Tag: hiking

My way of forgiving myself and love again

After Cori and I had screamed at the ocean, we found a very special and beautiful beach and decided to live there until she would have to leave Greece and head back to Germany.

The weather got a lot brighter and so did my mind. After days of despair and a lot of negative thoughts, swirling around the same again and again, I did finally find some clearness. It’s been like I was able to feel myself again. And through this, I was able to accept myself and gain back my balance. It felt very relieving and enabled me to describe my feelings and what had been spinning inside of my head for days. And finally, I could start to forgive myself and love again.

We spent some wonderful days at this awesome beach. Rosinante parked right on the beach and behind her, a river went by, took a turn along a magical grotto, and finally found the crystal clear water of the ocean.

After we ran out of gas for cooking, we cooked outside on fire and had the most delicious self-made bread and curry of all time. I don’t know if we would have cooked on the fire when we still had gas, but this way it was just perfect. One day, we hiked along the river, that flows into the sea at this magnificent beach. The hike was super nice and beautiful. You can enter it here.

After some days at this paradise, it was time for us to drive back to the airport in Athens and Cori headed back to Germany.

A part of me had wished, that our shared time would have been more harmonious all the time, but more and more I became thankful for this experience and how we lived through it togehter. In the end, we never blamed each other and were always empathic and loveful.

My key learnings:
🤗 Seeing people, I’m interacting with, as training partners really can help me. All of us seem to be training to live all the time and like in every training, things can get wrong even though they are not intended to.
😇 Seeing things that keep my mind spinning as super important and life-threatening/ changing doesn’t help. In the end, almost everything seems to be very less important and big seen from some distance.
💫 Describing my pure and honest feelings to someone else, without intellectually analyzing and reasoning or explaining their origin, helps me a lot. When I’m really out of balance, it helps me when the other person assures me, that my feelings are not wrong.

In the end, it’s all about remembering that I’m perfectly fine the way I am.

Getting lost while hiking near Kyparissi

It’s the end of April 2022 and I’m driving Rosinante on the last nipple of the Peleponnese in Greece. A nice German couple, I met at the dream cove and the Hippie Camp, told me, that the area around Kyparissi is really nice for hiking and so I picked that area as my next home.

After I arrived in the little town, I’m quickly realizing, that not all of the people here seem to be very camper friendly. At the parking of the beach is a sign that informs about the fact that camping is not allowed and will be fined. It’s the first time that I’m seeing a sign like this in Greece. I’m deciding to drive Rosinante up a very steep and pretty heavy offroad track to reach a spot, that I got recommended by a friendly farmer. The spot is super nice and quiet. In the evening it’s covered with clouds and the next morning there is pure sunlight.

I’m driving Rosinante to the place where I want to start my hike through another olive farm. The hike starts super beautiful and after my little hike at the Geopark, I’m hyped at this one. At the first little chapel, I take a pause to meditate. These chapels are so nice to meditate in them.

I continue my hike, pick some wild thyme and after some time, when the sun started burning on my head, I’m realizing that I forgot my hat at the chapel. Having forgotten my hat doesn’t make me crazy and so I take it as it is and do some trail running back to the chapel. Once I got my hat, I trail run back to where I’ve been before again.

After two hours, I’ve reached the other side of the mountain and the hiking track is getting more and more difficult to follow. The markers are getting fewer and soon I can’t find any of them anymore. This hiking path is in none of my apps and I’m happy of taking a photo of a map showing the hiking paths in this area, yesterday. The terrain gets more and more difficult and soon I’m starting to feel very lost. I decide to take the effort of climbing up a hill with lots of scrubs, stones, and cliffs. I’m crawling most of the time because either the scrubs are too dense and tight or the rocks are too dangerously slippy and steep to just walk them. Standing on top of one hill, I get an overview but I’m thinking about aborting my hike and going back because the terrain has been so difficult to go through and there will be much more of this to go through. I’ve no good clue where the normal path is. For a short moment even going back feels to be very difficult. I take some time to compare the photo of the map with two of my hiking apps. I’m getting more and more confident that I got a good direction and a plan to find the path again if there still is one. I’m fighting my way back from the hill and enter a small valley. The terrain changes and gets easier. And there, after crawling through the last scrub and after two hours of searching, I see the bright red of one of the markers indicating the hiking path. I’m happy and relieved and continue my way feeling a lot lighter and lighthearted.

The hike leads me through different sceneries and I love them all. Hyped about the beauty I decided to advance my hike and after seven hours I see Rosinante down where I left here. Although the hike has awesome, I still feel happy to see her again. The straight path shown on the map I took a photo of, leads to a big cliff and I’m searching for the way I’m supposed to take around it. I can’t find it and so I take the longer way long way and reach Rosinante after another hour.