Skradinski Buk, Croatia
Somewhere around 2015, I saw Plitvice Lakes National Park in a 2CELLOS video. I was sure it was the most beautiful place on earth, and I just had to get there.
I made it my goal to hike Croatia before I got too old.
The goal was attainable, but, you know, stuff happens. And while stuff was happening, others were discovering beautiful Croatia. As demand went up, prices went up, and as prices were going up, my chances of getting to Croatia were going down.
I recently read you need $2.5 million to retire when you’re 67, and I’m a bit short.
I’m already 63.
Now, I realize that 63 isn’t all that old. I’m still active, still sharp. But I also realize that no matter if I’m 23 or 63, it might not be wise to hike alone.
I have friends who love to travel and friends who love to hike, but none who were able to both. So I searched until I found a small tour group hiking the southern coast of Croatia. The tour wasn’t going to Plitvice, but I decided I’d add a few days to the end of the trip and visit the park on my own.
I booked it. Six months later, I was seated at the airport, excited, nervous, rarin’ to go, when I flipped open the cover of my phone. My driver’s license. It wasn’t in its usual place. Where was my driver’s license? Why didn’t I have my driver’s license? I had to have my driver’s license. I wanted to drive out to Plitvice Lakes.
I dug frantically through my backpack, upsetting the order of all things I had so strategically placed. It must still be in my wallet, I thought. But I had decided not to bring my wallet. Too bulky, I had thought; I wanted to travel light, I had reasoned. I didn’t need most of the things in my wallet anyway.
Except my driver’s license.
I called my friend who had just dropped me off, asked her to rush back to my place, grab my wallet from my pajama-clad husband waiting at the door, and race back to the airport. In the meantime, I would run the wrong way past the flabbergasted security guards, out the doors of the terminal to pace back and forth until her car came careening up to the curb. We made the handoff and, thanks to TSA PreCheck, I was able to race back through security in time to sit down and peek into my wallet, just for the assurance of knowing that my license was there.
But it wasn’t.
Oh. My. Gosh. The reason I was on this trip was to go to Plitvice Lakes National Park, and now I couldn’t go. My confidence was shaken. I was trying desperately not to cry. I can never do anything right, I thought. I wanted to give the whole thing up and go home.
I had some choosing to do.
I could give in and give up, or I could stop, take a deep breath, and ask myself some questions. Was it the end of the world if I couldn’t go to Plitvice? No, but it would be a major disappointment. Were there other ways to get to Plitvice? Sure. I could take a bus. That might be better anyway. Less stress. And I began to calm down.
And that was the beginning of the dream trip that was quickly becoming a nightmare.
Dubrovnik, Croatia
And the tour hadn’t even begun.
When I met the rest of the hikers in Dubrovnik, I was surprised to find I was the only American and almost the oldest one there. As I became acquainted with my tour mates, they kept commenting on how brave I was, though I wasn’t quite sure why.
Was it because I had come so far? Because I was alone? Because of my age? Yet some were older than I was, and some were traveling on their own. And it couldn’t have been because I had no experience with international travel. Because I did.
I’d gone to Iceland when I was 61. Before Croatia, Iceland had occupied the top spot on my “I’m Going to Get There” list. My highly-envied niece had been to Iceland, and she told me everything was amazing but the food. So I kept my eyes open for a trip on the cheap, and when I found one, I called one of my experienced international traveler friends, and we signed up for a tour.
But then I got to thinking. Did I really want to get on a bus with dozens of others to go where someone else decided we should go? Absolutely not! I thought we should make our own way. My friend was a little nervous, having always toured with people who knew what they were doing, yet somehow, I talked her into it.
We printed a map and charted our course. Iceland is an island, after all, and if we hugged the coast, I said, we should end up back where we’d started.
Jökulsárlón, Iceland
No need to be nervous, I said. It was on our way to the rental car desk in Keflavik International Airport, luggage in tow, when I remembered one last-minute decision I’d made that would have a real-time consequence: I had decided to leave my wallet at home. Too many things to lose, I’d thought, because I’m an expert at losing things. Too many things to leave behind, I’d reasoned, because I’m quite experienced at leaving things behind. But thinking things through to their logical conclusion?
That, I’ll admit, I don’t do quite so well.
So there, at that rental car desk in Iceland, for the first time, perhaps, since I was less than the legal drinking age, I made a conscious decision to break the law. And to my shame, I coerced my friend to do the same.
We lied.
We said she would be the driver when she had no intention of driving. We never dreamed we would have a run-in with an Icelandic highway patrolman later that day. Although 98% of the population of Iceland speaks English, not many elderly Icelandic farmers do. They’ve been around long enough, however, to know that frantic faces behind the windshields of rental cars translates into Americans who have lost their way. It was just such an elderly farmer we encountered out in the backcountry of Iceland. Thank God his son could understand enough of our Airbnb confirmation to point us in the right direction.
The father gave us the international signal for “follow me” and began to lead us quickly, way too quickly, down a narrow, unpaved road until, I guess, he’d decided the cows had come home, and he needed to be back at the farm.
Little did we know he had called in an almost English-speaking trooper, who snuck up behind us in his squad car and scared the bejeebers out of licenseless me seated behind the wheel. But his duty that day was simply to serve by leading us to our cottage, which he did, just in time, just as the sun was setting behind the beautiful Icelandic hills.
the beautiful Icelandic hills
That little adventure had been my sixth time overseas.
When I was 58, I went to Nepal with two seasoned international travelers, and when I was thirty-something, I went to Thailand and the Philippines with a crew of twelve. I traveled to Bulgaria with a native Bulgarian when I was twenty-eight, and in my early twenties, I toured Israel. Twice.
But when I was 63, I went to Croatia alone, and it was hard.
I left my paper notes on the plane because I was too distracted playing with my digital planner. I lost the use of my digital planner when we left U.S. airspace because I didn’t have an international SIM card. Without notes or a digital planner, I got on the right bus to the right neighborhood but got lost in the alleys of Split.
And in the middle of it all, I thought, “I will never do this again.”
I still don’t know why the Brits thought I was so brave. It might have been because I was overseas, or alone, or older than average. Perhaps it was because I was all three.
Looking back now, I see that they were right and I was wrong. I am brave, and I will do it again.
I have the good fortune of having friends who are quite a bit younger than I am and some who are quite a bit older. I’m watching all of us getting more experienced in most areas, and in some, a little bit slower.
Yet I refuse to let the things that are fading overcome the things that are growing. I am still carefree, and still way too careless. But I am still learning. I still have a few places on my “I’m Going to Get There” list, and whether with others or alone, I will still be traveling when I’m 64. (By the way, when I got to Croatia and unpacked my suitcase, I found my license strategically tucked away with the other things I’d need for my trip to Plitvice Lakes.)
Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia
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