Rules of Hitchhiking -- Split, Croatia

I'm starting this post from a gorgeous balcony overlooking the sea. I'm sipping a glass of delicious red wine (don't ask me to remember the variety) and feeling pleasantly full/BURSTING with an absolutely sublime dinner of veal knuckles, potatoes and an exquisite tomato sauce.

Can I use any other words to demonstrate how immensely satisfied I am with life right now?

Yesterday was long.

We started the day off bright and early (the sun lit up our cave well before five, so we didn't really have much of a choice), rolling up Judy, packing our bags, taking quick and frugal swigs of water, and trudging up the hill and back to the main road. 

My calves were on fire and my glutes were mightily murmuring their disconent.

GrumblegrumblemurmurmurmurDISCONTENT

HOW WILL I GET RID OF MY STUFF? GOD, I need a netbook. This laptop is just too heavy. I can't handle it anymore. Somehow, someday, I will lose my laptop and get a significantly lighter camera. My butt simply isn't up to this sort of strain. Neither are my shoulders. 

I want a massage.  

We made it back into Preko by 8:15, quickly purchased two Greek yogurts and two small pears and had ourselves a delightful little picnic on the ferry as we watched Zadar grow larger and larger on the horizon. 

We landed a bit before nine and quickly made our way out of the city, straining at our backpack straps and keeping our eyes peeled for scraps of cardboard.

Tessa  found a thick white box outside of a small fruit market and we neatly trimmed the edges and wrote our destination.

SPLIT.

170 kilometers.

Something that I didn't really realize about hitching is how long it takes to walk to a good location.

There are three incredibly important factors in hitching.

#1) Non-threatening/pleasant appearance

#2) Time of day

#3) LOCATION

#1 -- Try to look nice. Smile lots. Wave at the people who wave at you. Laugh out loud. Keep yourself open and don't look discouraged. Keep your spirits up and people might give you a lift. :)

#2 -- Don't bother hitching at lunchtime. No one will bother to pick you up. Early in the morning has been our best bet. Not only do we get people as they commute to work (which is generally good for long rides), but we aren't smelly and exhausted and burning up in the heat by the time someone finally finishes lunch and decides to talk us.

#3 -- This is SO important. You have to be standing in a place wherein the driver can get a good look at you and make a decent judgment call on #1. You also have to make sure the driver can pull over to pick you up should you be pleasant enough and he/she isn't on his/her way to lunch. Being left on a toll road is BAD NEWS. Being left on the wrong side of a nearby big city is BAD NEWS. Tessa and I were stranded just outside of Sibenik for one and a half hours. Try (if possible) to get dropped off on the OTHER side of a big city.

Tessa and I walked for over forty minutes to find a decent #3. 

We stuck out our thumbs.

Twenty minutes later, a friendly looking fellow in a grey/black car pulled over to give us a ride. He was a local fisherman with a hangover from last night's party who was returning home from a potato shopping spree at a nearby supermarket. He told us that the last girls he'd picked up didn't have a place to stay, so he'd let them sleep on his fishing boat. 

People in this world can be so generous. Goodness. I love seeing the goodness of people. 

He dropped us off in Biograd, a small town halfway between Zadar and Sibenik.

We still have such a long way to go. 

Again, we stuck out our thumbs.

"I don't like red cars," I noted judgmentally as the umpteenth car zoomed past. "I have a feeling that we'll never catch a ride with a red car."

"Why's that?" my unprejudiced friend questioned my dislike of red cars.

"I dunno. I just don't believe that red cars stop for hitchhikers."

Our next ride was 10 minutes later. It was a red car. He was a high-maintenance chap who spoke only German and Croatian and whose car was at least 500 degrees. Celsius. Tessa quietly sweltered in the back and I sweltered whilst struggling to converse awkwardly in my extremely limited German.

He dropped us off at the worst location at the worst time -- the small town of Vodice (right outside of Sibenik) at 11:30.

Lunch.

We waited. Waved. Danced. Tried not to yawn (I tried harder than Tessa) and did acro yoga whilst holding our sign for SPLIT.

Nothing worked.

