Mari Ermi

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plan for today: somehow get stove fuel and somehow make it closer to the surf school.

had waffle breakfast again, packed up my shit, replenished my water supplies and went to say goodbye to chris, who was sitting, as expected, at the café. we were joined by three other friends of his, a hippie couple and an older woman, all german. they were all super friendly and told some stories of their own hitchhiking experiences. one of the guys offered to give me some of the gas he had left in a spare tank of their renovated fire engine, that's problem one solved.

i said goodbye to all of them, chris even got me a little present, a small bag of scented wood for my backpack. so cute. i started marching my overloaded ass west along a road. it was siesta and super hot, so barely any traffic. i got lucky, the third car i held my "ovest" sign out to picked me up. three swiss friends in their late twenties on vacation with a rental, they had great music taste. i got dropped of somewhere behind oristano.

i started walking again, this time it was a little harder. even if one of the drivers saw me, there were hardly any opportunities to stop. had a short breather in a small abandoned tower, about half an hour later, i was picked up by a friendly italian man.

he dropped me off and i realized that i was completely wrong there, but it was a somewhat touristic area so i decided to have a look at the attractions (tower kinda thing, pic 5). at this point, my phone and powerbank were both almost dead, the solar panel couldn't really help either.

had a nap, then i realized that both my charging cables were fucked, so my 15% battery was all i had. nonetheless, i was good on water and food, so no big worries. walking back towards the (only) road, i couldn't believe my eyes when i saw the fire engine from the guys that had given me gas earlier. i was like an hour away from where we parted ways.

again, i got picked up, this time by two very verbal italian grannies. they didn't speak the tiniest bit of english and neither did i understand them, which didn't stop them from talking to me the whole way. they took me to the next intersection and hand signaled me to get off here. back to walking.

the last ride (four rides in a day is my new high score) was by far the best one yet. i got squished into a tiny fiat with three other teenagers. three seconds in, a large glass container filled to the brim with weed rolled against my feet. the guy next to me screamed something italian, snatched the thing and the entire car, including me, started laughing.

their english was very limited, but andrea, the guy next to me, managed to ask me wether i smoked. i wasn't trying to be a pussy, so i replied "a little". it seemed to be the right answer, because this dude proceeded to unload the weed container into an empty box of fags and gave it to me.

the three italians took me to a seaside camping site where they were apparently employed and let me stay there for half the price. absolute legends.

my phone was completely dead at this point, so i went for a sunset swim in the sea before making pasta (half of which landed on my stove) and calling it a day.Read more