The Senj Detour

After a glorious night sleep and a shower that sort of worked, the lady’s husband came to meet us at our pre-arranged time…9AM. We handed him the key, thanked him, and give him a 5 Euro tip – since we had such a great night (and we felt a little bad about knocking 40% off of his original price).

We headed our for what became our typical breakfast: 1) double espresso macchiato, 2) a year’s worth of second-hand smoke (Croatian’s like their smoke), and 3) off to a market to find pastries and yogurt. I did everything in my power to find “active cultures” everyday…and I found the yogurt in Europe to be quite different from the States. It’s much more liquid than ours…no spoon required – just drink it…and it’s good. Ah! Give me Euro-yogurt!

We walked around the market for a while and then decided to begin our search for a car. After Budget, Avis, and the local guy “Hector” who needless to say, didn’t do one-way rentals – we were still car-less. “There are no cars for rent in Pula” – all sold out. Zut alors. After much walking, Eurocar said they had one car – at the airport. Our driver picked us up and took us to the airport. As we made our way to the Eurocar booth, Seth spotted our friends Daniel and Iva – we did see them again, just not where we thought. Long story short, Daniel and Iva had reserved a car but due to a mix-up, they were unable to rent it. Forced to wait for the bus, we suddenly had a car available to us. I felt a little bad about stealing their car…but I justified it because someone else would have rented it anyway…or something like that. At any rate, we laughed with them about running into them again, once again, and, half-jokingly we said “see you in Briste”.

We hopped into our Peugeot and started driving. We didn’t know where we were going…our next stop was Plitvice – the National Park that was a “can’t miss” from my Croatian advisors Danny Parker and my climbing friend Amy, both of whom had spent a fair amount of time in Croatia. As we cruised down the highway, we were impressed with the highways – all of the infrastructure in Croatia seemed to be very solid. There was construction everywhere … roads… bridges… tunnels. The roads were new, nice and clean. Everything was clean in Croatia (in stark contrast to Italy). We made our way through a billion tunnels (Croatians don’t go around their mountains, they blast through them).

The terrain was rolling shrub-covered hills. We drove and drove, stopping at roadside pit-stops for shots of espresso – which usually set us back about 5 Kunas. We were nearing Plitvice, but it was getting late. Wanting to 1) have a nice place to stay for the night – since it was the 4^th of July, and 2) have the full Plitvice experience, we pulled out the map and decided to head to a coastal town called Senj.

We had passed a large hillside with sweeping views of the Adriatic, which was going to be our bed for the night – but we had heard (and seen) that a huge storm was coming in…so we decided to find a Sobe for the night. We stopped at, what effectively was a Sobe broker and asked the girl if any rooms were available. After a short phone call she said “take a left at the gas station and it’s the second house on the left…ask for Maria”. Fair enough, we thought.

We made our way up the hill…found what we figured was the place and knocked on the door. “Hello” she said. Maria was probably in her late 40’s – she lived in a small but nice house with gorgeous views of the Adriatic. “Call me Momma Maria” she said. Maria had extensive burns all over her body. Burn scars on her face, scars on her legs and arms…one of her ears was half gone. It was hard not to look. I couldn’t help but wonder if something had happened to her during the war. It appeared that she lived alone in this house by the sea.

We gave her 42 Euros and she showed us to our quarters. It was the standard – one double bed and one single. Also standard was a balcony with views of the Adriatic Sea and one of the many islands off the coast of Croatia. We were treated with one of the most amazing sunsets I’ve ever seen…it was downright ridiculous.

We considered our night on the balcony at Momma Maria’s to be one of our favorite nights of the whole trip. Two bottles of Vino, Bread and Cheese, and toasting to America on her birthday in Senj, it was pretty remarkable. We talked, wrote, read what we wrote, laughed at each other for what we wrote, and probably made a little too much noise. A glorious night in Senj and another glorious night in Croatia.