From the ALPS to the ADRIATIC!

Slovenia was a dream. A total, total dream. It reminded me, almost every second, of being in the Sound of Music. Running through alpine fields of flowers and with birds singing with you every step of the way in the sweetest of songs.

But...like all things, we had to bring our trip to an end. We had already delayed coming to Croatia by several days later then we had anticipated, so it was necessary for us to drive on south. Heading down from Novo Mesto, where I last logged on (the lovely Slovene hilly red rooftopped cafe lined garden city), we zoomed in and out of tiny villages on the curviest and windiest of roads, doing some kind of very active driving (that is, turning the wheel at almost every second).

The landscape had long fallen away from mountains and into a more gently hilly landscape that reminded me of Italy. Vineyards everwhere, olive trees, fig trees, cheese stands that dot the road being manned by old ladies or their grumpy husbands. The sunniest of days--almots too hot for our non-air conditioned car...us, sweating inside but still absorbing every second of total beauty.

Croatia loomed in the distance...and we crossed into it with ease! We drove down crossing through many a destroyed Croatian town from the war (and thru one truly crappy Croatian town with those awful block apartments still with the huge pock marks from mortar fire...Ben got a chance to see what I have been seeing for years, and I was glad he saw more than the rustic charm and the glitzy coast!) to the National Park of Plivice, a gorgeous series of terraced waterfalls lined with boardwalks that sometimes even went under the falls. The lakes seemed like lagoons and the water would ocassionally come rushing up out of the ground. Now the major downside to this was two things. One, HUGE HUGE crowds. The second we got there, we thought YELLOWSTONE!!! NO!!!! Must have been our first experience with the tourists, because we were really shocked. The second thing we thought was DAAAAAAAYAM! This is expensive, because it cost over $25 a person to get in to the park for a few hours. Despite these two things we still enjoyed the park very much for a few hours, and escaped from the masses into the delightfully cool crystal clear lakes. By the way, the water here is so clear we cant believe it. We have never seen anything like it. All across Slovenia the water was many colors of clear, blue, etc, but ALWAYS clear. We saw the same at Plivitce.

After a long afternoon, we headed to the coast immediately...to another national park called Paklenica, what the Rough Guide had called a hikers paradise. Coastal Croatia was a totally different landscape. Windswept...at times barren, some green all over the place though. Mountains, certainly, and coastal. Of course We stopped in Starigrad, looking for a place to lay our heads, and got a cheap room for the night. Ate what would be our worst pizza but some great gelatto, and headed up early the next morning to the Park.

Again...mobs of tourists on the main path. But we, being the quick hikers that we are, passed them all and hiked up into the rugged mountains. A hot hot hot day in this park was intense. This was definitely a climbers paradise, as we passed tens of them climbing up one of Croatias premiere spots. Ben was jealous, of course. Rocks were so smooth I slipped and hurt myself once. Water was consumed in massive amounts. On the way down though, we found a remote water hole to dip into and were excited to get in! Clear water, of course, with sun peaking through little holes of shade, rocks lined up all around our spot. PERFECT!

Next up, the Dalmatian coast! We zoomed down to Split, a big port city we were hoping to avoid, but had to catch a ferry to Korcula. We arrived in Split in the nick of time to get on a late afternoon ferry, and 3 hours later, after passing numerous islands, we arrived on our Korcula in Vela Luka. We were relieved to quickly find a sobe, a room for us to sleep in, and had some of the best fresh fish ever. Ben had just read about sustainable seafood eating, which you do apparently by eating lower on the food chain, and we were psyched to try the mackeral. It was cooked in the simplest of sauces...salt-pepper-oil and some parsely and lemon. Tastiest of fish, freshest and delightful. Having grown up being petrified of mistakenly eating a fish bone (I remember my mom even making us look for bones in our fishstix!), I still enjoyed the fish tremendously along with a glass of Korcula red wine. Delightful!

Up next is the other side of Korcula island, where we will spend two nights. We will visit some isolated beaches and read and relax and enjoy, before we head down to Dubrovnik...the lovely Dalmatian city that was destroyed in the recent Yugoslav war in the 90s.

A note on history: Ben and I have seen some towns that are still devasted from the war. Mostly Orthodox Serbs homes which havent been rebuilt, even 15 years later. But it is truly sad to drive through these small villages and seen one in every few homes destroyes, pieces of churches left but in such tattered condition. The one important thing to stress is how each side (Catholic Croats, Bosniak Muslims and Orthodox Serbs) were all to each other. There is a perception that only the Muslims (and the Croats, to some degree) suffered and were tortured by the evil Serbs. Evil prevailed on all sides, and no side is blameless. We have read a lot about why the US see the Bosniaks and Croats as the victims, but why that is not the case, and for decades, all sides have perpetrated violence against each other. This land has a very divisive history and people often are deeply nationalistic. It is hard to understand, since they are all the same, ethnically.