The Great Hans Wanderlust

Hans was born in Switzerland in 1963. But, that’s about as much as he can remember of that little mountain paradise. Ah —- wait, he did become a qualified chef there, but soon tired of putting blobs of puffy cream on Cuckoo-cookies. Hans has been restless for the last 20 years and is so eccentric than he’s completely off the map. In fact, it’s impossible to find a map that he’s not been on. Once he’s on a particular map, he works towards getting off that specific map, even if it means that he must cross a continent to do that. Once, whilst crossing the Atacama Desert in Chile,he got so hungry that he had to eat his map. He’s completely ‘Wanderlust’ insane and has been so from the day he left school. Travelling and insanity holding hands into the far horizons. First came the usual hitchhiking stuff, but not like you and me. No—-No, he tramped down from Anchorage, Alaska to Usuaiha in Argentina, the most southern city in the world. Then he hitched over Russia to Mongolia and trekked through China and South East Asia.

The first time I met Hans, I just knew that it wasn’t going to be the last. The first time was in the municipal campsite in Garies. I would really put it on the map as far as campsites go. The campsite in Garies should not really be on any map. The only other person, besides me in the campsite had a small tent and a bicycle. He was going through a prolonged tirade of German swearing. Swearing in German with a Swiss dialect is even funnier, almost what puffy cream blobs add to Cuckoo-cookies. Finally, I walked over to him and congratulated him on his vocabulary. He was angry, because, in Africa, there are never any rubber plugs and toilet paper in the ablution blocks. I reminded him that in most parts of Africa there were no ablution blocks, so why then bother with the shit paper and plugs. He introduced himself as ‘Hans’ and mentioned that he had just used the last bit of his last map to wipe his arse. He added that it was a crappy map in any case.

This was his forth return- journey from Switzerland to Cape Town. Two times down the west side and twice up the east side of Africa. He added that this was done on the same bicycle over a period of six years. A feat like this is too inconceivable for normal cookie travellers like me to comprehend. I rolled my eyes around the hills of Garies and asked: “How many kilometres?” He smiled and said, “ 63,000 or more”….. Two months later, there was a knock on the door at home. “ Oh, my God!” I exclaimed, rolling my eyes around the mountains of Natures Valley . “ No”, he said, “—only, Hans”. He had dropped by on his road to somewhere via Africa —- the tough and fit cyclist, that no map on earth could contain, no continent could stop and no distant horizon could beat, had arrived from out of the blue. “Do you have toilet paper?” he asked with a smile. “No”, I answered, “just a whole shit load of maps”.

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