2011

After my fourth visit, Antigua feels like my second home. Shortly after my arrvial I met some old friends and started my visit this year with a very relaxed week in Antigua. The second week I went to Lago Atitlán for a few days, a huge lake sorrounded by three volcanoes. I went to San Pedro by boat, hiked to San Marcos the next day, passing some coffee plantations and then went back to Panajachel, the biggest town on the lake.

Copán was my first stop after Antigua. It is in Honduras, just behind the boarder and has some good Mayan ruins in the jungle. Also lots of big, colorful parrots. From there I went to Rio Dulce, a hot and busy town in the Petén - district. From there it is a wonderful 2-hour-ride on the river to Livingston, a place that is not at all like Guatemala but highly influenced by the Garifuna culture, similiar to Belize and the islands of Honduras.

I couldn't help it, I had to go to Caye Caulker again, the beautiful small white island in the blue Carribean. A perfect place to hang out for a few days and go snorkeling. I did the same trip like last year - watching nurse sharks, rays and turtles. This time there was just four of us on a big sail boat with some raggea music and good rum punch, this might well have been the best day of the whole trip. Life seemed so easy and relaxed. After half a day in Flores I went back to Antigua for my last two days. A hard Goodbye.

Some of my collegues and I spent a weekend in the Elbsandsteingebirge, south of Dresden. We went hiking and enjoyed the first warm days of the year. In October we went again for one day.

After several years of canoeing I decided I wanted to try kajaking. On the long Himmelfahrt-weekend I knocked myself out going from Neustrelitz to Rheinsberg and from Wesenberg to Mirow. The weather was perfect and I covered more the 200km of waterways on the Mecklenburger Seenplatte. Kajaks are a lot faster then canoes ;-)

Like last year I went to Austria for a four-day-hike to get in shape for my big summer vacation. This time I went to the Verwall where I had already been hiking in 2006, and a friend of mine was actually crazy enough to join me although he knew what he was getting into. But he could keep up well (after we left about 4 kg of food in a tiny self-service-hut) and we had a great time despite of the cold and snowy conditions. On one summit I event found the remains of a prayer flag from Nepal I had put there five years ago.

This year I decided to do a nice 7-day-circuit in the Allgäu mountains which are - quite unusual for me - still in Germany! Like the close Lechtal the mountains are a bit lower but still very challenging. The weather was just perfect, and the mountains beautiful. I climbed a lot of summits, jumped into every lake I could find and met some really nice people. The day I did the very interesting Heilbronner Weg was very foggy, so I did not see a lot around me which maybe wasn't a very bad thing ;-)

During the second part of the hike I went along some very nice ridges and climbed the Hochvogel, a very impressive and distinctive mountain. The last night I spent at a cow farm because there were no more cabins in this area. My day of rest I spent at the beautiful Plansee.

The weather was very warm and predicted to be stable for the next week, I got really lucky this year. So for my trip in the Pfitschtal in Italy (south of the Zillertal) I brought along my warm sleeping bag and slept outside under the stars every night. This is quite rare and was a wonderful experience. The first day I went up the ridge from Wiesen near Sterzing on a trail that was quite tricky on the last part and not very pleasant to walk on because it was not well marked and a bit slippery. But spending the night high above the valley with just some sheep around me made it all worth the effort. A guy from Rosenheim told my that due to the warm weather for the last two weeks it had been possible to climb the Hochfeiler (or better - el Gran Pilastro) without any further equipment so I decided to do a little detour. The views into the Zillertal, Stubaital, Ötztal, Tauern and even the Dolomits were fantastic and it turned out to be the highest mountain I have climbed so far in the alps.

I climbed the Wilde Kreuzspitze, the highest mountain of the Pfitscher mountains with great views. The day after I came back to the valley it rained a lot but in the afternoon it was sunny again and the rising fog from the mountains created some very nice views :-) The next day I climbed the Geierköpfe from the Plansee, a very nice finish of this year's hiking vacation. I cannot believe how lucky I got with the weather.

At the end of the summer I decided to go kajaking again for one weekend and again for three days in October. It was amazing how fast I was away from Berlin and on the water. Again, the weather was fantastic and the foggy sunrise on 2 October truly incredible.

For the third time I joined the annual trip of our IDEAL - soccer team. This time we went to the Spreewald where we visitied a huge coal mine, went canoeing and enjoyed nice evenings with great barbecue.