After the insect situation was under control I was enjoying the beach life again and got to know very interesting people on a super cool beach near Thessaloniki.
Since my time on Evia, I got strongly into the Bo Staff training and because I always wanted to train the Kung Fu strikes, I thought about how I could get a real Kung Fu Bo Staff. After trying several shops and Kung Fu places, I finally searched for someone from Greece to order Bo Staffs from a Greek online shop to his address. I found Christias from Offroad Greece and he was super nice and helpful. In addition to that, I had Tino, a friend from Germany, sent some spare parts for Rosinante’s electronic systems to Christias. The package delivery system in Greece was somehow interesting or better to say: confusing to me. But when the stuff had arrived, Christias and I met and did an interview for Greece Offroad. It was very interesting and I had a lot of fun. It’s nice to talk with others about the things you like and do, right? It feels so affirmative 😁
The next day I felt like it was time to leave Greece and head to Bulgaria. The temperatures got pretty high and I was looking forward to lower food and especially diesel prices. But the main motivation was that after months of beach and some mountain life in Greece, I felt like exploring a different country, culture, and people would be super nice.
And I should be right, I can tell you that much as a teaser for the upcoming posts. It gets intense… ✨
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.
Right now, as I’m writing this post about my hike on Mount Olympus in June 2022, it’s November 2022 and it feels so crazy to remind myself of the day when I hiked Mount Olympus. Even the text of this post feels weird to me because I wrote at the day after the hike.
Since that day so much has changed. I experienced so much. The text and the memories both feel like from another world, from another universe. Like from someone else. And this may be the most impressive about this journey, this life as a nomad on this potentially never-ending journey without a destination but full of experiences, change, and growth.
I love hiking and mountaineering and made my experiences but I didn‘t expect what the Olymp would be like.
A good friend shared with me the route she had been taking a few years ago and it looked very promising but it included staying on a mountain hut and I always thought that living on a big mountain in Rosinante would be a blast. So I researched a bit and found a place at about 2300 meters where it is possible to go by car.
After a big thunderstorm (the loudest I‘ve ever witnessed) at the beach, I had been living, the weather reports predicted pretty good weather at Mount Olympus for Monday. And so I started my journey to the biggest mountain in Greece on Saturday. On the way, I met a very nice farmer and because he didn‘t speak German or English, he called his daughter who is living in Germany. We had a nice chat via the phone.
The next morning I went on, reached Olympus Mountain, and started the offroad track toward my destination. The track wasn‘t that bad but there were a few mud pits we had to pass. The view was amazing and I felt very amazed about it. The track got very steep and rocky and lead just straight up the mountain. And after some bends, it lead to an area between the mountains and we drove into the clouds. It was awesome. After some kilometers and at 2300 meters, just three kilometers away from my destination, out of a sudden, a big snow field piled up in front of us. A small offroad car parked in front of it and after investigating, I quickly decided that there is no chance to cross it without digging snow for hours. Parking at the snow field and starting my hike the next day from there, I did not like because when there is one snow field there maybe coming something else down the mountain soon and there wasn‘t any really good parking spot. So I turned around and head back to the main road. In the park4night app, I found a spot in front of a military base and after hours of driving I felt quite tired and so I went for it. It was a really small military base at Olympus Mountain with armed guards etc. and a small parking space in front of it. You can park and stay for the night and between 7 and 18 o‘clock you can cross their gate to hike the mountains. It felt weird, but why not. And it‘s cool when Rosinante has some guards while I‘m hiking.
The weather prediction was okay, but not super good. Temperatures from 2 to 9 degrees Celsius and there has been a change of rain and thunderstorms for the next day. And quite a bit of wind as well. Because the last days had been sometimes rainy and because of the big thunderstorm at the beach, I was not super relaxed. But when I started my hike at 7 o‘clock the next morning I‘ve been quite positive and the weather looked good. After telling the guards my name and mobile phone number, I entered the base, walked through it, and started my climb.
The first part lead up a ski slope that got steeper and steeper. It was not very comfortable or beautiful to hike and in combination with the weather prediction, my motivation dropped a bit. But then I saw the first summit of Mount Olympus. My first destination. And there were only a few clouds around it and that boosted my motivation because I saw the chance of actually getting to one of the summits and not only seeing a cloud from the inside. And so I did the climb of 970m on a distance of 3.7 kilometers pretty fast, got to the first summit Agios Antonios at 2816m, and had a magnificent view! The wind was strong and it‘s been cold, but it was beautiful.
I was hyped and started to run to the next summit. The wind got less and the temperatures higher and in just a while I reached the summit of Skolio at 2905m. At that point, the weather was super nice. And the view was astonishing. I’ve never seen such impressive cliffs and rock formations in my life.
So I got hyped and because I could see summit Skala from there, I went for it and reached it shortly after at 2882m. Until this moment I‘ve met nobody else. At Skala, a group of hikers took a break and enjoyed the view. And this view has been incredible! From Skala, you can see the real Olymp. And when you see this one it‘s so easy to understand why some people in the past thought that it might be a place where the gods could hang around. It’s astonishing!
After taking my break and enjoying the view, I thought about going back to Rosinante. The weather had been very good but I felt not very confident about taking the route to the Olymp. Although I know that most routes are easier once you are in, this one looked very impressive. I checked the weather report again and it has been promising. And at that moment out of nowhere a guy asks me if I was planning to climb the Olymp. Turned out that he was from Germany as well and did not feel super confident to take the route alone. Although he might have done it alone, he felt better in company. After quickly exchanging our climbing experiences etc. I quickly decided to take the route with him. And it has been awesome! The views, the cliffs, the crevices, the weather, the other German guy, and the route itself: everything has been fantastic! When we reached the Olymp at 2918m I‘ve been so thankful for everything: for being there, the weather, all the beauty, and everything else.
After taking a short break we headed back for the Skala summit and on the way, more clouds pulled up. All the time we were very safe and had no problems taking the route but when these stones would get wet… I thought it would be getting very tricky. When we reached Skala I felt super all the way and a bit of pressure released itself from me. After another chat, both of us started our way back which lead us in opposite directions. The clouds got stronger but it was still warm and I was just super hyped and happy all the way. After passing the summits Skolio and Agios Antonios the weather got super nice and the view was still magnificent. It‘s been like walking through the prototype of a fertile and beautiful mountain landscape and I had a super awesome time heading back to Rosinante.
When I reached Rosinante, I could see the dark clouds behind me. After I packed everything together and started Rosinante to search for a new home, the first raindrops hit the windshield.
What a day! I‘m so thankful and everything for how everything developed. And I‘m very proud because at no point in this whole adventure I have been stressing myself.
