to actually open my laptop rather than throw it into the nearest river.

Building a Routine (With Extra Mate)

Here's something nobody tells you about working remotely from a small Colombian town: it's weirdly productive. In Buenos Aires, I had a million distractions — cafés to try, friends to meet, Instagram stories to obsessively check. In Jardín, the rhythm is simpler.

I'd wake up around 7, brew my mate on the hostel's terrace while watching the mist burn off the mountains. By 8, I was at my laptop. The WiFi at Isla de Pascua was solid — not fiber-optic-in-a-WeWork solid, but reliable enough for video calls and uploading large files. I worked until noon, then walked to the plaza for lunch.

Afternoons were for exploring. I'd wander the streets with my camera, collecting textures and color combinations that I later incorporated into actual client work. One afternoon, I spent two hours photographing a single wall — the way the paint was peeling revealed layers of previous colors beneath, like a geological cross-section of aesthetic decisions.

The other digital nomads at the hostel became my unofficial coworkers. There was a developer from Berlin who explained blockchain to me seventeen times (I still don't get it), a copywriter from Bogotá, and a photographer from Melbourne who shot everything on film and made me feel ancient for using a digital camera.

The Coffee Revelation

I need to talk about the coffee. I know, I know — you're thinking, "She's Argentine, she drinks mate, what does she know about coffee?" Fair. But listen.

I did a coffee farm tour on my third day, mostly because everyone at the hostel insisted. I walked through the fields, watched the roasting process, and tasted coffee that was roasted literally thirty minutes before I drank it.

It ruined me. I'm not being dramatic (okay, maybe a little). But I genuinely could not go back to the instant Nescafé I'd been drinking alongside my mate. The coffee in Jardín has layers — fruity, chocolatey, sometimes floral — that I didn't know coffee could have. I started having a morning tinto alongside my mate and felt like I was betraying my entire country.

When Design Meets Place

The real magic happened around day four. I was working on a brand identity for a boutique hotel client in Mexico City, and I was stuck. The client wanted something "warm but sophisticated, playful but luxurious." I'd been producing variations of the same boring earth-tone palette for a week.

Then I looked up from my laptop and saw the building across the street — hot pink walls, deep blue window frames, terracotta roof tiles, and a wooden balcony overflowing with red flowers. It was warm. It was sophisticated. It was playful and luxurious. Jardín had been showing me the answer the entire time.

I rebuilt the palette from scratch, pulling colors directly from photographs I'd taken around town. Saturated but not garish. Bold but harmonious. The client loved it. They called it "the most alive design" they'd ever seen.

That became my process for the rest of the week. I'd explore in the afternoon, photograph whatever caught my eye, and the next morning I'd use those images as a launching point for client work. The colorful colonial architecture, the textures of handwoven baskets in the market, the gradient of green shades on the mountainsides — everything became source material.

The Night I Stayed Up Drawing

On my sixth night, there was a power outage. The whole town went dark for about two hours. At first, everyone at the hostel groaned — WiFi down, laptops dying, the horror. But then someone brought out candles, someone else produced a bottle of aguardiente, and suddenly we were sitting on the terrace under a sky so full of stars it looked fake.

I pulled out my sketchbook — the physical one I hadn't touched in months — and started drawing. Not for any client. Not for any project. Just drawing. Faces, buildings, the shape of the mountains against the stars. My hand remembered things my mouse had forgotten.

When the power came back, I didn't open my laptop. I kept drawing until 2 AM. It was the first time in over a year that I'd created something purely because I wanted to.

Why I Extended My Stay

I was supposed to stay five nights. I stayed eight. I cancelled a weekend plan in Medellín and rebooked my bus. The hostel staff just smiled knowingly — apparently, this happens a lot.

Those extra three days were some of the best of my trip. I visited the Basilica, hiked to a viewpoint where I could see the entire valley, spent an afternoon at the hostel pool sketching guests and getting hilariously bad at tejo.

What I'm Taking Home

I left Jardín with a full sketchbook, a hard drive of photographs, two kilograms of local coffee beans, and a creative confidence I hadn't felt in years. My designs are different now — bolder, more colorful, less afraid. My clients have noticed.

But more than the professional stuff, Jardín reminded me why I became a designer in the first place. Not because I wanted to optimize conversion rates or create "scalable design systems." Because I love color. Because I love how a well-placed visual detail can make someone feel something. Because beauty matters, and this weird little town in the Colombian mountains is practically drowning in it.

If you're a creative person feeling stuck, go to Jardín. Stay at Isla de Pascua. Bring your laptop, but also bring a sketchbook. Let the colors seep in. Let the mountains slow you down. Let the mate brew a little longer than usual.

You'll come back different. The good kind of different.

— Ana Belén Ruiz, Buenos Aires, Argentina. July 2025.