Intro

After so many years traveling, and having adventures and most importantly, people telling me to write about them....the time has come to do just that. In the following days, weeks and months I will be writing about the stuff that has happened to me in the past and, hopefully, catch up to the present.

The following intro was written by my brother, for an article that was published in a magazine in Puerto Rico...thanks Bro!!!

"Luis worked for a number of years as a Technical Advisor (TA) for private demining companies. The job’s mission is to help countries to get rid of their problem of landmines left behind after years of regional conflicts. As a TA he has traveled to Ethiopia, Kosovo, Zambia, Armenia and lastly to Afghanistan. There he applied his expertise in the city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, as a TA for the Demining Agency for Afghanistan (DAFA). In Kandahar he was also the team leader of three EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) teams in charge of clearing the biggest ASP (Ammunition Supply Point) the Taliban had in Afghanistan.

When his demining contract was up in June of 2004, he accepted a Security Coordinator position with a private company providing security for the deminers and ex-patriate engineers clearing the road from Kabul to Kandahar to Herat, approximately 1000 kilometers of the ring road around Afghanistan. During that time Luis roamed the countryside in Afghanistan, coordinating security for various companies involved in the reconstruction of the war torn country and also providing protection to ex-patriates traveling to different work sites in the arid country. A job that perhaps might be considered by many more dangerous than that of demining if we take into account all the kidnappings and beheadings going on in that region of the world.

He began the journey in Miramar, Santurce were he spent most of his childhood and adolescent years. He graduated from the Academia del Perpetuo Socorro in 1980. After a brief year attending The Citadel, he joined the US Navy in 1982. His first duty station was the USS Goldsborough in Hawaii. After 2 years in the fleet, he applied and got accepted into the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit (EOD—the Navy’s Bomb Squad). As an EOD technician, he was tasked with rendering safe conventional, nuclear, and chemical ordnance, foreign or domestic, in land, air or sea, as well as rendering safe improvised explosive devices (IEDs), commonly known as home made terrorist bombs. His areas of expertise were IEDs, Special Operations and Air Operations.

Amongst his many qualifications acquired in the Navy are that of Master Naval Parachutist (Free-Fall qualified), Naval Jumpmaster, Naval Dive Supervisor, Mixed-Gas Diving Supervisor, Master EOD technician and Master Training Specialist. His awards include the Navy Commendation Medal (two awards for Valor), Navy Achievement Medal (3 awards), Combat Action Ribbon, and the Navy Good Conduct Medal (4 awards).

Luis spent his military time posted in Puerto Rico, San Diego and Hawaii where his last job was as an advanced EOD instructor. He deployed all over the world, from Guam to Korea to Saudi Arabia —his team was one of the first Navy EOD team in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, arriving in country in early September of ‘90, merely weeks after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He spent most of the war clearing landmines and floating sea mines.

When not busy demining and protecting, Luis turns to his other passions; photography and more recently writing."