I´m sitting on a ranch in Utah, in the beautiful Castle Valley and let myself be spoiled by Scrambled Eggs and Bacon. The view reaches from the breakfast room of Red Cliffs Lodge directly to the Colorado River, which loses much of its lurid power in winter. Every now and then a falling snowflake sails through the picture, otherwise not much happens here in January, measured by the streams of tourists drifting through Canyonlands and Arches National Parks in summer.
How do you think the total detox to the players‘ metropolis Las Vegas looks like? Maybe like an overnight stay at the Boulder Mountain Guest Ranch near Escalante. The journey alone promises deceleration as it leads you through the loneliness of the Nevada desert, through the passionately beautiful Zion National Park, touches the Bryce Canyon and peels its way through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.
„I see you’re traveling with a larger travel group“. National’s rental car agent looks at me eagerly as if he’s expecting a delegation from the German Skiing Association. „No, not really,“ I answer with astonishment and a questioning facial expression. „Well, you booked our biggest SUV. There fit easily 8 persons in“ answers Mr. National. Okay, the eyes were probably bigger than the driver’s license, but less than 10 minutes later I steer the Star Destroyer into downtown Denver. Because before my stay in the brand new Limelight Hotel from Snowmass, the travel planning set the NHL game of the Colorado Avalanche against the New York Rangers.
A little boy standing alone at the Kalk Bay pier defying the storm. Again and again he renews the bait on his rod, pulls out in a high bow and tries to catch a fish in this windy night. The iron sea breaks against the quay wall, almost as if she wanted to pull the little boy down. But she won’t get him, that’s for sure.
My first day in St James Homestead Guesthouse couldn’t have started more promising, because before my arrival I decide for the short but exhausting hike to Lion´s Head, which is next to the Table Mountain Plateau, the second impressive elevation in Cape Town.
There is a world out there that is so much more beautiful than the one we normally live in. A world without roads, without noise and pollution, a world where the greatest gift is a sunrise over the grassy waterways of the Okavango Delta. I am back in Africa and it hits me right in the heart. So much originality, so much landscape, so much warmth. So many good-hearted people, so many wild animals, maintaining a last ecosystem in peace that began thousands of years ago and may have disappeared sometime. Yes, I am in the middle of Botswana, on the lookout of my &BEYOND Xudum Okavango Delta Lodge Suite, gliding my gaze across the plain, always hoping to find elephants.
A small Springbok gets into the cone of light of my headlight and tries desperately to escape the glistening attraction. From time to time he pauses to finally follow the road before disappearing into the thicket just before my final destination. Then there is silence again and the starry night sky lights up the last meters to Longlands Cottage on Orange Grove Farm, in the middle of nowhere on Robertson Wineland.
One almost gets the impression as if the Swiss had turned away from one of their most spectacular landscape stages and left the village of Grindelwald entirely to tourists from Korea, the Emirates or the US. Only at the mountain, high above the beautiful Bachalpsee, one meets them again and enjoys with them a painting of glaciers, peaks, legends and tragedies.
The morning mist still sticks like cotton candy to the wooded slopes of Piz Mezdi, while the rising sun bathes Lake St. Moritz in warm, soft light and creates a touch of melancholy in me. Are you actually happy or rather sad if you have to delete a part of your bucket list? Badrutt´s Palace in St. Moritz is a living legend that has enchanted generations of travellers and yet sits timelessly enthroned above the greenish shimmering lake.
After the ascent to Ballstadheia I already weighed myself on the climax of my Lofoten trip, the panoramic view over the fjord landscape around Leknes was so unique that I almost ran out of letters. But today’s 120 kilometres from Svolvær to Reine should eclipse everything that has existed so far. I was served a picture-book summer’s day, which occasionally raises the thermometer to a record-breaking 19 degrees. I’m even about to apply sunscreen and for the first time I’m really happy to have chosen the low season from May to mid-June as travel time, because there’s not much going on on the streets, in the few cafés and restaurants and in the accommodations. In midsummer you will certainly need elbows and lots of luck and patience due to the limited availability.
Even the flight to Tromsø, which is close to the Lofoten Islands, in early summer resembles an Arctic acclimatisation. While Lufthansa just gave me a „downgrade“ of -10 degrees Celsius on my way from Munich to Oslo, SAS added a shovel on the following 1,200 flight kilometres and adjusted the air conditioning to the outside temperature, so that I finally reached the rain-wet taxiway of Tromsø with only 6 degrees Celsius.