An hour later, we decided to adjourn our odyssey and engage our lunch break.

"Is there a better location?" I asked Tessa through a mouthful of sliced gouda and apricots.

"Not on this side of Sibenik."

"Do you think we should take the bus to the other side?"

"Why don't we try one more time?"

"Okay."

We tried from the same spot again. My cheeks had loosened up and lunch had freshened my outlook on life (cheese has a habit of freshening my outlook on life). I had high hopes that my new cheer would encourage a driver to think that his long sojourn back to Split could be made infinitely more pleasurable with the two of us on board.

But despite our happy, determined faces, nary a soul could be bothered to pull over.

"Should we give up?" Tessa asked, forehead crinkled with doubt.

"Fifteen more minutes," I held the sign as resolutely as I held my smile.

Five minutes later, a middle-aged man in a striped shirt slowed to a stop. In a red car.

I will never say anything bad about red cars again. God bless the red cars. 

"THANK-YOU, THANK-YOU, THANK-YOU!" we overwhelmed the striped man with gratitude as we tumbled into the seats. "We waited for an hour and a half before you came."

"I am only going to Sibenik," the man tried to calm our effusive gratitude.

"That's PERFECT!" we cried. "We can hitch to Split on the other side of Sibenik."

And we did. The man in the striped shirt (with a baby seat in the back) dropped us off at a gas station on the other side of Sibenik, and half an hour later,  yet another red car stopped to give us a ride. Our driver was a 23 year old engineer who was commuting from Sibenik to Split every day. He chit-chatted on about historical sites, his favorite places in Split and his job for the whole journey, then drove another five km out of his way to drop us off in the city center.

"WE DID IT!" Tessa and I high-fived each other and wearily happy danced all over the pier.

Our happy dance had an uncanny resemblance to a slow shuffle to a park bench, but it was still a jubilant shuffle. There is nothing quite so satisfying as suddenly arriving at your destination after spending six hours not knowing whether or not you're actually going to arrive. This 170 km trek had been more discouraging to me than any previous attempts (due to the hour and a half wait outside of Sibenik), and there were several moments during this period wherein I started viewing the adjacent flora differently.

I slept in a van in Ireland. This made me look at vans for the few weeks following with the question of, "I wonder who lives in there?" running to and fro in the back of my mind.

I am now someone who needs wild camping to get around. I look at big bushes and think, "Could I use you to pee behind, should worst come to worst?" and I look at clumps of trees and think, "Would anyone notice if we hung Judy between your branches?"

But we didn't need bushes or copses. Tessa and I made it to Split. Boy howdy.

I called my friend from Vis (the fabulously esoteric yoga teacher who can be woken from a deep sleep by whispering the word "coffee"), and her flatmate came to pick us up about an hour later. After I'd given him the wrong directions (several times) and he'd managed to find us anyway (as people always do).

I just... directions. Why do I have no sense of direction? Sometimes I think I'm the worst traveler possible. I have ZERO sense of direction, am intolerant to gluten, speak only English with a smattering of French, am stuck with an iPhone that doesn't have a place for a sim card and doesn't support wireless Google Maps... what have I got going for me? Well... I'm friendly. I love people, can sleep anywhere and am adaptable. *sigh* I just wish I could follow/communicate directions more efficiently. And eat baguettes.

Kristina's housemate (the captain of a tanker who spends ninety days at sea and then ninety days at home) immediately floored us with his kindness.

"There is very little food in the kitchen. We'll stop to do some shopping before we go home." 

We drove up to a Tommy and tumbled out of the silver mercedes.

"We don't have our wallets with us," we gestured to our bags which were packed into the boot of the car.

"It's okay," Darko patted his own bag and we entered the Tommy. "What do you want to eat? Take what you like."

We picked up aubergine, zucchini, rice, onion, tomato sauce and mushrooms for dinner. 

"Do you want cheese? Do you drink wine? What kind of chocolate?" Darko wasn't done feeding us. Amazing foodstuffs fell from shelves into the basket and the rumbling of my belly was drowned out by immense feelings of gratitude and thoughts of, "how are people this good?"

