Fabio Silva Luis, graduated in Nurse Sciences, 5 years ago and found his passion for hiking and landscape photography. While he was doing his Erasmus in Oviedo – Spain, Asturias which is such an incredible place for nature/hike lovers, he started his hiking and photography journey. Fabio always had an artist vein to explore, since he was 8 years old Fabio loved  drawing and used his parents film camera. Now he's 32 a Portuguese living in Italy for the past 3 years. Ever since he found this passion, he's been exploring the nature in her rawest format and untouchable version, capturing her beauty as he saw her, trying to immortalize some moments that will capture the people's attention for nature and give her the right respect and love.

Last year I've met Christian Bruth in the Dolomites since that time we’ve connected through Instagram talking about when we could meet again and explore other natural panoramas. But due the worldwide pandemic we were living was not easy to come with a date. After some time, we’ve finally come with a date and a location to met again, from the 23rd until the 30th of May in Switzerland. This trip meant a lot for me especially in this occasion with all the lockdown the crazy work rhythm’s I needed to relax and exhale all this contaminated air, finding my inner balance by connecting with the nature and the mountains.

For this adventure, I’ve decided to change the way that I travel by challenging my self by carrying only the Tilopa 50 L for the entire trip where I’ve fitted my photography gear has my Sony A7iii, my lenses (24-105G, 14-24 Art and my 100-400GM) has well my Mavic Air 2, a Gopro H7 and my tripod. A part from my photography gear I’ve fitted also 5 T-shirts, 1 mid layer, Socks, underwear, a rain poncho and accessories (batteries, headlamp, etc…). My packing plan for this week was to plan day by day where we will be, where will we sleep, the weather on the location. I was not worried about the quantity of gear that I was carrying because I could always wash it on the go and at the end of this adventure, I’ve realized that all this fear was only on my mind and in the reality traveling with less is much easier that we’ve thought, this minimalist approach for this trip made me enjoy much more the places I’ve explored by giving me more freedom of movement. 

Fabio Silva Luis 

We’ve started our journey on the 23rd with a road trip from Zurich to Appenzell than hiking 16km to Fälensee and Saxer Lücke. We’ve done the return hike during night and we were death tired but was such an amazing day and experience. We’ve arrived at the car around 11pm having the energy just to eat something and prepare to sleep for the next day sunrise. We have woken up at 4:40am and was still dark outside. On the very start of the day we did a 30min car drive and a 1,5 hour hike to the beautiful lake Seealpsee, that was well worth it. After having our lunch we needed to move to Ticino our next destination, where we’ve found such an incredible atmosphere with the low clouds, rain and the hundreds waterfalls created by the melting snow. We’ve been there for 24hours to enjoy Valle Verzaska and Foroglio. The next day we spent it at Interlaken where we’ve visited Rosenlaui, Lauterbrunnen and Oeschinensee. We had such a pleasing surprise during the hike to the lake view point with an intense fog. We came across a group of Apex and this was the first time that we both had seen this particular creature in their habitat, they only are friendly until you cross the safety distance (around 10m) where they make a particular noise to let you know that you’re too close.

Fabio Silva Luis 

The craziest adventure was yet to come in Zermatt, we wanted to do the 5 lakes hike and watch the sunset at Stellisee but to reach we needed to do 9km hike, that wasn’t that bad has the descendent 9km hike to the hotel where we took like 3,5 hours to do in a pitch black night. Unfortunatly, my last day in Switzerland was arriving but before I leave there was one last location to explore Fronalpstock and a meeting with other photographers and nature lovers. Now that I’ve talked a little bit about our journey in Switzerland, there was one last thing that I’ve missed out and that's the food. To be honest we didn't have a great schedule to really enjoy a proper lunch and dinner because we were always on the go. But the breakfast was amazing with a lot of variety from salt to sweet options. Yet with the lack of time, we were lucky and had a tipical dish from Appenzel called Raucherwurstli mit kartoffelsalat that was like and potato salad with a bittersweet sauce and a big sausage.

Fabio Silva Luis 

With the limited time that we had its important to plan in advance your trip, day by day, the location that you want to explore, taking in consideration the time needed to explore each location and consider always a plan B. Making a prediction on what you will need for the vacation in terms of cloths, gear. Making sure that you bring warm cloths in case of high probability of serious cold. Checking the weather for each day is a good way of planning the cloths that we might need. If you’re like me and like to be on the right place at the right time to capture the best image possible check the best times of the day to a “x” location, some are better at sunrise others at sunset. an use this widget to input text into the page.

While you’re web-scouting location for your trip try to connect with some local they know better that us the location and can give us really good advises. In terms of gear bring what you feel comfortable with, or with what your project demands, making sure that we don’t bring unnecessary gear and weight. Because the most important think while travelling and hiking is the weight, less is more.

Can’t wait for my next adventure, I’m already thinking in some location like West USA or Patagonia but let’s see how all this Covid situation evolves until September. Meanwhile I will keep creating content on my area Sicily/Italy and taking care of people as a nurse. 

You can find Fabio's work on his Intagram and Youtube channels.