I'm from the colombian Caribbean coast but with aztec roots, as my mom is native to Iztapalapa, one of the biggest neighborhoods in Mexico City. I was raised in Cartagena, a really hot city in the north of the country. I studied economics at Barranquilla, a city famous for its carnival, music, poets and writers, as Gabriel García Márquez started his journalist career there. I've lived in Recife, Brazil where I learned Portuguese and got interested in Brazilian culture while working with an ONG. I've also lived in Quito, Ecuador where I found one of my biggest loves: Andes region. I got really interested in spice history, then started investigating their traditional medicinal uses in different cultures, their culinary, ritual, ceremonial, recreational and many other uses spices have.

My biggest passions are: music, literature, poetry, ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology and pre-columbian history.

Pourquoi je suis sur Couchsurfing

I'm new on Couchsurfing. I got introduced to the community by my girlfriend Alejandra, who is a really experienced traveller that has visited more than 40 countries using Couchsurfing. On April 2022, we went to the Amazon, where I experienced for the first time being a guest in a couchsurfer house. It was really amazing, I met people and made friends from France, Israel and Perú.

Then I decided I wanted from experiences like the one I lived on the Amazon region, so that's how I became a couchsurfer.

Morceaux de musique, films et livres

I love colombian traditional music (traditional genres as vallenato, cumbia, bullerengue, fandango, porro, champeta, Musica africana, lumbalú, marimba, currulao, llanera, etc.). Also I love music from all over the world, especially all kind of jazz genres, psychedelic rock, stoner rock, folk rock, freak folk, alternative rock, krautrock from Germany, English rock; African music from Mali, Ethiopia, Congo, Tunisia, Nigeria, Angola, Niger, South Africa, Senegal, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Somalia, etc. Son cubano, reggae, ska, chanson francaise... I LOVE MUSIC.

I love reading poetry and currently my favorite writers is Mircea Cartarescu, a Rumanian poet and novelist. I like reading about antrophology, archaeology and about ancient and indigenous cultures. I like the works of people like Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hoffman, Gordon Wasson, Christian Ratsch, Paul Stamets, Michael Pollan, etc. I have a particular curiosity for entheogenic plants.

I love films. My favorite directors are Fellini, Passolini, Antonioni, Noé, Kubrick, etc.

Une aventure extraordinaire que j'ai vécue

Walking through the Amazon jungle at night with nothing more than a machete and a flashlight. It is a terrifying and fascinating experience.

Enseignez, apprenez, partagez

I can teach about colombian exotic spices, their culinary uses and tradicional cultural relevance. Also about native flora, music and poetry from Colombia. I play guitar and bass.