After I have waited the whole day for wind or the feel of the usual thermic activity on the take off of Calheta Buena I decide to start my night walk back to Iquique. I am sorry to do that and blame myself a lot for flying out without appropriate preparation, but it´s the way it is and I have to face the consequences and I find that a night walk is the safest of all possible solutions and so I go on. After 10 km I feel pain in both of my shoes around the smallest toes. I never had faced problems with blisters, so I decide to walk on. But the pain gets worse. So I finally take off my shoes and really : blisters ! The smallest toes look like pumped up and underneath the big toe there is also a small blister on every foot. I calculate the remaining time of the night and take in mind my reduced walking speed and find out, it would be possible to reach Alto Hospicio within next mornings time and so I go on. But my enthusiasm gets less and less and although I did not want to ask someone for help for such cheap mistakes from my side I push the button for retrieve on my SPOT device. As it is in the middle of the night now, noone will come. In the morning light a pick-up with road construction workers appears first. They friendly guys donate a roast-beef-avocado-sandwich and a 1,5 liter bottle of water to me and tell me, they would advice their night watchman to take me back to Alto Hospicio as soon as they had arrived at their working place. Soon after that, the night watchman arrives and I get a ride to Alto Hospicio. Just about 5 km later my friend Jarek crosses our way on his ride for my retrieve, having received my SPOT request for picking me up. I change cars and an hour later I am back in town to serve my wounds and have a rest day and think over, what I have learned from my 12. october mistaken decision to fly on without appropriate water, food, batteries …
