Curiosity may have killed the cat, but not me.

Whenever I arrive in a new city I like to spend hours wandering aimlessly through its streets listening to the diverse sounds floating from the windows: snatches of speech in unfamiliar languages; musical scales practised on a distant piano; a singer’s voice reaching high for an elusive note, and then laughing; perhaps the dissonant blare of a TV or the melody from a radio.

I inhale the foreign smells, sometimes haunting, sometimes teasing me with flavours of dishes cooking in hidden kitchens. I want to feel the city with all my senses, I wish to love it from my heart. I often stop and look at the houses, imagining how people live inside of them — what they are doing, what their everyday lives look like, how different it all is from my mine.

I can sit for hours at cafés on the street just watching the flow of strangers passing by. The soul of a city or town for me is not architecture alone, it is the life force and character of the countless souls who live and work and laugh and cry there. It is the collective dream that spills into every corner and crevice and floats like fog through the streets and alleys and spills forth in the unusual and unexpected. It’s all about the people.

One of my favourite cities to walk in is San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico. Each time I step onto the streets in Old San Juan, I always feel a sense of adventure, and I smile at the cheerful bright-blue cobalt colour of the cobble stones. Time stopped here long ago, and I hear the clump, clump of Spanish boots echoing across the centuries. Ornate colonial buildings in all their faded glory stare down at me. The sun is hot and nobody is in a hurry. Steam rises from puddles on the stones and black-haired men drink strong coffee sitting at small round tables in the plazas. Homeless cats drowse lazily in the cool shadows, and stretch and yawn in the crooks of spreading tree crowns.

Five years ago, I was wandering the empty streets in the hot afternoon. In an ancient building with massive forged doors, I saw a wide-open window. It was a huge art studio with high ceilings. I went closer, and saw it was filled with all kinds of unusual sculptures — from very tall human-size figures to small, outlandish creatures. There were bright and colourful naïve-style paintings of Caribbean life on all the walls. I noticed a man wearing an apron blotted with colour and grime, working with great intensity on a sculpture. I coughed quietly to get his attention.

He looked at me, smiled in a friendly way, and asked if I wanted to come in and see his art. “Yes!” I nodded with great enthusiasm. That is how I met locally beloved and internationally acclaimed artist, Nick Quijano.

It was also my introduction to sea trash art. Every morning, Nick walks for hours on beaches and collects all kinds of objects washed ashore with the tide. They must be plastic and industrial refuse, and they must be polished by the waves or even encrusted with corals or shells. Nick incorporates his found pieces into his sculptures without any adjustment; no cutting or bending, just as is.

He turns a hairbrush into a moustache, an old washcloth into a beard or shaggy hair, the soles of shoes into a hat. He calls his creations “personages”. I laughed at his statement about smoking; instead of rings of smoke, handcuffs emerged from a smoker’s mouth. A gambler had dice instead of pupils in his greedy eyes. A blonde woman with a very sad face, revealed a broken heart of stone, polished by the sea.

When I was sitting among these strange, ironic, whimsical and amusing “personages” I felt a part of a surreal world. Nick Quijano’s world. The sculptures were looking at me with their shells and buttons instead of eyes, and I felt they were telling me their stories of travel far across the ocean.

They made me think about the generous majesty of the sea that keeps taking and taking everything people throw at it. Except the sea has no power to reject these things we so carelessly throw away. Instead it transforms them, softens their edges, breaks them down into polished beauty and ultimately hides them in its vast expanse.

Each of us knows this generosity from the sea is finite. It can only accept so much, and the ever-growing population of the planet is choking it with refuse. Nick sees this tragedy, and he responds with his artistic soul; he takes back what he can and transforms it into a message of love for the ocean and for people, and he does it through humour, the best of all attitudes.

I visited San Juan several times while I was working on a cruise ship and every time I would run to Nick’s studio to see his new art and admire the flights of his imagination. Nick and his wife became my good friends. When we last met, he presented me with fantastical sea-decorated shoes he made himself. I felt like Cinderella at that special moment.

I know that the people who influence me the most are ones I meet accidentally, not when I am looking for inspiration. It could be on a street, at a coffee shop, in a park or even how I met my husband — through a chance conversation at the Royal Naval Dockyard. I have learnt a very important rule: don’t be afraid to start a conversation. Every person can teach you something unexpected and perhaps open a door into their life. These people are precious and they stay with you long after you part.

• Nina London is a certified wellness and weight-management coach. Her mission is to support and inspire mature women to make positive changes in their body and mind. You can share your inspirational stories with her at her website www.ninalondon.com