Paradise Found

We found paradise. Its at the end of a bumpy dirt road that won't let you out of first gear. Then you go down a trail. It is about 5 km past Zawala on the lavender and grape-covered island of Hvar. To get there, you take a ferry, drive through a mile-long single-lane tunnel and on past where the pavement ends. It is a private south-facing pebble beach tucked in a cliff side that provides shade even in midday. Thousands of of pebbles populate the beach worn smooth by the sea. The waters and winds are still in the morning like a lake and more lively in the afternoons until an hour or so after the sun sets.

It is the home of Didier, a friendly guy from Belgium whom we met through couchsurfing. His mom was Croatian, his dad Belgian. His parents began building this house to fulfill their dream of a bed and breakfast nearly three decades ago. Suddenly, his mom fell ill. It was lung cancer, metastasized in the intestines. Despite their best efforts, she was dead in four months. His dad stopped construction on the house. That was 1986.

What remains are two rooms, a small solar panel, a deck, a well and an outhouse. And Didier has hosted more than 30 couch surfers already in two weeks of his holiday here. It will undoubtedly be fifty by the time he returns to Belgium at the end of the month.

I consider this paradise a gift of sorts from cancer. Part of the silver lining that surrounds its thunderclouds of suffering. Thunderclouds, however, are beautiful and powerful in their own right.

Aside from long days on the beach sunning, swimming, soaking and snorkeling, we thoroughly enjoyed a great cross section of the couch surfing community. In addition to Didier, there was his friend Adrian, a personal trainer who wants to go back to school to study nutrition. He is from Belgium, speaks better English than he thinks, and has come with Didier here for some time every year for the last eight years. He is hilarious and made for the best evening of Go Fish I have ever played.

Then there is Alessandra, from Sardinia. She is beautiful, a diver, maybe 40. She works in the public works department for Italy and hates her job almost as much as the Italian bureaucracy that comes with it.

And Robin from Sweden. 28 years old. Handsome. Blond hair and a beard. Loves soccer. He cooks tuna and eggs three ways two times a day (omelet, fried eggs, and scrambled eggs). When we met, he was three days into a year and a half o traveling. Within fifteen minutes of meeting him, I knew we will see him again somewhere.

Then there were five from Poland. Three boys: Martin, Paul and Patrick. Two girls: Anya (Patrick's little sister) and Rose. They are maybe 20 years old. Both girls are “knockouts” as my mom would say in reference to their beauty.

Then came Galen, the 20-year-old from Alaska who left me feeling annoyed by Americans. (That probably has more to do with me than him). He has already traveled widely and just finished an intensive Croatian language program. He likes to share what he knows on all topics. I wonder if I was like that at that age.

Galen met three spunky girls from Barcelona on the ferry – Nuria, Anna and Raquel. They quickly turned our private beach into a nude beach and made fast friends with Annette in the dance clubs of Hvar. We will see them in a few weeks in Barcelona.

And on our last night, two very sweet girls from Berlin arrived – Carol and Julia. They brought peaceful spirits and an appreciation for paradise.

It was truly a beautiful little momentary community formed there just southeast of the village of Gromin Doloc on the island of Hvar. I write this from the overnight ferry from Hvar to Ancona, Italy. The other members of this community are already spread across the continent – Dubrovnik, Budapest, Romania, Monte Negro.