Dinner was divine. Darko first made us coffee and then gave me some helpful tips while Tessa and I prepared the rice. I stirred the sauce in a wok (my favorite cooking pan) and Darko poured us glasses of wine and assembled a plate of cheeses and charcuterie that rivaled all the aperitif plates I've enjoyed in France.

"Tessa?"

"Yeah?"

"Are we eating cheese from Pag Island?"

"Yeah..."

Darko chatted with us about his job, the nearby islands and his gorgeous art collection.

We fell asleep on the couch/double bed in the living room, after being asked several times whether or not we had enough blankets and if everything was okay.

We could not possibly be MORE okay right now. Madonna. Every part of me is supersaturated with goodness.

Kristina blew into the apartment the next morning (I think she blows in everywhere. The woman is like a delicate butterfly with a bumblebee engine), windblown from her boating yoga trip the day before and nearly as happy to see me as I was to see her.

"My sweetheart!" she cried and kissed me solidly on both cheeks.

"Kristina! I'm so glad to see you. What a beautiful place. We feel so lucky to be here."

"I am so happy you came," Kristina's deep voice makes me think of chocolate and coffee and cigarettes and art. "Would you like a coffee?"

"Haha, yes! I would love one of your coffees."

As we drank our coffee, Kristina and I reminisced about our respective experiences of the retreat on Vis. The work environment had been toxic and stressful for the both of us, so it felt cleansing and liberating to be able to talk with someone else about it. Someone who had been there and could understand exactly where I was coming from.

Then I kissed Kristina goodbye and Tessa and I strolled along the coast into Split -- where we wandered through the market, ate ice cream, and then met Giuseppe and Kristina in the park for acro yoga.

Kristina loves acro yoga. I love that she loves acro yoga. I would put my butterfly/bumblebee friend upside-down all day if I could.

We returned from our wandering just before seven o'clock to an apartment that smelled sublime. 

Darko had been cooking.

I have never had tastier tomato sauce in my life.

Darko is a perfect cook.

"Where did you learn?" I asked as I tried to savor my meal as long as humanly possible.

"I was on a boat and I had two choices -- learn to cook or eat out of tins."

Now Kristina, the kids and Darko are out. Tessa and I watch acro yoga videos on the balcony and slowly sip our wine.

"Tessa?"

"Yeah."

It's important to acknowledge and appreciate how wonderful our lives truly are.

Tessa and I are living wonderful lives.

And we appreciate everyone who touches them in such beautiful ways.

Kristina and Darko are certainly two people who have touched our lives in beautiful ways.

Hey. Hey, we appreciate you. A lot, a lot, a lot. 

Are We in a Cave? -- Uglijan, Croatia

I'm starting this post from the mouth of a cave.

Yesterday was a yacht. Tonight is a cave. A cave with spiders, sand, sticky, spiky weeds with evil, clinging seeds, peeing in bushes, eating picnics on rocks and spending hours watching the sky whilst waiting for glorious sunsets.

I love it when life moves so slowly that I can appreciate every tendril of cloud. Every nuance of color. Every shimmering ripple of the sea.

 

 

It's illegal to wild camp in Croatia. It's so illegal that you can be fined up to five hundred euros if you're unlucky enough to be caught in the act of enjoying the outdoors for free.

That's nearly my entire budget for Europe...

I want to wild camp, but I'm also a wee bit attached to the idea of keeping majority of my budget for Europe intact. To avoid being caught, Kristof recommended that Tessa and I take the ferry to the nearby island of Uglijan and sleep in a cave near a castle.

We looked at each other and made the "why not? Sounds like a decent enough adventure" face.

Tessa and I make this face at each other on an increasingly regular basis.

My half-fish friend jumped into the sea as soon as she pulled herself out of her yacht bed, face flushed with joy and feeling very much awake when she showered off at the back of the boat.

I love seeing people love things as much as Tessa loves swimming.

Regretfully, we disembarked from Kristof's perfect, peaceful yacht in the velvet smooth harbor at 9:50 this morning. Our kind, captivating host had prepared for us a healthy breakfast of fruit, yogurt and tea and introduced me to some new Camino paths while we ate. It felt too soon to say goodbye.

