I recently returned from my first trip to Croatia, where I spent a week hiking, biking, kayaking, rafting, exploring and eating throughout the country. Between grieving my mom's death, working through her stuff, the busy-ness of work and trying to stay caught up on the rest of life, I hadn't had much time recently to do something purely for fun and purely for me. When my sabbatical was coming up this was one of the first things I planned, and I'm so glad I did it. (My mom also loved to travel and explore new places, so I think she would have encouraged it, too.)
I coordinated the trip through REI's Adventures program, which offers adventure/active travel and vacations around the world. I really appreciate that they focus on using local guides to facilitate small group trips full of context, history and authenticity in a true spirit of exploration, instead of just shuffling hoards of people through a standard tourist experience in all the standard locations. In Croatia this meant constant conversation with our two guides about the political and cultural history of the areas we visited, delicious home-cooked meals at the houses of everyday Croatian people, adapting our plans to the moods and weather of the day, and being able to linger in beautiful locations we had biked or paddled to, before and after the tour buses or cruise ships had come and gone.
This is my second trip with REI (the first being a week in the Galapagos Islands), and I felt fortunate that both times we had excellent guides (thanks Marin and Valentin!) and a group that was easy-going and enjoyable to spend time with. Celebrating our milestones and accomplishments over meals together each day was a real treat.
Croatia itself is just beautiful. The landscapes are so varied: lush national parks with waterfalls everywhere, open plains, islands dotting an amazing coastline, bustling cities. It has modern infrastructure and a high standard of living, but reminders everywhere of the not-so-distant periods of war and conflict.
Tourism is on the rise and is perhaps the country's main "export," and so they are wrestling with how to balance the many benefits that brings with the concerns of congestion and environmental degradation.
In addition to the joy of learning about a new place and getting outside my cultural comfort zone, the trip also served as a challenge to myself around physical fitness. The trip activities were rated as "moderately difficult" and I knew that I would need to do some preparation to go from my relatively sedentary lifestyle to being fully ready to take on a week of day-long physical exertion. Apparently I do pretty well with goal-oriented training; adjusting my diet, doing bike rides around town with a loaded-up trailer in tow and working out at the gym three to four times per week in the months leading up to the trip was a lot easier when I could do it in the name of not totally embarrassing myself in Croatia.
And it paid off! Each day I was more than able to keep up, sometimes even being the one who was pushing for a bit more speed or distance. Biking felt especially good and I think I was smiling for most of a 22-mile ride through the rolling countryside.
There was some cumulative fatigue by the end of the trip, but it was the kind that left me content and proud.
You can view all of my posted photos from the trip.
Now I'm on to new adventures and travel in the months ahead, but I hope I'm back in Croatia again before too long; there's more to see and do there!