I made it back to the mainland! But had only about three weeks to pass Turkey and reach Georgia because of the way the Turkish border control did calculate my visa days (see the last post).
I had kept in touch with Cindy and she had recommended that I visit the Aladaglar National Park and said the mountains there were amazing. And she was absolutely right!
Cyprus was super nice but to see again some real mountains was just mind-blowing. I loved it and the paid campsite in the national park had a super nice location.
I met July and Philip from Germany. They just traveled the Arabian peninsula in the camper van and were about to go east to Georgia. The same direction I was about to take. They told me that they would like to climb a mountain about 5000 meters high. Maybe in Turkey or maybe in Georgia. I never went up that far and loved the idea.
After the Sesshin I crossed the border to the northern part of Cyprus and went back to the southern part again.
Near a water reservoir I found a nice camp spot, met with Thomas and Sihong and together we did a nice hike in an area that had been burned entirely in a wild fire a couple of years ago.
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.
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.