I can still learn so much from him. I want... ach. I want some sort of mentor. I want a person like this to be my some sort of mentor.

We chose to cough up 15 kunas for the 10:10 bus into Zadar rather than hitching the 14 kilometers. We're learning that short distances can be quite a bit harder to thumb our way through, as people don't think it's worth it to take two vagabonds 15 km. They figure we can just get a bus.

For the first time in nearly two years of travel, I found myself without a place to stay the night. It was exciting. Exhilarating. Nerve wracking.

I loved and hated it.

Tessa, as always, seemed unperturbed.

We figured the best way to exploit our homeless predicament would be to wild camp in a cave on a nearby island about which Kristof had waxed on the night before.

 Makes sense, yes?

So we purchased our picnic (lunch and dinner) and boarded the ferry at 12:15.

I tried to be assertive and make good choices about directions and tickets and all that jazz. But everything I said was absolutely, unequivocally wrong, so I finally just squashed my assertive side and let Tessa be the unquestioned leader of the day. We've decided to take turns wearing the pants in this odyssey, and the universe was definitely informing me that it was not my day to wear the pants.

Perhaps I'll wear the pants tomorrow.
After a brief 45 minute ride, we landed in the small town of Preko. 

The sky rumbled ominously overhead.

"Are we going to get rained on?"

"Probably. But we'll be okay. We can always whip out Judy and hide underneath."

We tightened the straps of our respective elephants and began our ascent up the island mountain.

I am going to get rid of so much crap. I don't know how. I don't know what I have left in my elephant that I can get rid of, but I am going to find it and it is going to go. 

I can't carry this. My life is still too heavy. If it takes the joy out of climbing a mountain, it's not worth carrying. 

This person owns an island. We don't know who this person is, but we discussed the possibility of swimming to the island, knocking on the door and asking if we could join in on lunch. Right now, nothing really seems out of the question.

We trudged and tramped along. My shoulders screamed and my hips protested angrily as the pads dug deeply into my "not skinny" flesh.

What else can I leave behind? 

Then came the rain. An explosion of rain. Not just a delicate pitter, patter, raindrops on roses business. An "I will make you look like a drowned poodle" business.

It was roasting in Croatia, though, so Tessa and I were thrilled to death to receive a solid dousing on our sweaty way up the mountain. I simply snapped my waterproof cover over my elephant, threw my head back, whispered sweet words to my indignant shoulders, and pushed ahead.
 

The view from the top.

"Is there a communications tower in the castle?" "Yes." "Why?" "We're in Croatia."

We stayed at the top of the tower, napping and reading and nursing our angry body parts until just after four pm.

"Do you think we should go find our home?"

"Yup. Time to find our home."

Someone else didn't manage the poodle drowning storm as well as we did.

So we scrambled down from the castle and set off in search of the cave on the side of the mountain. After half an hour of steep downhill and jagged, rocky flats, we found our cave. But there were tourists hovering about (damned tourists), so we chose to continue down the path, around the corner and out of sight.

I am not going to get a five hundred euro fine for wild camping after hiking this far to get to a decently remote location. 
 

Tessa spotted another cave. Complete with small, abandoned mattress and old fire pits.

"Can this be our home?"

"Yes. This can be our home."

We ate another picnic.

Watched another sunset.

Enjoyed the quiet until it was rudely interrupted by a swarm of bumblebeetles (they weren't bees, but they had a similar sort of bumble).

Tessa reads Thoreau on her E-Reader behind me, propped up against our cave wall with the thin mattress a previous wild camper left behind. She sighs deeply and I squelch my impulse to ask what's wrong.

Tessa has a tendency towards deep sighing. This caught me off guard at first, but deep, contemplative sighs are simply a part of her respiration. I no longer swivel my head around and try to discern what could be the root of her deep melancholy (assuming it isn't aftermath of Ivan), and just accept that it's probably a simple lack of oxygen.

We laid out Judy and spread my yoga mat and the resident mat on top. Then our bivvy bags for extra protection. I opened my computer and cued up a Rick Steves podcast about WWII history in the Balkans.

