postcard 35: wild pigs + wine cellars

diving deep into Istria this week.

My childhood friend, Serena, reminded me recently that while we were both ahead-of-our-grade level, overachiever, straight-A homeschoolers, the one thing we always sucked at, without fail, was the maps and diagrams section of the biannual standardized tests the state assigned us.

We’re not actually that far from home when Topher and I realize that both of our international SIM cards have expired so we’re without data, but I assure Topher I can probably get us to the trail I had picked out and we get on the highway anyways. Probably. I zoom in and out on the map, hoping my photographic memory will combat my lack of directional skills. He’s rightfully dubious. We stop at three gas stations hoping for WiFi before giving up and navigating to a tenuous point on the map. A few miles out, we hit a closed road and spend the next 20 minutes comparing downloaded road maps and topo maps until we pull over at the end of a gravel road at a wastewater treatment plant that looks promising. Or something.

The sun is already high in the sky and it beats down on us as we walk past a canal full of the weirdest noises. It almost sounds like laughter and I have my eyes glued to the reeds looking for birds. Hazelnut cocks her head and I catch the movement. The murky water is filled with frogs, singing the strangest chorus.

By the time we find a trail sign (victory!) and start climbing, the path has filled with people. In retrospect, we should have probably turned around when we hit the closed road, or when I lost my hairtie, or when Hazelnut beelined for a shady patch while we argued over which direction to go, but we didn’t and now we’re stuck on the side of a cliff. Quite literally.

After entering a narrow canyon and passing two waterfalls that were just a trickle this late in the spring, the trail had grown more and more slippery as we headed uphill. There’s a slow moving tour group ahead of us and another knot of hikers behind us and we’re clinging to a class IV rock face with sketchy looking cables running along it's length. They’re anchored to spindly trees, but the metal footholds bolted to the rocks spin when I weight them, so I put my faith in the cables and pull myself up every time the group ahead of us moves, my mud slicked boots scrabbling uselessly at the smooth rock. Hazelnut’s claws look like a cartoon character as she scrambles up, getting one good step in for every three leg movements. The woman behind me keeps bumping my backpack, trying to get us to move faster.

Finally we hit the top and weave through the selfie-taking group to find a flatter section of trail. We catch our breath and check the recording, audibly groaning when we see we’ve only accomplished a third of the elevation gain. There has to be a bail out, somewhere.

The fork off the main trail leads through a tiny village and down a road that really looks like someone’s driveway. A gaggle of truffle hunting dogs barks wildly from a block of kennels as we backtrack up and down the road looking for the trail we see on the map. Finally, I spot it, a faint break in the trees. Topher leads, taking spiderwebs to the face and hopefully scaring away the snakes we’ve seen twice so far today. Hazelnut sandwiches between us, getting poked by thorny bushes hiding wild asparagus.

Topher assures me the sound in the woods is another hiker but I’m certain we’re the first people on this trail this year. The oaks around us are thick and this is truffle territory. I’m terrified it’s a wild boar crashing through the brush towards us.

“Hey pig!” I yell loudly and the noise stops immediately. I start singing a nonsense song (if it works on bears, maybe it works on pigs?) and usher Topher and Hazelnut as fast as we dare down the steep slope. Finally, we pop out on the main road, scratched and allergic and very ready to be home.

Legs covered in angry red marks from the bushes under my sundress, we walk downtown in the dying light to eat fried rice at a Asian restaurant that’s just reopened downtown. The waiter asks Topher three times if he liked the food and he can’t figure out why and I remind him he’s probably the only Japanese man in town. It’s date night and we drink spritzes on our balcony, watching the bats swoop past the streetlights.

I'm fighting allergies, or maybe a cold, so we alternate between eating green chile mac and cheese (with the precious canned ones brought to us all the way from Colorado) and reading in bed, and lifting weights before work.

Our big birthday present to Hazelnut was finally getting brave enough to post on the expat Facebook group to find her a friend. On Friday night we go to the dog park to meet Buddy and Benny, whose moms both are also Mikaelas. They run around and around, chasing each other and wrestling in the dirt and drinking an entire Hydroflask in the first 10 minutes. It’s a success, I think.

The next two weeks are full of visitors so there’s laundry and chores and shopping to do, but we sneak out on Sunday for Istria’s open cellar day. For 10 bucks we receive a wrist band and a passport and are sent out to taste wine across the province to our heart’s content. We stop by a local bakery and get thick slabs of real Burek, a flaky pastry filled with savory ingredients like ground meat and caramelized onions. It’s hard to find here and it blows the chain bakery out of the water.

Tucked into the heart of old town Vodnjan, we duck into a covered courtyard full of cool stone where we’re poured glasses of sparkling wine and offered plates of homemade speck and sausage. The event organizers told us we're only allowed three free tastings per winery, but our first hosts immediately tell us we can have four. Hazelnut startles from her place next to us when the bottle of wine pops open and hides under my feet.

Up the highway and through the hills, crawling up a narrow road past stone olive oil jugs, we find our next cellar. We’re a few minutes early and the man out front blinks at us until I tell him we’re there for a tasting. He leads us inside and looks just as surprised as we do when the woman there tells us he’ll be leading our tasting. We hide in the corner of the patio and taste five wines this time, watching as the sky grows progressively darker. Hazelnut is brought a bowl of water and we joke about the vintage.

The canopy of trees blocks out the sky on the random gravel road we’ve pulled off on for a picnic. We unpack the cooler and roll the windows down and immediately get inundated with biblically large mosquitoes. Maybe not here. By the time we make it back to the main road, the rain has started and it's straight up pouring when we pull into a picnic area in the next town. We eat our pasta salad as the drops turn to hail and thunder booms in the distance.

The hilly roads have rivers of muddy water running along their sides and I nervously clutch the oh shit handle as we cause comically large rooster tails, but Topher navigates us smoothly to a gas station. It’s the only place open on a Sunday afternoon and I use the automatic machine to fill a cup with chocolate cappuccino to soothe my allergen-enraged sore throat.

We have two more stops to make, but we’re flagging by the second glass at our next tasting. The sun has come back out and Hazelnut sits and watches little yellow birds flit between the vines from the elevated patio we’re seated on. The last stop gets skipped and we read in bed instead. Vacuuming can wait until the morning.

-Mikaela