Martina Martinez

All You Need to Know about Lima

Lima has so much to offer, being one of the largest cities in South America, with a long history. Though the city is big and chaotic, every district has its own identity and charm. Just choose what best suits you, be it the artsy Barraco, Lima´s Historic Centre with its colonial architecture, or Miraflores, an […]

Wedding in Peru by the Pacific Ocean

Most women dream about their wedding since their teen age, imagine how things would be and often incline to some truly romantic, movie-like ideas. I was lucky enough to get mine fulfilled in Peru, by the Pacific, on the day of the first day of autumn.

Long-Distance Travelling with a Baby

Since our son Rafael has two homes, in the Czech Republic and in Peru, when he was 16 months old, we decided to fly him to his other homeland for the first time, from cold and rainy winter to sunny and hot summer. What to focus on when traveling halfway across the planet?

Peruvian Nannies – The Magic of Being Helped

Some mothers tell me they would never allow a stranger to take care of their kids. Some even claim that nannies, au pairs, cleaning ladies are people exploited. My experience working as one and having one has been thoroughly good though.

Peruvian Fiestas – Birthdays, Baby Showers and The Day of Love

Most Western countries would believe Latin America in general to be a place of constant fiestas and regular siestas, powerful sunshine, deep passion and affection, dancing in the streets, and soap-opera-like drama. How do birthday parties and the Day of Love celebrations look like in Peru?

Everything about the Carnival in Peru

Celebrated in February, a week before Lent, it is one of the most exuberant holidays in all of Peru and throughout Latin America, a time of feasting and partying.

Martina was born in 1982 in the Czech Republic. After graduating from the Grammar School in Kadaň, she worked as a news editor and news presenter at the regional radio Agara in Chomutov, and then spent a year in England, where she studied English and British history and culture at a language school in Penge, London.

During her studies at the Pedagogical Faculty of the Charles University in Prague (English Language and Literature – Czech Language and Literature), completed in 2009 summa cum laude, she worked e.g. as an event manager (for visitors from the UK and Ireland), published several articles in various literary periodicals and completed a semestral Erasmus study exchange program in Dublin at St. Patrick’s College.

After returning from abroad, she joined the Department of Languages at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague as a teacher of English and Czech for foreigners. She has worked there for more than ten years.

She has regularly participated in internships abroad, mostly in France where she was teaching English at the ENSCR in Rennes, but she also interned in Vietnamese Hanoi in 2011, where she was teaching Czech language for Vietnamese EPU students. Some of the experiences from this internship (and from the journeys she took in North Vietnam) were published in the Reflex magazine in 2013.

For several years, until 2012, she worked externally for the Centre for Learning CERMAT, creating GCE A Level tasks from the Czech Language for deaf students.

Until December 2019, she was the chief-editor of the non-commercial cultural portal nenudtese.cz. You can read her reviews, interviews and articles HERE. Since June 2018, she has been publishing travel articles on a well-known Czech travel portal hedvabnastezka.cz. Since January 2020, she writes editorials and other articles for the yoga magazine Jogadnes.cz.

In March 2012 she released her book debut, Kolej Today, which became the best-selling book for that year in the Plejáda publishing house. The book was nominated by the publishing house for the Jiří Orten Prize and Magnesia Litera Award.

In December 2012, her novel Ztracené cesty na útěku domů appeared in bookstores.

In August 2016, Zítřek byl včera was released with the book launch ceremony taking place on Avoid Floating Gallery in Prague. The Czech band Zrní became the godfather of the book.

In September 2019, Coo Boo released her fourth book, a short story collection named Plovoucí po hvězdách.

Since 2016 she has been working as a yoga and meditation instructor.

Since late June 2018 to early June 2019, she traveled the world with yoga teaching. You can read about some of her experiences HERE.

In July 2019, she co-operated with Corny CZ leading the Paddleboard + Yoga Tour in the Czech Republic.

Since December 2019 to May 2022, she lived in Peru, where she worked in a volunteering program of children´s education and teaching yoga to the public. She has cooperated with jungle healers and herbalists as well as animal rights activists. Together with Zuzka Bartáková, she has organized yoga retreats with a deep spiritual purification in the Amazon jungle of the Tambopata reserve.

In March 2022, she married her Peruvian partner in Peru and took both of his surnames, Martinez Arboleda. In August 2022, their son was born in the Czech Republic.

She currently resides in the Ore Mountains in the Czech Republic, where she teaches yoga and meditation and dedicates herself to creative writing.

She enjoys playing the guitar and singing, dancing, painting and DIY.

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