When it comes to answering questions like “why have I hiked the PCT?”or “why do I want to hike the E1?” I always remember that one life-changing moment laying in bed after work. It was about 4 o’clock in the morning and I was trying to get some sleep whilst channel-hopping on the TV. Suddenly my attention was caught by beautiful landscape pictures. I became curious, stopped and watched. It was either a documentary of or an advertisement from the tourism-office of the beautiful island of La Réunion. I was stunned by the pictures I saw and I decided to have a closer look at this island … tomorrow when I wake up. I fell asleep, woke up a few hours later, excited like a child at christmas still due what I have seen on TV. I turned on my PC to check out the island. La Réunion is a small island in the indian ocean about 700 km east of Madagascar. The pictures I found online and the stories I read by people who have been there made my decision very clear very fast: I gotta go there! This all happened 2011.
It took another 4 years before I finally went. Upon decision to go there I asked myself “What’s there to do? How do I explore the island?” and after further research on the internet I decided to hike the island. La Réunion has a well maintained hiking trail system and offers a variety of different trails. I chose the GRR2, a trail that traverses the island from north to south on a distance of 140 km. Those 140 km probably were the single most beautiful 140 km of my life! I will write about the island, the trail and my experiences in future posts but so much for now at the end of this hike, after 12 days, I knew I want to keep on hiking. I wanted and to go further and farther than any Björn has ever gone before. I was hooked to hiking.
I stayed on La Réunion for four weeks and as soon as I came back to germany I started looking for longer hiking-trails. It took me about 4 month to finally decide to hike the PCT. I hiked it in 2016 and it was, of course, also magnificent. That’s why I hiked the Camino in 2017, met Jared and now I am going to hike the E1 in 2019.
Life‘s a thru-hike