Daily life in the Caribbean – how I became a digital nomad

My very first experience as a digital nomad was living in the French Antilles for 2 months at the end of 2018. This adventure gave me a lot of profits. My daily life in the Caribbean islands confirmed that I was able to focus on work while living next to a beautiful beach, tempting me with warm water and white sand. And that was one of the biggest advantages for me, as a beginner digital nomad.

I was always interested in work and self-development. But even if I work a lot, and actually love it, I also try to keep a healthy life balance. So no, in the Caribbean I was not only lying on the beach, drinking rum. And no, I was not working all the time. In this post, I will show you how my daily life in the Caribbean looked like.

Read more: The Ultimate Travel Guide to Guadeloupe.

Hard beginnings

If you were following my trip from the beginning you might know that together with my boyfriend we had some electronics issues from the very beginning. On the second day of our brand new digital nomad’s life, one of our computers broke down. Two weeks after we drowned one of our smartphones. So our technical abilities decreased. Nice beginning.

So in the first days, we had a small crisis. How we would be able to work with only one laptop and one smartphone per two persons? But after a few days, we managed to change our point of view. We started to treat this situation as a challenge and a good lesson for both of us. And it worked pretty well. We learned a lot about self-discipline, which is actually something that you miss while working in the office. When we changed ourselves to our own bosses, we needed to learn to focus on the work in a kind of new way.

Work and travel balance

But hey! We did not come to the Caribbean only to work, right? In Guadeloupe, we were so happy to live next to a beautiful Plage de La Caravelle. We were visiting it almost every day, early in the morning or after dinner, around 4 PM.

But actually, after a few days, our trips to the beach became a part of our work routine too! We find out, that while chilling in the water and watching the Caribbean sunsets, we were able to organize our mixed-up thoughts and create the most brilliant ideas to improve our projects. Those brainstorms shared in the water of the Caribbean Sea were the most significant for our businesses. In fact, we appreciated those moments so much. And they were the essence of digital nomad’s life – have a possibility to calmly work on your own way in a paradise.

On the first island, we didn’t have a fixed work system yet. But we were working a lot. We were also visiting neighboring towns and beaches. But during the last week in Guadeloupe we had a few days off for vacation, so we could rent a car and visit the distant corners of the island. Thanks to this we saw beautiful natural wonders, like the volcano or the jungle waterfalls, and discovered other interesting places. But after this week of a total chill, we had a lot of zeal to work.

Routine of daily life in the Caribbean

In Guadeloupe, we were acting more spontaneously. But after moving to Martinique we developed an efficient work system. So in general, our days looked like this: two days of work and chill at home, a trip for a third day. This schedule worked pretty well during our second month of daily life in the Caribbean.

Since we had only one computer and one smartphone, we needed to create our own daily work routine, so each of us could benefit out of it. We found out that the best solution was to divide our workday into two parts: morning and afternoon. This system worked pretty well, especially, when we were living in Martinique, where a beach in our town was not so tempting (covered with awful sargasso). One day, one of us woke up earlier to work on the computer, and we made the switch on the second day.

Our daily work system:

So usually I woke up at 5 AM. The sun in the Caribbean raises around 6 AM, so that time was perfect to start a day. I immediately sat down to work. Mornings are the best for me to focus on high-priority tasks, like writing or creating new strategies. Around 7 AM I had a snack or cereals and came back to work.

At 10 AM we together had breakfast and a bigger pause. Until that time I had most of the daily tasks done. I found out that this system worked perfectly for me. I was glad to fulfill the most important points of my to-do list, and actually, it was still morning, when I finished.

After breakfast, Mariusz took over the laptop and me, I switched to the smartphone to work on social media, watch some tutorials and learn, learn, learn. After a while I could already relax, cook dinner and chill a little bit until evening, when we both had free time. And the next day, we switched roles.

Lesson learned and final thoughts

This daily life in the Caribbean learned us self-discipline. Which was so important when we tried to switch to freelancers’ lifestyle. And the most significant thing is that now, after this trial, we are sure we will able to work remotely on any tasks.

Sometimes it is hard, but if you are doing something that you really enjoy it comes much easier. Our daily life in the Caribbean islands shown us that this is a lifestyle that we truly appreciate. And we are going to continue to plan some new digital nomad’s trips somewhen in the future.

Thinking about moving to the Caribbean? Read these posts first:

• Costs of living in the Caribbean – everything you need to know
• How to get around with the public transport in the French Antilles
• 8 things that surprised us in the Caribbean
• Guadeloupe or Martinique: which island to choose for a trip?
• 16 meals, snacks, and drinks you must try in the Caribbean

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