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.
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