Life as a travel writer

Read and study, live, remember, write. That is, in short, what I do when I travel.

It was on a visit to Mexico in 2005, before leaving for university, that I opened my eyes and realized that, for me, traveling was not an uncomfortable and cluttered process. The exercise of facing the complex nuances of different latitudes made me feel truly alive. The eager but pressing uncertainty of my journeys pushed me to study my destinations more and create better itineraries. The organization invigorated me and each new journey was an opportunity to improve. From the most remote places he returned with a full soul and a shaken spirit. That inspired me to travel the world and invite people to explore it just as I did. Today, traveling continues to be what motivates me to continue living with the spirit that characterizes me.

When living the first experiences of an insolent adolescent with assisted independence outside of Panama, I found myself happy on airplanes visiting friends in the United States. During college, history and politics absorbed me and gastronomy amazed me. It was there that I took my first steps in the world of blogging. Recently, I reread some of those writings from ten years ago and honestly, they are rubbish, but I dared to do them. In 2008 I made the trip that changed my life, to China, where I stayed for a year studying the history, culture, language and literature of that exciting and enigmatic country. Every night, I wrote in a diary my adventures of the day: “I ate roast duck in”, “they got me off a bus because I didn't know where I was going”, “I took too much in Tibet and the altitude did not help”. Experiences like these made me write more and more and tell the world what I experienced there. This is how I wrote my first travel articles, narrating anecdotes about the murky waters of the Yangtze and the terrible smell of the streets in Xinjiang.

I was always in love with literature and the complexity of the Spanish language, and composing articles allowed me to explore my creative and curious side while narrating trivial reviews. Those who received my stories seemed to enjoy them. I continued to educate myself on how to be a writer, although the most important lesson was always the same: read more. One day, someone who was going to visit Panama asked me for recommendations and I created my first list. Like that, I started making one of every place I visited. I was collecting them in a folder and then, little by little, I transformed those lists into reports that inspired people to travel and that made them feel that they were walking with me through those streets, beaches and mountains of Europe, Asia or South America. I started monetizing those articles through my The Brunch Blog page and using the income I generated through other blog activities to finance my travels. Today, I have visited 66 countries and written more than 130 reviews for international newspapers, magazines and blogs. That is how I started this phase as a travel writer.