Backroads Takes Athleta to Croatia

by Lynny Kramm, Backroads Leader

The singing started just before midnight. The dinner plates were still scattered on the tables when someone started softly humming an old folk song. Within a few bars, most of the others had joined in…. these six men had been friends for more than 40 years and singing together for almost as long and each picked up their part effortlessly.

I was sitting on a 100 year old wooden sailboat with my good friend Heather as we realized we had front row seats to an impromptu klapa concert. Klapa is a traditional Dalmatian form of a capella singing in four or five part harmony. The songs tell tales of the sea, and fishing and lost love and found love, and nagging mothers-in-law and other universal emotions and experiences. Klapa loosely translates to mean “group of friends.” In other words, your clan or your posse, and at that moment I felt like I truly had gone from being a visitor in this country to being a part of it.
It was my third season leading trips for Backroads in Croatia, and as I looked around the boat on a rare night off, past the remnants of grilled lamb and vegetables and homemade bread and homemade olive oil and homemade wine, I thought, this is why I travel.

It’s the feeling I had that night that we try to share with our guests who come to Croatia all summer, and that we wanted to capture for Athleta when they asked Backroads to help them scout locations on the Dalmatian coast where they could shoot their fall catalog. It sounded easy… show a couple of folks from Athleta all the great places between Split and Dubrovnik where you can run and hike and do yoga and kayak and bike and rock climb. Take some pictures, see some beautiful scenery, spend a week with some great people… piece of cake, right?

So off I went, in February, to show off this stunning stretch of islands to Rachel and Jed from Athleta. But as they de-iced my plane in Zagreb, I remember thinking… this might be a little harder than I anticipated. It was cold. And raining. And dark. And it’s really hard to envision how it feels when you jump from the upper deck of a private boat and into the crystal clear, deep blue of the Adriatic while looking through a ferry window at sheets of rain bouncing off the whitecaps on a grey sea. So I talked. A lot. I tried to capture in words the essence of the places I’ve been lucky enough to bike and hike my way through over the last three years. A typical conversation went something like this…

Me: “So in May this town will be amazing.”

Jed: “Really?”

Me: “Trust me… the lipa trees lining this street grow over the road and there’s this incredible citrus smell and the leaves are a soft light green and when the sun hits them and you’re biking underneath this canopy of dappled light it’s almost magical.”

Jed: “Um, right…magical trees. Got it.”

So there we were. Me talking with Rachel and Jed taking pictures and using their imaginations. Luckily, they’ve done this before, but I couldn’t help feeling frustrated by how poorly my descriptions painted a true picture of this coast, of the moment on the boat that night, and of countless other moments like that every season. Some things can’t really be described, they can only be experienced. I knew Jed and Rachel would experience plenty of their own moments when they came back with the full crew in May to start shooting the fall catalog, and could only wait to hear their stories in return.

BACKROADS is the ultimate adventure vacation company that combines your passions for active travel and worldly exploration in each trip. It’s a company that’s all about seeing the world from a bike or from hiking trails, getting around on your own terms and via your own power, with time to stop and sample local cuisine or hang out with the locals. These hiking, cycling and multisport vacations are designed to get you closer than you can get behind the wheel of a car or passing through on a tour bus. From hiking the Croatian Islands to biking across Rajasthan, these are the trips that give you a whole new perspective. And isn’t that why we all travel, anyway? For more information, visit Backroads.com or call 800-GO-ACTIVE (800-462-2848).