I've decided to take you off the tourist path and up my grandmother's mountain. It's lovely up there - very high - but breathtakingly beautiful.  So walk with me please... but let's take it carefully and split it into two parts, because as I said it's freakin' high...

We are in Drasnice on the Dalmatian Coast.  Both of my grandparents were born here (although they met and married in NZ).  The village is packed with European tourists of the family variety, think small togs and big bellies, rubber shoes and lots of lilos!  They cluster on the pebbled beaches, fiercely protective of their 'spots' - even leaving their towels out overnight to ward off marauding beachgoers.  They come to bake and to enjoy family time in the safe and stunning waters of the Adriatic.

As I pick my way along the vacuum-packed lines of towels I can't help but glance upward to the old village and imposing mountain above and think; "Could you have ever imagined this, Grandmother?"  I can't seem to settle and relax at the beach like everyone else, my mind is occupied with how it must have been to eke an existence out of this barren chunk of rock. 

I've wandered through the old village rendered uninhabitable by the earthquake, Dad and I have explored our family's 300-year-old hand-hewn stone houses, we've marvelled at the old terraced gardens and devoured the figs that seem to be growing out of sheer rock.

And still the mountain looms behind us - with the old village lying nestled on its haunches and the new village cowering down on the coastline.  It's like it's trying to push you into the sea, so imposing and sheer is the slope.

And then Aunty starts talking about how she climbed it when she was here 50 years ago - she climbed it with her grandmother  (my great-grandmother) who used to do it every day. She'd pack up the donkey and head into the sky to collect firewood and tend gardens on the plateau behind the peak. 

I have to do it.  I know I do.  But there are a few issues - it's too steep for Dad and Aunty so I must tackle it alone, the path is difficult to find at best and then there are the snakes.  I change my mind at least four times or so, Dad suggests that I perhaps should 'wait' until I've got someone to go with. I agree, then I go anyway.

I have a map; well, really a piece of paper from the tourist office with a line zig-zagging across it representing a path.  I have a backpack with water, clothing and a nectarine - the nectarine is my reward when I get to the top.

I head up through the old village where I'm told by a Kiwi guy that I should really have a stick to ward off the snakes - mental note: find a stick, and step loudly until I do.  I shoot up the old overgrown stone steps and pathways between the crumbling dwellings.  I wonder how many feet have toiled the same path carrying a burden or bustling to get something done - if only the stones could talk.

Up past the houses and over a bit there should be a path.  I head further and further along to the left and still can't seem to strike it - the brambles are certainly loving me though.  I look at my map thing - hmmm, maybe I'm not high enough - so I decide to head straight up for a bit, it's only shingle - how hard can it be?  Scrambling might actually be a better way of describing it, I scramble on all fours across the ever-moving mass of rocks. Higher and higher - don't look down - then I do look down and I start to worry.  If I don't find a path soon I honestly don't know how I'm going to get down without causing an avalanche of boulders and scree.

I squint up and try to find a line amidst the grey - it really should be there, that path, the map says so.  I aim for a big rock that could be the edge of it - sh*t, no such luck.  I crouch on my haunches, stuck literally between a rock and a hard place. Going back the way I came is near treacherous and heading across into the brambles looks to be just as bad and rock-ridden. Maybe that's the path just above me there... just a little further upward... surely grandmother and her donkey never came this way!

Find out next week...

Sayonara,

Lenska

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