CURRENT MISSION

To search the world for grapes and then make wine!

ABOUT ME

I am not actually from Antarctica. But it is the only piece of land on earth not owned by a government. I like that fact. Ideologically, I am from Antarctica.

There is nowhere I call "patria". When I arrive somewhere new, I feel like I have returned home.

PHILOSOPHY

Forget philosophy, live life.

Travel philosophy: Don't travel to see the sites, but to know the people and understand the culture. Throw away the camera!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I just learned about CouchSurfing (the website), but I have been couchsurfing (the act) all of my adult life. That is why I have a bad back: most couches are too short. But I also have a history of letting people surf on my couch. I wish I knew about this website earlier so that I could have hosted some travellers before I started my current trip.

Interests

My interests change too frequently to list them here. My main interest, however, is to have no interests, and just enjoy life whichever way it is served. When I was a kid I was interested in being an explorer, but then I learned that everything had been explored already. When I was a little older I wanted to be a poet, but none of my good poems were written with words, so I couldn't publish them. Next, I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I had no money. Now I just want to be.

I make wine, beer and hydromel...so that I can drown my sorrows from not achieving all the things listed above!

• culture
• poetry
• wine
• beer
• traveling
• history

Music, Movies, and Books

When it comes to art, I am out-of-date. I listen to classical music, medieval music, experimental jazz and la guitarra flamenca. (And Jorge Drexler, though I can't explain why.) With cinema, I am stuck in the 60s and 70s, when films were works of art: Godard, Tarkovsky, Antonioni, Pasolini, Fellini, Bellochio, Resnais, entre autres. Books: I admire literature in which the authors wrote about themselves, about their own lives, about what they knew and experienced. I like imagination but not fiction: Henry Miller, Giacomo Casanova, Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Hesse, Remarque. (They're all dead, by the way.)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Spent a night at the rim of an active volcano, lying on my stomach with my head over the crater, staring down into the burning red lava... listening to the earth speak to me. I saw that the volcano was an eye, the eye of the earth : this eye was a mouth and it spoke to me by looking at me. It told me more than the sea of Solaris. All of the dormant veins of Life began surging with hot magma... And a second thing: almost got bitten by a poisonous snake while sneaking into Machu Picchu without a ticket.

Countries I’ve Visited

Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal

Countries I’ve Lived In

Antarctica, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Croatia, France, Spain, United Kingdom, United States