1800km From Home... The Long Road To Freedom! My Story pt. III, Puglia, Italy.steemCreated with Sketch.

in #minnowtowhale7 years ago (edited)

What made me leave everything behind and start travelling? My story pt. III

Check out part I & II of the story to see how I got up to this point in time!

Chapter V: Arrival at 'Giardino Della Gioia'

..29th of June, 2016..
I finally arrived after the long bus ride.. My new home, It was amazing! Only 15 minutes walking from the beach and still it felt like we were completely isolated from the rest of the world, living deep into the wilderness!
The place kind of looked like an old olive tree plot abandoned by people and mother nature completely took over again, making it look like a complete wilderness. These olive trees really looked like ancient trees, I think they told me a lot of them were minimum 500 years old.

Some of the insects here were really enormous. And the strange thing was they were only enormous in this place. When I walked to the beach, only after 5 minutes walking towards the sea the insects started to be the normal size again. For example the 'Cicadas' they were really big, loud and noisy. Every day in the morning they started to sing there usual mantra-like songs all together until the evening falls, then the Cicada "mantra" was slowly fading out while the sun was slowly falling behind the horizon and a new sound faded in to existence, the meditative sounds of the crickets who slowly prepare you to go to sleep. I loved this part of the day!


It became like a ritual, every night watching the sun go down in the ocean and listening to mother nature's music..

Chapter VI: The Adaptation

After the acquaintance with the residents I started helping out were I could. My main task was watering the plants in the morning before the heat and again in the evening after the heat, otherwise the water just evaporates into the atmosphere.. and I also helped out in the kitchen. In the summertime it is too hot to work a lot, so they only asked to help for 2 hours a day.
Eventually it started to feel like a nice holiday camping in nature and going to the beach almost everyday. In the first week I slept in one of their yurts, but it was too hot for me so eventually I put up my tent under one of the ancient olive trees were I had some shadow in the morning.



This was an other kind of huge insect and they were everywhere, keeping us company at night in the yurts.. this was another reason why I decided to move out and sleep in my own tent..😄

In the summer vacation they also hosted one yurt for 'Airb&b'. Most of the time it were young families who came to the airbnb. Really nice loving families who liked the experience of staying in wild nature for a while. One particular family planned to stay only one week and ended up staying for 3 weeks! They really loved this place.
It was incredible how many like-minded people I met there, young and old. When I lived in my hometown I almost never met people who where thinking outside of the box, and now so much in one month. It was like Portugal all over again..
This gave me a good feeling, I believed I was on the right track.

In the beginning it is a little bit scary to live in the wilderness because we aren't used to it anymore. We are living so disconnected from nature these days. In some cases so disconnected they could even forget what an insect looks like..😀
This adaption of living together with mother nature's little creatures again goes slowly but eventually you are completely used to it. I was picking figs every morning in small fig trees full of wasps. Normally I would never do this but I became used to their presence and I think they can feel your good intentions after a while and the chance of getting stung is very small.
Not even once I got stung while I was there . The peacefulness of mother nature starts to settle in after some time.

Chapter VII: The "Real" life off-grid

After one month there started to appear more people of my age and volunteering in the project. Now we were with 2 couples, and 2 non-couples 2 guys and 2 girls me included. So 8 people were volunteering and no more airbnb hosts for a while.
At this time the founders of the project had to leave for a month and asked us if we wanted to take care of their land meanwhile.

"This is a unique opportunity to experience how it feels like to live in an eco-project"
"Before we leave we will explain the daily tasks necessary to keep everything running and assign 1 or 2 to each person" they said to us.

We had a few meetings until we had figured it all out who was doing what.
Gathering wood, watering plants, watering young fruit trees around the property, kitchen maintenance,...
My task was watering the young fruit trees from now on. All 300 trees are done manually by carying buckets of water around the plot. Everyday I had some team members who were free to help me out. We all helped each other out where needed. The group was like the perfect team. We all came along so well. It was a wonderful experience, I am very grateful for this opportunity!


This is only half of the portion of the meals we ate everyday, the table was almost full every meal.. the italians really love their food. This was food paradise for me. The meals took me to heaven everyday..haha..

Of course like every experience in life, this also has its own set of challenges. Everything we do in life comes along with its challenges. Nothing is a straight line, so I try to avoid dreaming about things and think "if I do this or do that then everything will be perfect." It seems like 'perfect' was an illusion I unconsciously had in the past years. Fortunately I had come to this realization before I started travelling because travelling is like looking at life through a magnifying glass. These things somehow seem much more obvious when you take huge steps out of your comfort zone.
Living more free and having time on your side has a lot of advantages. You automatically start to pay more attention to what is happening in your day to day experiences and your own reactions to it. This allows you to create a better relationship with yourself eventually. This is how I experience this free lifestyle, of course everybody's experience is different. But I am sure most people would benefit a lot from more free time in their lives...

