Category: overlanding

Dealing with over 300 insects bites/ stitches (June 2022)

After Mount Olympus, I did another hike in that area and after some days of the mountain life, I felt like heading to the ocean again. On the way to the beach, I washed my clothes at a self-service laundry and maybe that’s where everything started to go crazy.

When I was living at the beach for one day, everything seemed to be fine. I got some mosquito stitches or bites but it did not feel like something extraordinary. The next day I started to count these bites and when I reached a count of 30 I got irritated, but not worried. The next day I counted about 80 of them and that was the point where I started thinking and getting worried. The stitches started to hurt and itch more and more and it was a real challenge to not try to scratch them out of my skin. Meditation got very interesting and challenging, by the way.

My first try to dissolve this insect situation was moving to another beach. I thought that maybe only on the one beach these insects were so strong. The crazy thing about this is, that I never found a mosquito or insect that I thought would do stitches/ bites like I got. I researched and learned a lot about mosquitos, fleas, bed bugs, and all the other friendly insects but still, I did not manage to identify one of them around me.

The next day on the next beach I counted 100 stitches on just one side of one of my forearms. I stopped counting at about 300 in total!

At that point, I got desperate and afraid of what was going on. My mind felt to be in between something. Somehow undecided or in doubt. I tried to escape the insects by moving on a mountain, but it did not help. I set up my hammock in Rosinante to have a safe place to sleep, but it did not help. Sleeping got more and more difficult, by the way, which made me more and more sensitive to everything. I searched for traces of the animals that were stinging me. Once I found one that looked like a flea but it was just a fly. All of this made me feel so desperate. It was painful in a physical and psychological way. It was occupying me. There was nothing else anymore. I was suffering.

And then I decided to go all in into this situation. It felt like accepting it but not in a passive way. I consider myself a pacifist and friend of nature but at this point, all of this stepped back. Still, I did not know what kind of insect was trying to eat me and so I just did everything I had learned during my research.

I did:

  • get a mosquito lamp
  • get a vacuum cleaner and was vacuuming Rosinante two times a day
  • get different mosquito and insect sprays
    and organic stuff like lemongrass and neem oil and used them several times a day (actually, I did not find pure neem oil and so I used dog and cat shampoo with neem oil)
  • wash all the clothes I had used again and all the covers, sleeping bag, etc.
  • put all my other clothes into the burning sunlight at least for a day
  • put my sleeping bag etc. into the burning sunlight every day
  • get different ointments and stuff like that to ease the itching
  • put on Rosinante’s heater to cook whatever was eating me inside of her

A few minutes after I put my stuff in the washing machine and turned it on, I felt kind of relieved. It was crazy. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was just a mental reaction because I started to deal with the situation and that spread some hope inside of me. But to me, it felt more like a connection between the hundreds of bites/ stitches on my body and something that was feeding them broke. No matter what it meant for the insects that had been eating me, it felt very uplifting to me.

After I did all this, the number of bites did not increase anymore and the situation eased more and more. My mind relaxed with every hour. I think, that it is true what all the mindfulness and spiritual people are saying: you can deal with everything in a healthy, not stressful way. I learned a lot about this during that time.

And as I was sitting in Rosinante, feeling the relief, the calmness, the chill after the desperation I suddenly heard how a car revved up and blasted across the beach. When it passed by, I saw how two guys tried to reanimate a man lying on the bed of a pickup.

Witnessing this attempt to rescue a human life let me feel so small. It’s indescribable.

Back on the mainland of Greece, learning to fish and getting more into writing (June 2022)

Finally, in June 2022, I left Evia and hit the mainland of Greece again. After some weeks mostly in solitude, I felt like meeting some people would be nice. I looked for an easily accessible beach and found one with a great view of the mountains in the north of Evia.

On that beach, two super friendly, older Greek guys have been living for months. They had built up a little camp and one was fishing every day. They invited me to have several meals with them and it was super fun to talk with them about their perspective on Greece and how it has been and is changing.

I got to know another Greek guy who visited the beach every morning and evening. He had several fishing rods with him and showed me how to use them. For me, it was the first time using a pole and I enjoyed learning it. But at the same time, I felt very sorry for the fish. I’m mostly vegetarian but from time to time, if someone invites me, I’m eating little meat or fish. The fishing experience made me think about that again.

Most of the time, the water of the sea has been calm like in the video above. After the hiking on Evia, it was just perfect. I continued my swimming and bo staff training and got more and more into writing. I had started writing micro stories at the super nice mountain spot, I found on Evia. I just wrote whatever came into my mind and it felt very free and exciting. The joy of writing intensified over the weeks and very naturally a routine of daily writing established itself.

My most beautiful spot in the mountains

It was the beginning of May 2022 after my tiny dream cove on Evia in Greece when I felt like I want to go hiking again.

I started from the dream cove and went into the central mountains in the north of Evia. After some offroad driving and trying different tracks, I found my most beautiful camp spot in the mountains! The track leading there has been tough, but Rosinate did very well. This place was very much isolated from everything and in the whole week I stayed there, I only saw one goatherd.

One day I recognized that the plastic of the cable protecting fusion leading to my charging booster for the batteries in the cabin had been melted. I guess there is always something to do. Even when living in a car. Every time something like this happens, I’m reminding myself that having less, especially sophisticated, stuff means fewer expenses and fewer things to handle.

I did a lot of walks to discover my surroundings, meditations, and bo staff training. One I went on a hike to the top of a nearby mountain and the view has been fantastic.

From its summit, I had a great view of the biggest mountain on Evia. It’s called Dirfi and is my next destination.