I am Genaro and I am going to crew ‘Ya’.
I am originally from Mexico City. Already from my early age it was my dream to design things. I studied for industrial designer and then started working in this field. But, I do not want to live all my life doing the same, so I quit my job, left the city and I started traveling.
Since then i have been traveling for the last 5 years. I like adventures and I like to know more of our world.
I started with just a good backpack. Most of the time I worked and then I traveled on, alone or with friends I met, sometimes I traveled on a bicycle. When COVID started, I bought a Volkswagen van to continue traveling.
What did I do and where? To give you a glimpse:
· I was caretaker of a traditional farmers house in Japan.
· Worked in permaculture farming in Lao, China. Here you see a rice field.
· Volunteered for a while in the Shaolin Monastery near Fujan, China
· Renovated a yacht into a hostel in Malaysia
· One month just wandering through the jungle of Borneo, Indonesia
· Picking cherries in New Zealand
· And picking cherries in Canada
Liason officer and translator between tourists and the Yagua in the Amazon jungle, Colombia.
I spent a short time in Brazil, till COVID started, so I went to Mexico. Then I refitted an old Volkswagen van and decorated it to a simple home.
I could make a beautiful slow trip in my van along the Yucatan peninsula and later along the Californian coast.
First work I could do to thicken my purse was farming on a plantation of … marihuana! In California it is just as legal as corn or wheat!
Then I became bartender in Baccalar, Mexican Caribbean. There, I stepped on a small sailing boat and I discovered the magic of sailing, of moving with the wind.
My world changed from that moment. I soon became deckhand for a charter company. Later I was day skipper on the smallest boat, without even a good compass. But I did not care, I could sail!
I need to learn a lot. Last year I am orienting on everything that has to do with sailing. My last job was renovating a yacht, just because I would have a chance to become crew again and I can learn about sailing.
But then “Ya” came along. Now I arrived at “Ya” with great enthusiasm for having another adventure, to know another way of living and being able to float on the immense Pacific ocean hunting for the wind.
It is even more than this, as Ya is fossil free. I am aware that our search for comfort, at some point we forget this goal and get into excesses and overcunsumotion, taking us to our own destruction.
The Ya is a reminder that we can live in reasonable comfort without destroying ourselves.
I hope I can continue to tell more of our adventures here on “Ya”
Buenos vientos!
Genaro