Hola guapo!
I've been sitting with this for a few days now.
Not because I didn't know what to say. But because some experiences are too big for words, and you want to find the right ones before you try.
So here I am… Trying.
In May, me and Chiara Mazzucco hosted a coworking retreat in Nerja, Málaga. Nine guests. One villa. One week together.
I've hosted a lot of trips by now. Cyprus, Naples, Morocco, Tenerife, Greece… honestly, I've lost count. I've shared so many sunsets with so many strangers who became friends that I thought I knew what to expect going in.
I didn't.
Two of the people who walked through that door, I already knew them. Past tripmates. People who had trusted me once before and chose to trust me again.
I want you to understand what that feels like, because I'm not sure I can fully explain it.
To look at someone and see, with your own eyes, how a trip changed their life. To watch them walk into a room full of strangers and immediately start making people feel welcome because they know how it feels to arrive not knowing anyone, and they don't want anyone else to feel that way. To realise they came back because something in them was searching for exactly an experience like the one we built, to help people becoming successful with a personal brand. Because they knew what was possible here.
That moment alone, I'll carry it for a long time.
Then the real work began.
And I don't mean laptop work, although we did plenty of that too. I mean the other kind. The kind that asks something of you. The kind you genuinely cannot do alone at home in front of a screen.
Chiara ran personal growth workshops that I'm still thinking about now, weeks later. We didn't talk about productivity or routines or optimising your morning. We went somewhere deeper. Vulnerability shares that nobody saw coming. Moments where someone would start speaking and the whole room would just… go quiet. Because what they were saying was so honest it almost hurt to hear.
People showed up. Really showed up. The walls came down faster than I've ever seen.
And then, every evening, we just lived.
One morning I woke everyone up with a blindfolded rope activation, everyone connected, holding on, moving together without being able to see a thing. When they finally opened their eyes, the laughter was the kind that comes from somewhere real. Surprised, free, a little ridiculous. Exactly how life should feel like.
One afternoon we got on a catamaran and watched the Málaga sunset from the sea. Eleven of us. Wind in our faces. Nobody on their phone. Just there, together, with that specific kind of happiness that only happens when you stop trying to capture the moment and just live inside it.
And then there was the karaoke night.
Alcohol-free. Which honestly made it better, because nobody was hiding behind anything. Just people being completely, embarrassingly, joyfully themselves. Singing badly and not caring. Laughing at each other and with each other. By the end of the night, the room felt like we'd known each other for years.
That's the thing about these experiences that I keep trying to explain to people who haven't lived one. They compress time. A week becomes a lifetime. A stranger becomes a friend becomes family, and there's no shortcut to it, no app for it, no algorithm that replicates it. You just have to be there.
I want to tell you about the closing circle.
It's something Chiara and I do at the end of every trip/retreat. We sit together, close the week, and give everyone space to say what they're carrying. Whatever they want to share. Whatever the week stirred up in them.
I've done this many times. I really thought I was prepared.
One of the participants looked at me and said:
"I feel like you literally changed my entire life. You made the world a better place through me."
I tried to keep it together.
I failed.
Chiara too.
We sat there, the two of us, tears running down our faces, surrounded by nine people who had arrived as strangers and were now holding each other like they'd known each other forever. We cried. We laughed. We hugged and didn't want to let go. We all knew something was ending, and at the same time, we all knew that this would have been a new beginning for many of us…
Someone wrote to me after:
"The magic, the vulnerability, the rawness, the growth edges… it truly feels like soul family."
Soul family. That's it. That's the only way to describe it.
Here's what I know after years of doing this.
You can't manufacture it. You can't plan it. You can't advertise for it.
What you can do is create the conditions. Put the right people in the same space, remove the noise, give them time… Be present yourself, really present, not hosting-present, but human-present, and then get out of the way and trust that something magical will happen.
That's what Chiara and I did in Nerja. And what came back to us was bigger than anything we put in.
I came back from that week different.
Not in a dramatic way, not because anything huge happened or changed on the outside. Different in the quiet way. The kind of different that takes weeks to understand, that shows up in small things, the way you answer a question, the things you stop worrying about, the things you suddenly can't stop caring about.
But if I'm honest, this retreat gave me something even bigger than that. It gave me a confirmation I didn't know I was still looking for.
I'm born for this.
Not "I'm good at this." Not "this works as a business." I mean something deeper, I am made for connecting people. It's not something I do. It's something I am. And being in that room, watching nine strangers slowly become something else, watching the light in people's eyes change… I don't have a better word for it than joy. Pure, uncomplicated joy.
Seeing someone smile and knowing that smile comes from a place they didn't have access to a week ago. Knowing that they leave with a clearer sense of what actually matters in life. Knowing that they are now a little more capable, more confident, more open, more free to create as many moments of happiness as they want, for themselves and for the people around them.
That's it. That's the whole thing. That's why I do this.
Looking at those two past tripmates on the last day, watching them in that closing circle, I felt something I can only call pride. The deep, quiet kind. The kind that doesn't need to be said out loud. The kind that just sits in your chest and reminds you that what you're building is real, and it matters, and it's working.
This is why I built Feel.Travel.
Not for the bookings, not for the metrics, Not for any pitch deck or investor meeting.
For this… For the closing circle. For the tears nobody expected. For the blindfolds and the catamaran and the karaoke and the conversations at midnight around the pool about what we're actually afraid of and what we actually want.
For the proof, which I get, again and again and again, that real human connection is still possible. That we can create it, intentionally, on purpose, if we have the courage to show up and let ourselves be seen.
If you've ever traveled and felt alone. If you've ever sat in a café with your laptop, surrounded by people, and felt like something was missing. If you've ever wondered what it would look like to travel differently, not as a tourist passing through, not as a solo worker grinding from a couch, not in your room of a huge coliving villa, but as part of something real… This is what we're building.
And there is always, always room for you in it!
Grazie a Chiara, for being the kind of co-host who makes everyone feel safe enough to fall apart a little, and put themselves back together stronger. You're one of a kind. You are divine.
And grazie to all nine of you. You know who you are. You showed up, you opened up, and you changed, and because of that, I changed too.
You are, forever, part of this family.
Vi voglio bene. ❤️
Ad maiora.
Nico