"Tessa?"

"Yeah?"

"Are we in a cave?"

"Yeah..."

Are We on a Yacht? -- Sukosan, Croatia

I don't know where to start this post.

I'm just a little too flabbergasted/amazed/bewildered at where we started this morning...

...compared to where we are ending this evening.

I suppose I could just break the ice by saying that I'm on a yacht right now. Curled up under a cozy checkered blanket on a soft, delicious mattress in the harbor of Marina Dalmatia.

How? What? Even... possible? 

Happy. 

These are my thoughts. They are a disjointed mixture of disbelief and ecstasy. 

Our last night with Mr. Boring involved us trying to cook him baked stuffed aubergine with mozzarella and mushrooms and tomato sauce. Except he told me he was making us fish and that I shouldn't use tomato sauce because tomatoes don't go with fish. Then he told me I shouldn't bake the aubergine because they take too long. They should be cooked on the stove instead. I made a lighthearted joke about it being his fault if my dish didn't taste good, because he was finagling with all my plans.

He let me bake my aubergine. So I wouldn't blame him for its doomed demise into the bleak, bland land of "boring."

During dinner, he tried his best to convince Tessa that there were no islands in the Pacific Ocean between Panama and New Zealand.

Tessa rammed her hand into her face and we brought out a globe.

There are a few islands between Panama and New Zealand. Just so y'all know.

Then he made the all too familiar joke to me about yoga and Yogi Bear.

I chuckled weakly. A weak chuckle took magnificent strength and forbearance.

I can make anyone feel comfortable. Yes. This is my skill. I can be obscenely nice.

 Then he said something about Pooh Bear coming after Yogi Bear.

Tessa does not possess my skill of being obscenely nice. She possesses a different skill. It's aptly titled, "Queen of bullshit calling."

"I'm pretty sure Pooh Bear was before Yogi Bear," she said through gritted teeth.

"No," Mr. Boring looked up from corn crusted, tomatoless fish. "Pooh Bear is a new thing."

"Pooh Bear came out in 1924. I just googled it," Tessa resolutely displayed her iPhone.

"I hate Google," Mr. Boring retorted before tasting one of my aubergine circles.

I petted Tessa's' knee reassuringly. I wasn't sure just how much more bullshit she could handle.

"Can we go watch the sunset?" she asked me after we'd finished our fish and veggies.

"Yes," because sunsets aren't boring. Sunsets are breathtaking, my thoughts raced through my quick response. "We'd like to watch the sunset. Is it okay if we're back in about an hour? Thank-you so much for dinner. It was really, really lovely."

"Yes, thank-you," Tessa's relief at escaping the situation put on the facade of gratitude.

"An hour is okay for me," our host watched me take the plates from the table to the sink. "No, no, don't wash! I will take care of this."

So my simmering friend and I skip-hopped down to the promenade to watch the sunset. It was spectacular.

We said goodnight and goodbye to our host when we returned. Our plan was to leave the apartment quite early (seven o'clock) in order to catch a bit of morning traffic and miss a bit of morning curmudgening.

I made myself a cup of instant coffee the next morning. My mug was decorated with an angry looking cartoon child and the caption, "Every day the same shit."

How does this person get through his days? I tried not to let my souring mood sour my coffee.

I took another sip of Nescafe in the silence.

Is that... rain? 

Drip.

Drop.

Pitter, patter.

SPLATTER.

CRASH, BOOM.

blurgh. 

Tessa and I waited an extra fifteen minutes for the weather to clear, and then waltzed outside into the clean, fresh air, dancing, prancing beside puddles.

"WE DID IT!" I crowed. "We survived the most depressing worldview in the world, souls primarily intact."

"I feel scarred," Tessa said as she rummaged through a pile of cardboard next to the apartment dumpster. "How's this one?"

"Great," I tore the cardboard in half and scrawled on the word "ZADAR."

Here we go. 

We walked up a goodly amount of stairs, scampered around precarious shoulders of busy streets and eventually found ourselves out of town.

We held up our sign, stuck out our thumbs and pasted on our smiles.

