Croatia, climbing, and a kitten's best friend

After a few days in Slovenia, the weather proved itself to be the driving force in my decision making. I sadly dropped any ideas of hiking in the Julian Alps, and instead jumped on a train to Croatia. In Zagreb, the capital, I walked my way through the rain to a hostel that was just off the main square.

My hopes of catching some museum/gallery time went down the drain - it was a Monday and most of them were closed. Instead I enacted that favourite pastime of mine. Walking, a lot, or at least until I began to saturate, all around the city. The old city was really beautiful, and could justify a lot more time in better weather. As with so many cities over here, there was a great, indoor market in the centre of town. I had an espresso in a tiny bar in the corner of it. It was all of about 8m2, filled with locals, all of whom were smoking. You can't capture that in a photo.

In the afternoon, a bunch of us from the hostel went to a local brew pub to watch the football. What else to do on a rainy afternoon? The beers were ok, the food hearty, and the company entertaining.

Myself and two Canadians headed to Plitvice lakes the following day. They were quite stunning, but like Iguazu falls, I couldn't help but be put off by the hordes. We chose a longer track, partly to get away from all the people, but found ourselves wondering 'where are these lakes then?'. We were at least following a marked path, but when we finally came over a rise, we were greeted by a view of fields and a few houses rather than any lakes! It ended up being a nice opportunity to stroll amongst some rural Croatian houses; one had their own hams curing outside. It was one of many indicators that people in this part of the world are quite self-sufficient. We made it back to the lakes without too much hassle, and got a bus down to Zadar, on the coast.

The next morning, from where I was staying, I got a local bus to the terminal - but I missed the stop. The bus driver was rather humoured by this, and at the outskirts of town where we had ended up up, pointed out some wartime remnants. A destroyed church there, the tank that most likely did the damage there, bomb shelters there, all amongst peoples houses. He said that though Croatia is now a much improved country, it is only really the youth that are free from the war. Those that were in it, such as himself, who had been injured twice in seven years of service, could not easily forget these things.

After this I managed to make it out to Paklenica national park, where I got a nice view out to the water (and imagined myself overwatching the trade route that went through there in the middle ages, as the sign instructed me to), before heading up to the climbing areas. It was all quite spectacular, steep limestone cliffs rising out of a narrow gorge, and much more to my taste than lakes and cascades. I fell in with a jolly bunch of Bulgarian climbers from Sofia, and got a couple of nice climbs in before hitch hiking back to Zadar.

Back in Zadar, wondering what I would do with myself that evening, I had the pleasant surprise of seeing Adam and Dezarae as I walked out of my room. We had plans of meeting the following day, but they had pushed on through Slovenia to arrive and surprise me that evening.