In January 2000 I saw the posters for Günter`s  slide show in Munich: "South America - the 12,000 km ride". The picture excited and fascinated me. I kept seeing it. While I was watching his lecture, I knew: I want to travel with you! That would be the fulfillment of a dream many years old!

A few years earlier I had ridden through western Canada for a few months with my boyfriend at that time, Kurt - and the idea of ​​taking a trip on horseback over a longer period of time, a longer distance, hadn't left me since then. The idea was to ride with him to Alaska.

The most difficult step was to let go of everything at home in Germany, to leave it behind, to say goodbye for so long. The nicest thing was: the simple life, not knowing where you will arrive that evening, being together and being out and about with our animals, sitting on the leisurely walking horse all day long (or walking next to it), indulging in your thoughts to discover an interesting bird, a lizard, a snake or a flower along the way. I enjoyed the slow life of having time for everything. For the first time in my life it didn´t matter whether we stayed in one place for just a few hours, a day or a month, everything was solely my or our own, self-determined decision, no appointments, no one was waiting for anything that had to be finished. That was heaven!

The journey together, the encounters with other people who always invited us to stay, the different landscapes, animals and people will remain an unforgettable experience for me. Often we were stopped by involuntary stops, such as diseases of the animals or difficulties at the borders, but these interruptions always turned out for the better, in retrospect we were always happy to have been delayed and took good memories with us, saying goodbye to our new friends was often difficult. I ended my personal journey on horseback in northern Mexico.

My dream of many years had come true. Traveling with Günter, as a die-hard bachelor and lonely traveler for many years, yes, you could also say loner, was not always easy. To make compromises, to make agreements, to find the right tone in dealing with a partner, to be open to the wishes and sensitivities of the other, that was what first wanted to be learned. So some almost separations did not stay away, but in the end what we had together and the always reliable friendship brought us together again. We were a well-rehearsed team, understood each other over time without many words, and our love of animals for our horses and our dogs, which preceded everything else, made decisions easy and gave us a lot of mutual joy when our animals were doing well. The step to go on a long journey again is not as big as it was back then ... I'm already thinking ...