How everything started

We believe that it might be interesting and/or fun to share with you our process of change. About how two “town” people, who simply liked to do some short walks outdoors from time to time, became involved on long-distance hiking, sleeping in a tent, carrying all their luggage behind their backs, and visiting amazing places …

We have always enjoyed traveling, and since we had the option to do so, we have tried to go out and see the world. Seeing other places, other cultures, living all kind of experiences… Traveling brings us all of that, we feel that it makes us grow as human beings, and we will continue to do so while we can.

We could say that all that process of change of which we spoke at the beginning of the post began in Poland. That summer, besides visiting Krakow and Auschwit, we went to Zakopane.

That small town turned out to be much better than expected. It is the hot spot to visit the Polish Tatras, and has many hiking and mountain biking trails. And that we did (both activities … with an epic crash by Carlos included that we may share another day), but as always, with one-day-routes only. However, watching how people came up with their backpacks loaded when you go down, made us start to think that we wanted to do that too …

The following year we went for the first time to a trekking-only trip (to Bulgaria), but we didn’t dare yet to spend the night out of the comforts of a hotel. But yes, the hittchy feelig about going on a several days hiking was growing, and by the next year became something unstoppable.

So we decided that the following year we would do a real trekking. We bought our first tent, our first sleeping bags, our first everything … and there we went.

But do not think that we started hiking through the Alps without having any previous experience, that would have been crazy… First, to get used to walk long distances loaded with a heavy backpack we did the famous route of Carlos V. The plan was to make it one day, and to return the next day in the opposite direction. In addition, we took the stove for the first time, to cook our meals in the field. That WAS the plan. We will not go into too many details about how it really was. We will only say that on the first day we almost did not eat, we arrived at our destination looking like Chiquito de la calzada and Dr. House, and that we gave up walking back and spent the following day drinking beer…

We also went a couple of nights camping in our area, to know how to correctly pitch out tent; Carlos was obsessed with doing that quickly, in case it rained. Besides, we had never slept in those mattresses, in those sleeping bags, in that tent. At least, we had to try them…

So that was our preparation: a couple of trips, a couple of nights spent in  a campsite, and that’s it. That’s the way we are… Of course it doesn’t mean that we recommend doing things as we have. Being outdoors may not be a matter of laughts, we know we have always been very lucky.

Tell us what you think in the comments!