Source: By the Author
Hello all Hive community, I am Eros, Mike's collaborator, and I am writing this #Weekend-Engagement contest, because the affair that happened to me has entered the annals of comedy!
Intro
I have never had any problem with either orientation or fear of getting lost, on average I have always been lucky enough to be able to know where to know where I am and where I am going.
I acquired this ability mainly because of the study I attended, my attitude and the job I had until a few years ago: surveyor with a specialization in topography.
This brief introduction to give you a chance to laugh out loud with this strange affair that happened to me.
The Situation
To identify well with the situation, we have to go back in time; we are in 2002, when phones were still beginning their metamorphosis into smartphones, there were the first Internet connections, but the fast network was a mirage! That is, we are talking that the cool phone was a nokia 3310!
Do you remember the cellphone that were used to demolish buildings. Yes, that one.
Generated with https://imgflip.com/memegenerator
So you can imagine: no Google Maps, no Sigic, no Tom Tom, in short just the dear old (then not too old) map!
Summer vacation with wife, children and inseparable companion of endless adventures: my car a beautiful black VW Passat, which at a friend's wedding was mistaken for the bride's car!
The place
As a great devotee of Istria, I have practically always spent my summer vacations in this diamond of a land, where it seems as if the world has stopped and nature has threatened man to be treated as a commodity.
That year the season was anything but idyllic: when it wasn't raining it was cloudy and all it took was the rumble of thunder to unleash a thunderstorm with flakes!
One morning taken in a manner worthy of a nature-defying human being, I woke up and told us to get ready, that we were going for a picnic a few kilometers from Novigrad, on the shores of a lake.
All happy (though a little anxious about the season) we got into the car and off we went on this "field trip."
At that moment the hesitancy about the uncertain weather had vanished, and the image of this lake had taken over.
The route as you can see from the map, was not that bad. We were not going on a DesertStorm mission. A simple trip by car with decent roads. Well, that's what we expected.
Source: Google Maps
Thinking that on average 40 km is covered in a little more than half an hour, given the unfamiliar road and probable thunderstorms, I considered taking 1 hour.
Perfect, schedule perfectly laid out in my synapses:
- Departure 9 a.m.
- Arrival 10 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.
- 10:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. tour of the lake bath and games with the kids
- 13:00 lunch
- 15:00 - ad libitum games, lazing around, photography (36 poses 100 iso!).
- Sunset, return to camp.
Nothing is missing, is it? What more could you ask for?
Said and done we are in the car all loaded to go and conquer this unexplored (for us) part of Istria!
First stop Buzinija we check on the map and it all fits, next stop Villanova del Quieto, which, however, will not have to be touched because it is far from the "yellow roads" of great travel as the map legend said.
The road is really big, wide and straight: great I can increase the speed so I arrive earlier!
Source: By the Author
Wonderful, straight, clear road and wide, fast curves, the temple of speed for all Istrians I thought!
We proceed along the road and every now and then there is even some sunshine: look maybe this time human being beats nature by 1 to 0!
Source: By the Author
I warn the navigator (my wife, ndr) to check it too when she sees the signs for Livade that shortly afterwards we will have to turn right, going up the course of the Butoniga river that gives the lake its name.
We arrive at the junction and turn right unaware that our ordeal would begin a few kilometers from now!
We start to climb, and after a short while we meet Montona... But we were not supposed to meet any village, we were supposed to arrive perfectly against the river barrage... Alright little matter I remembered seeing that there was also another road to get to the lake.
Source: By the Author
Let's take a ride, we're on vacation anyway and not tied to the clock!
We proceed ahead to Caroiba, Skropeti and I say that we must be careful to take the turn to Trviz, and so we did, heartened that everything was turning for the better, we proceed and go ahead more and more curious to see this lake.
We continued along the road (without spasmodically checking the map) at a certain point the road becomes rather bumpy until it becomes completely a dirt road: fortunately they had put gravel on it: with the wet ground the chances of getting bogged down in a place abandoned by wolves would have been much easier than one would have imagined.
This is just to give you an idea of the road I was on. One detail: this one is paved....
Source: Google Street adapted by the Author
We go ahead and after a few kilometers the surprise of surprises: road closed for works!
What do we do?
Meanwhile, time passed and between villages it was already 12 o'clock, the kids were getting tired of being in the car and the navigator was showing signs of impatience...
Slowly I back up to the nearest clearing and manage to turn the car around, go back and at this point pull out the map and try to make the "ship point."
Good.
The problem arose at an intersection where I was supposed to turn right to go toward Sipraki; instead, going straight ahead I went toward Banicici: completely wrong!
Back on the right road in the right direction and past Sipraki, and straight to Misoni, again beating roads to the edge of reality!
The Disappointment
Onward, onward, this time consulting the map meter by meter, and after about twenty minutes we come to what looks like a branch of the lake: impossible, it is fenced off--since when are lakes fenced off?
Increasingly curious, we go on skirting this branch of the body of water (which then was actually the lake) until a point where everything becomes instantly clear: it is an artificial lake created with an earthen barrage!
Disappointed to the core, we look for a clearing and park the car, moreover far from the lake, open the tailgate and get our backpacks with tarps so we can get comfortable and eat our lunch, after all, noon had passed a while ago!
Image created with https://imgflip.com/memegenerator
All organized, at the time of laying out the tarp...plic, plic, plic, it started to rain! Pick it all up and throw it in the trunk of the car, and so while the kids ate their sandwich sitting inside the trunk, driver and navigator ate under the trunk door like it was a bus shelter!
Conclusions
Apparently such an adventure has no conclusion, except that it was a succession of mishaps starting with the wrong road and ending with lunch in the rain.
Instead it was a nice ride, yes, a little apprehensive about the less-than-excellent roads, but the places we passed through were truly magnificent and unspoiled.
The lake also has its own charm: very blue water very similar to that of the Plitvice lakes (anyone who has seen them knows what blue I am talking about!) and a very peculiar shape because it has three tributaries, while the emissary is only one, namely the Butonigla River.
There are 3 tributaries because, in fact, the other two are originally right tributaries of the Butonigla.
Bathing is obviously forbidden because being an artificial lake in a karst area, the possibility of running into sinkholes with the associated turbulence is very high with the consequence of drawning.
Here is the story of when I got lost in a foreign country with a nature that was not always welcoming; but even that made me grow!