Hiking Teide volcano

My soul was very lonely and betrayed again. I felt a lot of pain, sorrow, and disconnection coming from other people and from that special person I met in Gran Canaria last year. I felt out their emotions like I had no choice. "Someone who is empathetic is being coached by their environment. Empathy is an emotional response to vibration." Eventually, I just turned away and shut down because it was too much for me. The strong chi (= life force energy), that ayahuasca gifted me with in July, slowly diminished over the coming months and I lost my light. This winter I was constantly cold. And the winter lasted for 6 months. I was craving to come back to the Canaries to warm up and I specifically wanted to return to Tenerife to reconnect with my heart and with my soul family.

So this is where I currently am, on Tenerife, the heart chakra island. I joined a coliving place that I found on worldpackers.com and I am slowly warming up inside and out. I have got many like-minded people around me (travellers, digital nomads, soul seekers) and I adore the time we spend together inside and outside the house we share. My heart is gradually opening up again.

Last week we hiked Teide, the third-highest volcano in the world, during the night to catch the sunrise. It's 3715 m tall but I only got to 3270 m where the refugee camp is. We left home at midnight, drove to the parking area at the volcano (which was packed with cars btw...it seemed that we were not the only ones who wanted the thrill to hike without sleeping) and the six of us adjusted our headlamps, then hit the path at 1:00 am. It was planned to be an overnight hike to the top which sounded like a great adventure especially if you have fun people as a company but in reality, it was hard to battle with the altitude, the darkness, and the cold in the higher ascending part of the trail. The tired, sleepless body was another challenge to cope with. At some point, I just felt like my body was a heavy stone that I couldn't carry anymore. My breathing pattern was in sleeping mode and my heart was pounding faster with exhaustion. I just wanted to lie down and sleep a bit. I was ready to pass out on a rock and call it a day but I couldn't. The others were waiting for me and there were still 2 hours of arduous walk to the peak. So I huffed and puffed my way up to the refugee camp where I violently shook from the cold for the rest of the night which was between 4 am - 8 am. I was lucky that a bed had just freed up and I could lie down. Normally, visitors have to book in advance but those who didn't book a bed can still find refuge on the floor or outside the building.

At some point, I managed to fall asleep (or my body rocked me into an unconscious state from the cold) and when I opened my eyes next, it was 06:28 am, around the time the Sun started to appear above the clouds. When I stepped outside to see what I was hiking for a.k.a the sunrise, strong, freezing wind hit my face and numbed my body. On the other hand, the power of the sun was growing stronger by the minute and I went from shaking from the cold to applying sunscreen on me before I began the hike down from the camp at 8:30 am.

My hiking buddies told me that it was extremely cold on the top and they were all shaking so badly that they couldn't enjoy the sunrise let alone take pictures of it. I was shaking badly too, 500 m below them, but I managed to snap a few photos before I rushed to the back of the house to deal with my toilet needs on the rocks. The strong wind blew the pee all over my legs and about number 2., well, that went well...everything came out. I don't know what happened to my body during the hike, or maybe the power of the volcano did something to me, but after this hike all week I needed to go to the toilet two times a day and I literally felt my intestines became cleaner. It definitely unblocked and helped to flow the energy within me. Something has shifted on a subconscious level as well.

When I asked my hiking buddies if they wanted to hike Teide again, they collectively agreed "No!".

We got back home at around noon and I had an English lesson scheduled at 13:00. My student is a 13-year-old teen who asked me "How was the volcano?" My zombie self could barely react. I mean how could I sum up the most challenging hike in my life for a K-pop fan who plays video games in his free time?

1-minute video of the trip