There are moments when we do things and make decisions without thinking, but feeling them. Sometimes they are the most profound determinations on the path you take.
That happened to me when I decided to study journalism 33 years ago. I always knew I had to be a bridge. For something. I wasn't clear for whom. Then I moved from Santiago, Chile, to Puerto Montt, in the Lakes Region, part of northern Patagonia, Chile.
It was a family decision, which put me in a very special place. Where the country changes in its geography. Where the sea becomes the main road, where the green of nature, of the islands, of the air, of the maritime identity and of the presence of the ancestral culture and the Spanish influence that were in the wood cookers. Even if the families didn't know it, they were ambassadors of those traditions.
I loved the houses with shingles and without bars. Leaving the house and looking at the horizon with the sea as infinity..... and there I stayed, in love with that natural context, the flavours and what for many was so normal, for me it was the key to the door to a world. My world to this day and one in which I believe I will die doing what inspires me.
Because being a person with normal intelligence who had to study to learn what I came out knowing as a journalist, I had the opportunity given to me by God, or whatever you want to call it if you are agnostic or close to being a naturalist, to live what allows me to say today that almost 30 years have passed since the sea hypnotised me, that tourism is my thing when it comes to talking about journalism, communication, and legacy.
Yes, because I have passed the age of fifty and as a very good friend said, if I put a tape measure to measure the time I have left on average to live in this world, I have already spent more than half of it. And I want to do what I like to do, and to accompany those I can contribute from what I know how to do, so that tourism is not only an economic activity that helps them to be profitable and improve their quality of life. I also want to see their smiling faces because behind every business, every enterprise, every traveller, there is a story of effort, of illusions, of uniqueness that transforms lives.
That is why I am a journalist specialising in tourism. Because tourism is the only activity that makes us better people. Because hospitality is synonymous with human encounters and the money that arrives when there is a commercial tourist transaction is an emotional salary, which is the perfect finishing touch to a process in which the tourist and the person who sells him the experience he decides to buy, is the result of the happiness of feeling fulfilled because you are transferring a story, a culture, that something that you have to live and that makes you feel good.
In a world where stress, unbridled competition without empathy, and human intervention on the front line over returning to the essential, tourism is an instrument of peace, transversal over ideologies and beliefs, it gives you peace, wellbeing, security, joy and recognises the value of the small, the simple, the authentic and I can show it to the world, especially to those people who cannot travel, and for those who seek to travel to places, with the certainty that what they are told is indeed the way it is told.
So that's where I want to be and communicate.
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