After spending all day in a coworking office in the city, I walked the 30 minutes back to the hostel I was staying at in Zadar, Croatia and thought about what I wanted to do tomorrow on my day off. It was late summer in the Mediterranean and still very hot, I was staying only 5 minutes from the beach, but I didn’t want to spend my last day sitting around in the sun, I wanted adventure.
Other guests I met staying at the hostel had mentioned a National Park with waterfalls. That sounds promising. After getting back to the hostel I learned that the shuttle was fully booked to the waterfall National Park, but there was another National Park, they could take you too. It was 80€ and 5 hours round trip.
In the common room of the hostel, a girl recommended a hike she was thinking of doing tomorrow. You get to climb a mountain, it’s not flooded by tourists because its only known for rock climbing, and the bus ticket was 10€ round trip. Sold, I bought my ticket online right there. She seemed flaky, but I didn’t care if she was really going, I wanted to climb a mountain. I continued cooking dinner and by the end of the night, we had a group of 10 people to go in the morning.
It was a beautiful day when we started, but it was now was scorching and humid and we had been climbing the mountain for around 4 hours, we were becoming glue. You could tell which of us brought backpacks by the imprint of sweat soaking their shoulders and back.
After hiking for hours we unexpectedly reached a large house where travelers could rest and enjoy some food. Everyday there was only one thing on the menu, a big bowl of stew. Our group walked across the gravel area and shuffled into the picnic tables outside, thankful they were under shade. We were greeted by a grinning, barefoot women with the strangest mullet haircut I had ever seen (business in the front and party in the back, however in the small spaces on the side of her head just in front of her ears, she also grew it out long, it almost looked like mutton chops!)
We began eating and drinking from our packs, fueling up for the steepest and most dangerous trek of the mountain. Gleefully overhearing the plans as we discussed at the table, the mountain women stood up and walked toward us with a huge smile and new orders for us.
Her feet and calves were thick and strong, well developed muscles that had not seen the inside of a shoe in years if ever. She walked over to us barefoot, her front yard had no grass. It was a level field of sharp limestone gravel, and she strode over it like soft earth. “No, No, you can’t go up there”. She motioned to our shoes and denied our entry up the remaining part of the mountain. Out of our group, 2 had hiking boots and the rest wore an amalgam of city sneakers and tennis shoes, myself included.
Motioning for us to follow her inside, she turned around and walked away without waiting for us. She was a decisive person, there was no time for beating around the bush.
“Go visit our neighbors instead” she said as I looked around. What neighbors?. I thought. This was the only house we’d seen during the entire hike, I didn’t even know people lived up here!
“Take the path up behind our house to a clearing where you will have just as good a view, I promise”.
Sometimes it’s not about the view. I thought to myself, but I remained silent. I knew this wasn’t a woman to argue with and I didn’t want to spoil her hospitality, it was worth trusting her advice. She said the night before this area experienced torrential rain storms and combined with our motley crews lack of proper shoes and significant exhaustion I agreed it was advice worth taking.
The woman pulled from her pocket a hand drawn map and showed us the route we should take instead, we compared it to the hiking map on our phone and found that her map contained several secret trails unknown to ours. Cool. I tried to take a picture of her map, and she waived me off giving me her copy instead.
I next went outside and met her husband, a stocky bald man with just as jovial demeanor.
###
looking forward to the rest of the story