"I think tradesmen are our biggest fans," Tessa laughed as a group of middle-aged men gawked, grinned and waved as they whizzed past.

We're learning just how little attention people are paying to the road whilst driving. Most are talking on cellphones, messing with their faces (and some manner of makeup), or eating some sort of takeaway.

The scientist in Tessa wants to do some sort of study on people and their driving, but I'm more interested in trying to make eye contact with the ones who pretend we're invisible. Perhaps it'll be like seeing a relative you assumed was long dead. Or finding a partially moldy tomato in the back of the fridge that you thought you ate at the potluck last week.

People look at us in a vast variety of ways as they careen past. Some are confused. Some are guilty. Some are purposefully blank. An amusing and popular variety is the face one makes when one sees a gone off piece of produce hiding behind the milk. It's the, "umm... I think I'd rather just ignore that than chuck it out," face.

We are the rotten tomato. Man. 

Our first location wasn't good. The drivers who acknowledged our existence smiled apologetically and circled their fingers to convey that they were on their way back into Sibenik and could not give us a ride.

Our second location wasn't good. It was at the bottom of a hill, drivers were flying past and all seemed to be flying directly towards Sibenik. Do not pass GO. Do not stop to collect two cheerful looking hitchhikers who are continuously laughing at their own jokes to keep their spirits up. 

Our third location was perfect. We waited for around fifteen minutes in front of a large supermarket just past the last exit to Sibenik, smiling and waving and engaging in other friendly, "give us a ride, we're actually adorable koala bears in disguise" antics. Then a large cement truck rumbled to a stop.

A truck driver... hasn't the media told me that 99.9999 percent of truck drivers are actually dirty old men who just want to molest hitchhiking young ladies? 

"Should we take it?" I warily eyed the large vehicle. 

"He looks nice," Tessa noted as the driver hopped out to put some of his things in the back and make room for us.

"Great," I swallowed my media induced fear (Harriet would have asked me to describe it in detail). "Let's go for it."

And it was. So, so great. Our ride was a rather huggable man from Split who spoke hardly any English, but smiled pleasantly and laughed out loud when he saw how amazed I was by the seat suspension.

"This is wonderful!" I shouted as the seat bobbed up and down with the bumps on he road.

"Aimee has decided to become a truck driver," Tessa tried to communicate with the huggable Croatian. "She likes the seats so much."

I don't think he understood, but he laughed anyway. We all did.

The seat continued to bob and I continued to be absolutely delighted.

Nako (our driver) slowed to a stop a few kilometers outside of Zadar. Tessa and I climbed down the stairs and onto the pavement and he passed our bags down to us. Tessa's first and without complaint. Mine second and with a huff and a heave and an English exclamation of "it's a big boy!" 

"I know..." I huffed and heaved it onto my back. "Hvala! Thank-you!"

"Goodbye!" Nako waved before slamming the passenger door shut and driving off down the road.

We stopped at a Lidl to assemble our traditional picnic and then continued our trek to Zadar.

Anything with my "big boy" is a trek. 

It started to rain just before we reached the old town, so we popped into a cafe for a cappuccino, some shelter and a bit of internet.

We don't get picked up by women. We might start carrying chocolate to persuade this demographic.

 

"No news on couchsurfing," I told Tessa after checking my invite-free account. "We still don't know where we're going to spend tomorrow night, but my friend from Split has said we can stay with her after that."

"We'll be okay," Tessa sipped the foam off her coffee and seemed unperturbed.

"Yes. We'll figure something out," I adopted her unperturbed expression and tried to make it mine.

This is still so hard for me. Letting things be last minute. Resisting the impulse to panic and micromanage. We don't know where we're sleeping tomorrow night, but we'll probably sleep somewhere. And it'll probably be okay. 

The rain stopped, so we continued our journey downtown. We browsed the criminally priced local market for some apples and then sat next to Zadar's famous sea organ to enjoy our picnic while being serenaded by the sea.

Haven't quite broken in my shoes... I'm becoming a master at ignoring pain.

Is this my life? I sliced an apple, nabbed a bit of cheese and blissfully chewed. I live a life that is different every day. Chaotic. Overwhelming. Breathtaking. Simple. Light. Ephemeral. Natural.

