The story of the Jhony Hause

Losing everything and leaving anyway

For ten years I believed I could handle everything on my own.

I had a company in Comodoro Rivadavia and workers who depended on me. When my first supervisor left, I didn’t look for a replacement: I thought I could cover it myself. When the second one left, I thought the same again. I was young, and that confidence is exactly what sank me.

The company started to fall apart. Then came the money. And then something worse, which had nothing to do with money.

In February 2018 I did the only thing I had left to do: I left. I didn’t know that a few months later, some strangers would hand me the keys to a house in Puerto Natales.

I was already into Couchsurfing: I’ve had a profile since 2010. The references from those months show me turning up at other people’s homes. Desiz, who hosted me in Argentina in February 2018, wrote that I arrived with my road buddy Alejandro, that there were nine other couchsurfers in the house, and that I played “Spanish teacher and French student”. Another summed it up like this:

You arrived with Ale, your ukulele and a growing radio.

Idun · Argentina · Feb 2018 · translated from Spanish

The radio was Radio Couchsurfing On The World, a project of mine at the time. Along the way I hosted too: a couple from Mexico wrote that in Comodoro they tasted Argentine asado for the first time.

A house that wasn’t for me

I reached Puerto Natales, in Chilean Patagonia, and what was meant to be a stopover became one of the most extraordinary chapters of my life. Some people who believed in me offered me something unthinkable: a house. Instead of keeping it for myself, I opened it to travellers on Couchsurfing.

This is what I wrote on my profile at the time, word for word:

Having between 15 and 25 people at home every day was something that, without my noticing, changed a lot of people and transformed me. The most was 31 people on a single day, on 31 December 2018.

My Couchsurfing profile · translated from Spanish

Natales is the gateway to Torres del Paine National Park, so the house filled up with people heading to or coming back from the trek, backpackers, couples, solo travellers, people who had ended up there without planning to. A traveller from Ecuador called it “a house open to travellers where they can recharge, right in the centre of Puerto Natales and close to the waterfront”.

What was it like inside? Fernanda, who lived there for eight days, puts it best: a place “that is dining room, gym, games room and bedroom all at once”, with “that peculiar way of taking a shower in Patagonia”. A French guest said it in one line that still makes me laugh:

Warm people are more important than warm water.

To · France · Apr 2019

The shower deserves an explanation. A couple who came through in March 2019 described it on their blog: I warned people up front that here you showered “like 80 years ago”, heating the water in a kettle and pouring it into a bucket.

How a house with 20 people worked

There was no written timetable, but there were habits. The most famous was dinner: every day someone cooked for everyone. A traveller from China put it like this: “Everyday there will be someone that cooks for all the people.” And Luca, who had planned to stay just a few days, remembered the ritual that closed every meal:

A round of applause for whoever made dinner, a round of applause for whoever is going to clean up, and a round of applause for the Jhony Hause!

Luca · Spain · Apr 2019 · translated from Spanish

The numbers the guests give match what I remember. Eve, from Finland: “the first night there were 19 of us in the house, it looked like a travellers’ camp”. Shahar, from Israel: “at least 15 people every day”. Jose, from Spain: “up to 18 people while I was there”. Laura and Dara learned “to make pizza for 27 people”.

The couple from the blog saw it like this in March 2019. When they walked in, the living room was full of long-term travellers: some playing cards, some juggling, someone on the guitar, two doing yoga and, in another room, people meditating. At eleven at night a small group started cooking, two white sheets were spread on the floor and we ate sitting in a circle. It was 24 people with two small bathrooms and one kitchen, and at night the living room turned into a dormitory: everyone rolled out their mat and sleeping bag, and in the morning they were stacked neatly in a corner.

Couchsurfing is not a hostel

That line was on my profile, along with another: “if you read my profile you’ll know I won’t accept people for just one day”. I wanted people to come and live together, not to use a free bed. Some got it straight away. Lucila wrote that I was “strict with his rules, which we think is very good, it makes everything in his home work well”. Enrico, from Italy, said it shorter: “his house is like yours if you take care of it”.

Nobody paid, either. I covered the water, electricity and gas, and when one traveller suggested putting out a tip jar I said no: I’m convinced that what I give comes back to me when I travel. She wrote it down on her blog, and added that in return people cooked me dishes from all over the world every night, and that was enough for me.

And it wasn’t for everyone. Best to let someone who stayed a single night say it:

Including my wife and myself, there were 17 people in the house. People were stacked on each other! So it’s good and bad. If you want a night’s sleep before or after a long hike, this isn’t the place for you.

Dylan · United States · Jan 2019

It’s also true that I worked a lot. Several people noted it: Enrico stayed more than ten days and wrote that we didn’t share much time because I had to work; Adriano, from Brazil, was welcomed by “other people” in the house. That’s why the house worked even when I wasn’t there.

Vicente and the house that ran itself

Over time some travellers stayed for months. In August 2019 Daniel wrote that living in the house were “Vicente, Cristofer, Agustín and Pachayaku, who have been developing personal projects for several months”. Vicente is from Palma de Mallorca, and he’s the one who painted the llama with the name of the house on the wall. He shows up in lots of references as a host alongside me, and in a video of a dinner in March 2019 he introduces himself like this: “I’ve been in Natales for two months, at Jhony’s house”. Laura, from Spain: “Both Jhony and Vicente are incredible hosts!”

Koldo, from the Basque Country, asked to stay four days and stayed almost a month: he set up a compost bin, painted doors, went out looking for vegetables to rescue. And he wasn’t the only one: in a video he recorded later, Koldo tells how everyone sanded and painted windows and doors, and how an Austrian engineer, with a few Argentinians, built a wooden walkway joining two parts of the house. When a house gets to that point it no longer belongs to one person. Hanna, from Spain, said it in a sentence I’m keeping:

The magic you’ve created with four walls and the people inside them.

Hanna · Spain · Feb 2019 · translated from Spanish

That’s why a couple from Colombia wrote that “he and the Jhony Hause family” gave them a hand, not just he. And that’s why Lucila, writing from El Calafate, said “the Jhony house is already very famous in Puerto Natales”.

Finish your chapter and go eat the world

In May 2019 Fernanda left me something that wasn’t praise but an order:

Finish your chapter in Natales and go out and eat the world, you still owe yourself that, don’t wait for a push to jump.

Fernanda · May 2019 · translated from Spanish

By July that year she was the one hosting me in Santiago. Travellers wrote things like “I hope at some point you can carry on with your trip” (Karina, Germany) or “if you decide to open a Jhony’s hause in Spain, let me know” (Hanna). The house had its time, and I went back on the road.

Years later people still remembered. In 2022 Karla left me a reference that begins: “I met him in Puerto Natales in Chile, at the ‘Jhony House’, in April 2019”. In 2023 Amalia, in Chile, hosted me for an afternoon before I carried on to Rome. Today I live in Italy, I came because of my great-grandfather, and this journal grew out of all that.

If I had to pick a single line out of the 287, it would be Eduardo’s, from Argentina:

One day my children’s children will know about the JHONY HOUSE.

Eduardo · Argentina · Sep 2019 · translated from Spanish