While many 22-year-olds are graduating college and deciding what’s next for them, Robert Lennox Pinnacle has made what he calls “the biggest decision of my life so far” with an unusual purchase—7.5 acres of land in a Colombian jungle.
The Copenhagen, Denmark, native made the big decision to invest approximately $40,000 in three hectares of jungle land, with a dream to build a self-sufficient and sustainable home.
“I was actually traveling here when I was 19,” Pinnacle told Newsweek. “I had just turned 19 and was traveling with a friend. We realized that there were a lot of people living in these areas of the world who were maybe not rich in an economic sense, but they just seemed extremely free and to have an extremely high quality of life.”
Inspired by this way of living, Pinnacle spent years working full-time jobs in Denmark, determined to save enough money to turn his dream into reality. After months of searching, he found the perfect piece of land and arranged the purchase through local connections.
The land boasts a natural stream, providing fresh drinking water year-round. It also feeds his crops during dry seasons, a necessity for his fruit farm, which produces coconuts, sugar cane, oranges, passion fruit, guanabana (soursop), and avocados.
“I have approximately a dozen avocado trees,” Pinnacle said. “They’re all mature and large, so I’m producing over a ton of avocados each season.”
Pinnacle plans to turn his avocado harvest into avocado oil, hoping to sell it online. “I would probably be able to make over 100 liters of avocado oil each season, and I would love to try to be able to make a business out of selling that online.”
Pinnacle is currently living in a nearby village while he works on constructing a cabin on his property.
“I don’t really have any former building experience, any construction or anything. So I’m kind of just winging this, to be honest,” he said. “I just have a lot of confidence in the whole process of learning on the job. That’s kind of what I’m doing with this whole thing.”
Beyond farming and creating a self-sustainable home, Pinnacle also hopes to be able to give back to parts of the land and attempt restoring habitats for the native monkey species.
“The previous owners have deforested a lot of the land—maybe half to two-thirds of it by fire—and I don’t need that much at all for myself,” he said. “So, quite a lot of it, I’ll be replanting native forests to try to kind of grow the habitat for the monkeys. At least two of the three monkeys that I have here are endangered species.”
Global Forest Watch said, from 2002 to 2024, Colombia lost 2.09 million hectares of humid primary forest, representing 39 percent of the country’s total tree cover loss during that time.
This contributed to a 3.8 percent decrease in the total extent of Colombia’s primary rain forest—a crucial habitat for many of the nation’s endemic and threatened species, including birds, primates and amphibians.
Pinnacle is sharing the journey online where reactions have been mixed. “Some people comment and say that I should just leave this land and let it all go to the jungle,” he said. “But I think the most sustainable thing you can do really is take a small part of land—maybe three acres, maybe half of what I have—and use that as a homestead. You can use that not only to supply yourself with food, but you could probably also produce enough of whatever to make an income off that.”
As he builds his new life in the Colombian jungle, Pinnacle remains optimistic about the future. “I have so many plans and dreams and ideas—it’s kind of hard to just put it into words right now, especially since it’s all so new for me. But, right now, the plan is simple: plant a bunch of fruit trees, build the cabin, and take it one step at a time.”
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