At this moment, do I want anything different? Career? House? Husband? Children? 

Nope. This is where I belong and this is how I belong.

The ice cream here goes well beyond extravagant

We then walked to a park, napped in the shade, read our respective books, napped some more and then took the bus to Sukosan where our host for one night was meeting us at the beach.

At least, I assumed he'd be meeting us at the beach. I figured that he was probably working at the marina or something similar. What else would he be doing on the beach?

"Wait..." Tessa stopped as we approached the pier. "Does he live on a boat?" 

"I'm... not... sure?"

"He definitely lives on a boat!"

We followed the directions on my phone down to the beach, to the left and then to pier 42. We froze. Except our jaws. Those dropped considerably.

"He lives on a yacht."

An attendant wandered up and told us not to take pictures. We replied that our friend was on the yacht. He remained quite unconvinced and motioned that I put my iPhone away and "not take pictures."

"Our friend --" I tried to say, but then gave up. I think I realized just how ridiculous this looked. Two smelly, dirty, poorly dressed foreign girls with ENORMOUS backpacks turning up randomly in front of a gorgeous yacht and saying that their friend is inside?

A bit incredible.

So I decided simply to call Kristof.

I'd wanted to couchsurf with Kristof for many reasons -- most of which were related to the fact that the Frenchman has already accomplished nearly everything I hope to do with my life. He walks the Camino every year. He goes to India every year. He's been all over South and Central America and his profile just made him out to be a sincerely nice guy to whom life isn't boring. In the least.

I've discovered that the most difficult type of person for me to connect with is the perpetually bored. The impossible to enchant. Those who approach the world with the disinterested attitude of "I've seen it before, why would I care to see it again?"

Kristof if not one of those people.

Kristof is absolutely enamored by life. Just being around him for an evening filled me with energy and excitement.  Motivation and clarity.

Kristof did not ask me when I would stop traveling. Kristof did not tell me I needed to stop traveling.

Kristof simply opened my eyes to many more places I could experience.

This is the kind of person I want in my life.

He brought Tessa and me jars of pineapple juice and asked if we were going to swim. We swam (I panicked even less this time), showered, walked around the small town of Sukosan, took yoga pictures and returned to the yacht.

Where Kristof prepared an absolutely gorgeous meal of basmati rice with ginger, cardamom, lemongrass and coconut milk while Tessa and I watched this new sun as it slowly, gloriously set over this new horizon.

There were strawberries after dinner. Then chocolate. Then silver cardamom saffron morsels Kristof had picked up in India.

"If we eat anything else, we're going to sink the yacht," Tessa commented as she broke off another square of hazelnut chocolate.

We watched a few short videos with our host and then collapsed into the most comfortable bed in which I've ever slept.

"Tessa?"

"Yeah?"

"Are we on a yacht?"

"Yeah..."

How? What? Even... possible? 

Happy. 

These are my thoughts. They are a disjointed mixture of disbelief and ecstasy. 

Boring -- Sibenik, Croatia

Boring.

Everything to our couchsurfing host is boring.

"You are missing the sunset. But it is not a big deal because it is boring."

"I don't like going to the islands. They are boring."

"I don't like my job. Work is boring."

"Is there anything you find exciting?"

"Yes. Colorado."

Everything is boring except Colorado. Colorado is exciting because Colorado has the Rocky Mountains and has legalized the use of recreational marijuana.

Although I'm getting a wee bit tired of telling people that the Grand Canyon is not, in fact, found in my home state.

"Oh, Colorado. Denver! Marijuana! South Park! The Grand Canyon!"

Sigh. 

Marijuana is the primary reason he accepted Tessa and me as surfers. We share a very small room and a smaller bed that belonged to his daughter (he's now a bachelor and his daughter and wife live in Split).

Perhaps they were too boring.

Aimee... stop being so mean. He's a genuinely nice guy. I mean, he's opened up his house to us and fed us a delicious dinner with wine and seems... well... happy that we're here? 