Sorry I got a little of topic there.. 😅

..After most of the group left to go home, now friends of the founders came. They where also involved in the project but not living there full-time. They came to run the place while their was only a few people left. It was very important to keep the place running and certain tasks had to be done because otherwise the the young fruit trees would die and they could lag behind on stocking and drying wood, so they could survive the winter with enough wood to burn the stoves in the yurts and kitchen.
The simple life is not so easy as you might think..
They only have enough solar power to pump a few tons of water in tanks drawn from a well, and maybe a run a laundry. The laundry machine and the pump were the two only energy absorbing machines they had, even no fridge nor freezer.


The new bathroom under construction

Chapter VIII: The Reunion

In the last 12 days of my stay there my brother planned to come and visit me. It was an amazing reunion! In the last few years we didn't had a lot of contact anymore until we both separated from our ex-girlfriends. After this we started to hang out more, we were growing closer together again until I left the country to travel. But when we reunited again in Italy the relationship only got better and better. He is a very funny guy, it was a long time ago that somebody made me laugh so much everyday. Everybody liked him a lot in the project, also the musicians had a new guitar player to make some music with, my brother and a guitar go hand in hand. We had a lot of fun. After one week he already decided to skip his flight and stay longer.

While I was there in the passed 3 weeks I started to get to know some locals of a town nearby 'San Nicandro' who were at the beach every day after 15pm and I introduced them to my brother. They were really nice people, they had invited us to a private party at a friend's house once. What a crazy night..haha.. these guys knew how to throw a party! Italian style of course, with lots of food.

At the end of august we decided to leave and go visit a friend I had made here, he visited and helped out in the project a few weeks ago. He invited us to come help him a bit and stay at his place. He was creating a garden permaculture style and could use a hand. So we said goodbye to everybody including our local friends at the beach and left the project. We took the train in San Nicandro to the next destination 'Cisternino'..

Only the 3rd picture is not my own work, picture of Cicada source



I am a member of the minnowtowhale team, thanks to @joerocketfilms. If you are new to steemit and want to become a member to help each other grow and participate in the community go here for guidelines, and go to the discord channel and talk to @joeyrocketfilms in the team minnowtowhale channel https://discord.gg/Xuw5DF


Tips

Video Tutorials

Here are some of my older posts if you are interested in some healthy recipes, travel stories or health related topics. Now you don't have to search in between the pile of resteemed posts..:)

I would like to leave you with some amazing talents I discovered until now and their Pieces Of Art!

Friends



Graphic design is done with the website https://www.canva.com/ and all non-sourced images are 100% my own work.
The GIF image is the designed by @pulpworx

Sort:  

Thx for sharing

Your stories make me wanna go there too! They are so vivid!
I might go a little further (out of my comfort zone) though,
I am considering South America, Central America but I might need some more money first (to pay for the plane ticket), so why not start out in Europe ;)

Hehe.. thanks for the compliment. When I gather enough money I am also planning to make bigger steps. I am also considering South America and Asia in the future. May our dreams become reality :)

Oh thanks so much for the mention mate! You are just amazing! Your story is so inspiring man! Wow what an adventure!
Have a lovely day my friend!
@progressivechef

It is a pleasure to promote your work :) Thank you for the kind words brother :) Have a lovely day!

you please follow me and i will upvote you and you same will do please...

Congratulations on your new found freedom. It takes a lot of courage to do what you are doing but you get paid in the currency of HAPPINESS! Good luck on your journey!

Thanks you very much @maryjanepower. the best currency in the world :) bless you friend

Amazing trip! thanks for sharing it with us!

My pleasure friend :)

wow what an adventure you are just amazing very inspiring

pleasure

Congratulations @mitchiesfoodrace! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

Award for the number of posts published

Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here

If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

By upvoting this notification, you can help all Steemit users. Learn how here!

This post has received a 3.75 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @mitchiesfoodrace.

I love to help people but I have to be honest, I don't have a soft spot for people who beg. I think this isn't the way the universe works but no hard feelings, we are all just here to learn...

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.17
TRX 0.13
JST 0.027
BTC 60133.79
ETH 2686.90
USDT 1.00
SBD 2.49