Hitch-hiking in Croatia caused me far more problems than in Slovenia. I suspect that this is due to the country's greater tourist potential - the more tourists there is, the more difficult hitch-hiking becomes, probably for two reasons: tourists are afraid to give you a lift, they are usually with children packed to the top, having fun on their holidays, they do not know the location well and often they don't know the local language, so they are afraid that they won't understand the hiker.. On the other hand, locals rarely lift hitch-hikers due to the fact that they are used to earn money on tourists on a daily basis - so they don't feel the need of getting to know foreigners. Either way, I found myself in Rijeka in a pastor's house....

The pastor hosted me via CouchSurfing. As he himself said, he believes that his call from God is to serve people with hospitality. He was born in Bosnia, but moved to Croatia in search of a better life. He was about 35 years old and had a lovely wife and a one-year old kid. At this point I needed to bathe and wash my clothes properly, which I managed to do thanks to his kindness. In the evening we discussed various topics and as befits a pastor, lot of them were from "important topics" category. He seemed to me to be a man with a completely pure heart, almost innocent and extremely sensitive. Before my sleep I was enjoying the view and air of Rijeka - from the balcony of the apartment you could see city's panorama - thousands of lights shining and reflecting in the sea.

Rijeka

In the morning I ate a delicious breakfast with pastor and his wife (+ chicory coffee with coconut milk and honey). After a short tour around Rijeka I checked hitch-hiking Facebook groups - I found out that a guy named Bartek is in Rijeka and will gladly travel somewhere further together. We agreed at a given time at McDonald's in the center. The heat was pouring from the sky, and when I looked around the place I could not find the guy anywhere. It turned out that he slept on his backpack in the shade of big columns, right next to McDoland's. I woke him up and we welcomed ourselves.

Bartek

We grabed a beer or two to get to know each other better and decide what's next. What worried me was the lack of contact from Wojtek. Wojtek is my good friend, who was supposed to join me soon - he was driving with some distant family to Vienna and afterwards he was supposed to hitch-hike towards me and we were to spend the next 2 weeks together. It was already late afternoon, so with Bartek we decided to start catching cars in the direction of Plitvice lakes. Unfortunately, no single car wanted to take us away. We walked along the road, hoping to find a better place to catch. When it got completely dark, we decided to set up a tent on the side of the road in a village, next to the wayside shrine of the Virgin Mary.

The wayside shrine at which we were sleeping. Of course we cleaned after ourselves:)

We reached Plitwickie Lakes around 6 p.m.. We got there thanks to two lumberjacks - we helped them to move the concrete mixer and they thanked us in form of two beers :). One of them was singing Balkan songs aloud while we were slowly driving through quite climatic, but rather poor Croatian villages. Some buildings still had holes from the bullets since the Balkan war. The camping site turned out to be a damn expensive and another one was 10km away from the lakes... We decide to set up a tent in the forest, despite the potential of a very severe penalty.

We entered deep into the forest and pitched our tents. We talked for a while while enjoying dinner and it slowly began to darken. When the light was almost completely gone, we noticed hundreds, thousands of glowworms around us! They were literally everywhere, in the entire forest. I have never seen such a thing. They were flying with dignity and extinguishing for a few seconds to light up once again. This gave the place a magical atmosphere. Enchanted by this view we put ourselves to sleep, but before that we bind our food and hang it on the tree 100m away, because, as we have heard, there were many bears in the area. That cold night I woke up at least 4 times, awakened by various animals. One sound was quite strange for me, because it sounded like a bi-legged animal, but much bigger than a human being. There was no chance that at this time there was a man in this place... It effectively prevented me from falling asleep, and I had my own knife next to me in case of emergency.

In this place last evening we were greeted by glowroms.

We found ourselves miraculously in the national park without paying. The entrance was expensive, and we were poor hitchhikers (as we justified ourselves) although we had to visit the lakes with whole heavy luggage, so it was kind of a punishment. Turquoise lakes made a truly unearthly impression, although some of the pleasure was taken away by crowds of tourists. I definitely feel better in a more isolated nature. Either way, the lakes of Plitvice provided me with a bath of senses - colours, scents and the play of light were like a balsam for my soul!

After a few hours of sightseeing, it was time to leave the lakes head towards Paklenica. Unfortunately, it turned out to be much more difficult than reaching the National Park of Plitvice - we've been standing for the three hours and, despite a lot of traffic, no one had stopped. We tried different variants - standing with the sing of the city, without it, finally with the "ANYWHERE" sign... Nothing. Finally, we decided to separate and stand in try hitch-hiking alone in different places. So I said goodbye to Bartek, because we were not to meet again during the trip. I moved ahead, aiming at the nearest village and trying to catch cars on the way.

When I was walking, somebody stopped and said that he was going south. Wasted after a few hours of failure I was super grateful and silly-smiling all the time (hitch-hiking is really an emotional rollercoaster). I asked if he ever been in Paklenica - he said he's going there right now! 126 km from the Plitvice Lakes, not in a straight line at all, and particularly he was the one who stopped after few hours of standing by the road! He asked if that guy who was trying to hitch-hike few hundred meters before is a friend of mine was and if I wanted to come back for him - he didn't manage to stop a car to take him, but he can turn back for him. I haven't felt a greater joy in a long time when we were passing by Bartek and I was sticking out from the window and shouting to him like a freak, boasting good news - you are going with us! :D

The driver - he's name was Antony - turned out to be an incredibly. hmm..., interesting man, but about more about him and what happened to Wojtek - in the next entry!

Previous posts in the Wandering Memories series

• Wandering Memories #1: Exciting Slovenia - or how I got lost at a height of 2500 meters
• Wandering Memories #2: The sharpest turn of my life
• Wandering Memories #3: An Eclectic Guide to the Music of the Balkans
  

See also:

• Alexander von Humboldt - 10 reasons why you should learn about the greatest forgotten scientist and traveller
• First month on Steemit - thoughts, reflections, observations
• Insight #4: Attributions - how and why we judge ourselves differently from others
  

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