The 2000-Mile Reality Check

10:18 AM

I’m not fully recovered yet, but I’m afraid I’ll be incredibly bored otherwise, so I pack my bag and give it a try. 🥺

Jeez, why is it so heavy? Pff, the food bag is even heavier than the backpack 😮‍💨. I’ll just have breakfast from the backpack instead of a scrambled egg in a small cozy restaurant ☹️.

Whether it’s actually lighter remains to be seen 🤬.

I’ve reached the 2000-mile marker; in other words, I still have 2000 miles to go—that’s 3,218 km 🧐. I’d better not say anything more about it. Just thinking about it already makes me tired.

2:35 PM

It’s going to be one of those days again: walking among dead beans. You could say there’s something beautiful about it, but I’ve been walking among them for so long now that, in my opinion, it doesn’t get any better.

2:43 PM

I think I shouldn’t have written that sentence about “it doesn’t get any better.” Now it only seems to be getting worse. Everywhere I look there are sharp, rolling lava rocks. The trail goes uphill; I have to cross the volcano.

3:46 PM

Uh oh, the trees are disappearing now too. This is truly no man’s land. Absolutely nothing—nada, niente, zilch…

3:54 PM

4:11 PM

I’m out of water 😭

4:59 PM

A hiker box—it’s empty, but luckily there’s still a little bit of water left to get me through today 😛. Just to be safe, I filter the water, because I don’t know how long this box has been here.

7:06 PM

Now that I have water, I’m no longer forced to keep walking endlessly to the next water source. So I take the first campspot I find and call it good enough. I’m standing at the edge of a lava flow, between lava boulders and dead trees. Really cozy 🤭

Total: 30.11 km in 8:30 hours · 729 m ascent · 601 m descent