After the hike, I met Lowen again, and together we went to a full moon ritual at the Aphrodite’s Rock on Cyprus.

It was super fun and an interesting and profound experience. We meditated, jammed with drums and a whole lot of other instruments, had interesting conversations and a lot of fun. The atmosphere was amazing and very open and kind. It was just lovely.

The next day we met Timea and Roses, who had slept at the beach, at the still burning bonfire and together we decided to head to the other side of Cyprus to attend a community meeting of some alternative people who seemed to be a lot into ecology and open ways to organize their group. On the way after signing along to a lot of songs, we did a walk to a waterfall.

After that we spent one night at another beach and went to the meeting of the community. They call themselves “The Talking Circle” and this meeting was super exciting! They are quite a big group and meet frequently to learn from one another, organize and most importantly: having fun and growing and healing together.

The members were quite diverse and that made it even more interesting. The core of their organizational structure is a talking circle: everyone (who likes to) gathers in a circle a stick gets passed from one to the other and who has the stick may talk. Sounds a bit like “Waldorf Schule” (a famous alternative schooling concept from Germany whose name gets sometimes abused to describe when something seems to be alien and maybe so much good willing that nothing will ever result from it 😁) and too much in a certain way but I loved it a lot.

They are doing different meetings for different topics: they have an art, an sustainable agriculture and the main group. If you are interested, take a look at their website and contact them.

We had awesome days there and hanging around and living with this open and respectful community made me think if it would be nice for me to stay at a place like this. In a community like this. With lovely people like this.

I mean, what’s the deal about all this traveling anyway?

I committed myself to do my first Sesshin (meditation retreat in the tradition of Zen Buddhism) starting on March 20th which was my birthday. I felt that it would be nice to start “my new year” with a Sesshin. Because of the time shift between Portland and Cyprus, the Sesshin was about to start at 7 pm.

When I was writing with Cindy she told me that she wanted to do a hike in Akamas. It was a perfect match because I was just about to return to Akamas to do my online Sesshin with Bright Way Zen at a super nice spot I had found weeks before. And I felt like it would be perfect to spend some time in good company, getting to know Cindy and doing a physical activity before I would start five days of meditation.

Cindy and I met and did a nearly 30km hike in beautiful Akamas (see it on Komoot). Although it was my third time there, I still loved this hike and I enjoyed doing it with Cindy a lot. For the first time in my life I did a hike with someone else in my natural speed of hiking. It’s not that I was feeling bad when hiking at a slower pace in the company of someone else but still I found it interesting how powerful Cindy seemed to be. And for the first time Cindy and I spent some time together alone and got to know each other a lot. I got super curious about what else there was to get to know about her.

And we did visit the astonishing massive sea grass hill. Make sure you give it a like on Google Maps. Thanks.

During the hike I was thinking about what else Cindy and I could do but found it to be too pushy to ask her what she was feeling about it. And there was the Sesshin to start later that day and Cindy had a guest from coachsurfing.com… So I guess it was just not the right time…

Inviting people to your mobile home via couchsurfing.com sounded like an awesome idea to me and I was thinking that maybe that could be an easy way to travel with someone else for a longer time.