Hey!

My name is Jose Pablo, I'm 23 years old, born in Bolivia and actually living in France.

I'm a freelancer journalist (actually majoring in Journalism but been working for a while now) that writes about culture (music and literature) and chronicles about social matters.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Traveling is an activity that I to relate to solitude. Not loneliness, but solitude. When I was a child I didn't had the chance to really travel a lot, and I started traveling when I started college, doing it mostly by myself. This made me confident about people everywhere, realizing that our main trace as humans is amiability, although we always doubt it.

Hemingway wrote that you should never travel with anybody you don't love. As I traveled, I came to realize that the people I love the most are the ones that I stumble upon exactly in the right time and in the right place.

I love an Argentinian guy I met the first night I stayed in Paris, with whom I drank three bottles of wine and went walking through the Canal Saint-Martin at dawn.

I love a woman from Havana that I met for only one night with her boyfriend and chased me for three blocks when she realized I forgot my wallet on the park we were hanging out.

I love an elder lady I met in the Montparnasse cemetery, who offered me a cigarette, a smile, and recited Cesar Vallejo's poetry for me all that evening.

I love a Belgian girl I met in Trinidad, with whom I rambled through the city of Santa Clara and talked for hours sipping rum from a bottle.

And I would love to meet more people, opening my house to be that stranger who's an angel in disguise or meeting a new great friend that forever will remain as the reason to return to a city.

Interests

• literature
• photography
• wine
• traveling
• history
• languages
• social justice
• cuisine
• indigenous cultures

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: mainly jazz and protest song, but I'm not picky. I could listen to Pink Floyd and chill, sing my lungs out trying to follow a radio playing something from Elton John, or make a drunken fool of myself trying to dance to salsa.

Movies: I'm a big Woody Allen fan.

Books: My mains would be Hemingway for short stories, Cavafy when it comes to poetry, Theroux and Caparrós for traveling and Bolaño if I had to pick a novel.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Last December I spent an entire week exploring the Sierra Maestra, a two hundred kilometer mountain range on the south east cost of Cuba. I stayed in locals houses, camped in the jungle and rambled through little towns without any schedule whatsoever. It was a magical trip through a marvelous natural park, an historical landmark where Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and other fellows started the cuban revolution, and an isolated location where I could really grasp the daily life of the beautiful and brave people of Cuba.

The experience was enlightening because it finally confirmed something I always thought about traveling: it is not about running around franticly through the main sites of a city; but about seizing the opportunity to emerge yourself into the stories, the laughter, the reality, and the generosity (always unnoticed) of the people that surround you.

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Peru, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United States, Uruguay

Countries I’ve Lived In

Argentina, Bolivia, France