Tessa and I are confused as to why this fellow accepts couchsurfers. Everyone has their own reasons, of course -- but they are usually something similar to desiring conversation/cultural exchange.

Our host doesn't seem to desire conversation. Except to tell us that we're wrong, of course.

"Snakes are really dangerous in Australia," began Tessa. Who has spent three months living in Australia.

"No. Snakes aren't a problem. It is the spiders," contradicted our host.

"Washington has legalized marijuana too," I piped up. 

"No, it is only Colorado."

"In Istanbul, they put one heaping teaspoon of coffee with one small teaspoon of sugar for each person in a ladle like pot --"

"No, it's one teaspoon of coffee and half a teaspoon of sugar."

"well... maybe that's why no one liked my coffee."

Tessa and I finally just drifted into silence. It's difficult to start conversations with someone who is continually telling you that you're wrong. It's similar to improvising with someone who ruins your stranded in the desert scene with an interruption of, "No, I don't like sand. We're in a shopping mall."

He asked me how long I planned to travel. I told him that my dream is to always travel.

"No, you can't do that. You will settle down when you get a boyfriend."

"If I get a boyfriend, it will have to be a boyfriend who wants to travel with me."

"Then you're being selfish."

"No," Aimee, you can get stressed, or you can eat a peanut. Think about the peanuts. "I'm being realistic. Travel is in my heart. It's in my soul. It would be selfish to enter a relationship with someone who doesn't like travel and then try to change him." 

While discussing food, I mentioned that it's difficult to travel the way I do because I never know exactly when my next meal will be. Or what it will be. Our host proceeded to tell me that I shouldn't worry about food because I'm not skinny at all. And that he's not complimenting me.

Hello world.

I'm Aimee.

I'm not skinny.

I'm 129 pounds of yoga muscle with a delightful bit of extra softness around my tummy to protect my ovaries. Which is healthy.

I went to bed. Feeling frumpy and like all my dreams had been squashed.

But I was still thankful for a bed.

Tessa and I drank coffee with our host the next morning. Rather quietly .

Then we happily explored the city. Trying again to understand exactly why this fellow is on couchsurfing and analyzing our peanut stash.

"If we're staying with him another night, we should probably stock up," Tessa said as we walked to city center.

But we had a beautiful day. A day punctuated with ice cream, snacks, reading, cemeteries, turtle watching (Tessa can watch turtles for a very long time. I was thoroughly impressed) and parks. 

Quote of the day from our centenarian life coach: "Well, now you can see how sensible it is not to start your day by guessing what might happen," said Allan.

I NEVER KNEW ARTICHOKES WERE SO PRETTY

Third picnic. Smiling on the inside. Again. Let's just face it. Tessa's outside hates picnics.

ARMPIT HAIR

The clouds were unreal today.

We leave for Zadar tomorrow morning. It'll be about 100 km of hitchhiking along the coast. We found a last minute couchsurfing host in the city, but after...

ermm...

We might sleep in the woods the night after, or we might find another place to crash.

We'll try to be sensible and not guess what will happen.

We've developed keywords and guidelines, though.

"What would come up in a normal conversation?" I asked Tessa as we walked toward the stoplight for our first ride a couple of days ago

"Umm..."

"CHOCOLATE," I gave my friend no time to finish her thought. "Chocolate would come up in a normal situation."

"But how will we know that we're not just talking about chocolate?" her scientific mind poked holes through my safeword.

"Umm..."

"WHITE chocolate," she quickly smoothed over the situation. "I don't think either of us would bring up white chocolate in conversation."

"Okay. So if we're feeling uncomfortable about the ride, bring up white chocolate and find a way to pull over."

"Yes. White chocolate is a no go."

We have also made a rule to not put our bags (regardless of how massive they are) into the boot of a car. They remain with us. Even when our hosts are catholic priests and have Jesus fish hanging from their rearview mirrors.

I'm sure we will develop more rules as we continue. Stay tuned. Tessa and Aimee will develop a manual for hitching across the Balkans, Greece, Southern Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia, Northern Italy and France.

It will involve lots of chocolate and peanuts. Which will result in peanut butter cups and be AMAZING. The end.