`Come on Jule, you can do it! Step by step! Breathe in, breathe out. Only 300 meters further up.‘
At this time it was half past six in the evening and I just wanted to arrive at the mountain hut. But let’s start at the beginning of the hike.
We woke up at 6.30 in the morning. After a quick breakfast we had to prepare lunch packets. These would be our food for the next two days so everyone was interested in getting enough for himself. Everyone grabbed as much bread as he could, so the bread was piled up on the whole table: Above the honey, over the meat, leaning on the jam. Of course there was enough food for everyone, but a lot of the trays were empty after some of the students had finished their sixth sandwich.
After our daily cleaning duty we had to store all our backpacks in the bus without destroying anything. We had a little stop at a viewing point so we could enjoy the great view over the clouds beneath us and the Pico del Teide. It was so beautiful, it looked like a Mars landscape. The bus also took us to the Pico del Teide Museum, where Teresa told us interesting facts about volcanism. After she had finished we watched a funny film about a fire demon which is said to live inside the Teide.
After an other short bus trip we stopped at the starting point of our track.
Until we had walked 200 meters I had thoughts like ‚Okay that will be funny‘ or ‚I imagined it would be harder and more exhausting‘ but after that point it got very hard for me.
You know, I think there are two sides of climbing up a mountain. One is the hard, sweaty, exhausting path up the mountain, the other is the impressive landscape around you and – in our case – the fact that you walk the same path like famous men, for example like the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, who climbed Mount Teide in 1799 discovering endemic plants.
The temperature dropped further and further, and at the end a temperature of seven degrees was reached. Our goal for the day was to reach a mountain hut at a height of 3264 meters. The last group, which also included me, got there at 5:30pm. The fastest of us cooked hot tea and a soup with Cous-Cous to warm up the exhausted hikers. At 10pm we went to bed.
The next day started at 4:00am, because we wanted to reach the top before sunrise. So once again everyone put on his walking shoes and we continued our journey up to the peak. It got even colder and icy, so we dressed really warm. The walk lasted two hours and the way got steeper as we went up.
At the top we put up our Classroom under Sail flag, which was crafted by our “Auftakeln”-project. It was a great feeling, to reach the summit after such a long and exhausting walk. Many photos were taken to show our success to everyone. It was a wonderful experience, which – for sure – none of us will ever forget.