Yoko North, the bridge and the first buyers

In January 2021, the first group said yes. I called them the Lucky Six. They came through friendships, PassRight and my network. Many of those relationships are very different today. That is one of the hardest parts of telling this story.

The offer was bold. Early buyers were promised land and a house in some of the best spots on the mountain, plus a small stake in Yoko. But the mountain was forest. No road, no lots, no titles. I took buyers hiking through the woods, and sometimes I got lost. I had no experience in real estate development.

I want to say plainly what happened to those houses. Their contracts offered either land and a house of a set model, or two pieces of land. As North ran into trouble, they signed an offer to move their land to Yoko South. Then South got stuck with the authorities. I could not build their houses, and there was no money to build them, so I gave each of them a second lot instead. Their lots at South are two to five times bigger than the ones they would have had, with ocean views. But South is stuck, and they are stuck in limbo with it. That is a shame.

Liran and a man wearing headphones smiling in the evening sun — With one of the Lucky Six, the first group of buyers

With a neighbour who knew local development, we built a bridge and an access road. Nearby families who had to cross the river to get home finally had a way across. Those neighbours are still my friends.

Workers and wooden formwork for the bridge abutments — Building the North bridge

Then the problems came. A neighbour said the road crossed his land and took legal action. A post in a Facebook group that most of Santa Teresa followed showed a cleared property next door and called it Yoko. It was not our land. People reposted the photos and it went viral. From then on, my name was tied to something we did not do. Posts like this never really stopped. This is how the anger against me and Yoko Village started, and it started with false information. I was called a destroyer of nature, though we had planned our roads around the trees and counted every single one.

Social media post with an aerial photo of cleared land and the words Stop the greed — Posts like this spread online. The cleared land in them was not Yoko's.

Social media post pairing monkeys with an aerial photo of cleared land — Posts like this spread online. The cleared land in them was not Yoko's.

Concrete box culvert under construction with a digger behind it — Building a drainage culvert under a Yoko road

Excavator on a narrow track through the forest — Building infrastructure at Yoko North while counting every tree

Concrete and steel villa frame among palm trees — A North villa during construction

Building costs rose to as much as three times what I expected, so I stopped selling land with houses and sold land only. Afraid North would never get its permits, I found a bigger site and moved most buyers there. That became Yoko South.