Traveller and mountaineer Sašo

 

 

I don’t think many Slovenes know me. I’m not in media a lot, I’m active on social media only as an admin of alpine group and as an initiator of hiking trips.

My first longer trip was after war of independence right after I finished high school to Bremen, Germany, where my uncle lived. I was there for six weeks as I didn’t know if the war will end soon. I was prepared to stay in Germany like my uncle did when he was young. A lot of interesting things happened in Bremen, my uncle bought me a monthly tram ticket and I drove from the first to the last stop. I was discovering the unknown and not the tourist attractions. I visited the places that can’t be reached by tram by bike.

I remember a lot of my trips. Yemen, America, Morocco... I would put Morocco first. It was my first trip to another culture (Arabic or Islam culture) and I was really impatiently counting days until I leave. It was fantastic, we were happy to land in Marrakech in 21 degree weather in December (it was -3 in Slovenia) and then we had new adventures every day and also new expectations. Marrakech impressed me a lot. You can’t describe the atmosphere on the main square Jemaa El Fna in Marrakech. Snakes, mint tea, their food (cuscus, tajine, harira) and let me mention stand nr. 70, which has excellent Marrakech tea, which can be called Marrakech aphrodisiac. People are excellent merchants, even a little annoying and they have their own rules. Merchants are sending you from one shop to the other when renters of evening stalls on the square Jemaa El Fna are competing against each other and have a strict line to which they can address the people. Once a merchant stood over the apparent line and the fight between renters burst but luckily everything calmed down quickly. I would also like to mention riding camels on desert border, climbing on 2000 meter high mountain in non-marked Anti-Atlas (mountain south of Haut Atlas where the highest peak is Jbel Toubkal) and hippie and windy Essaouira.

My friend Vik recommended it to me. I wanted to see the capital Sana’a, which looks like time stopped 100 years back. I also wanted to go hiking in the mountains and feel, what it really means that belonging to a tribe is the most important thing. And what I was most attracted to: the exotic island Socotra. Old Sana’a is extremely beautiful, people are kind and you don’t feel like you’re on the other end of the country. Tribes that aren’t keen on tourists and are connected with Al Kaida are also nice. But kidnapping happen also in Sana’a. The island Socotra is also extraordinary. There we can find a lot of endemic botanical and animal species, especially known are the dragon blood tree and African baobab. There are sandy and stone beaches on the island, dry gorges and areas with running water with mountain lakes. The land in the middle of Socotra is hilly. You have a feeling like you’re at the end of the world. Tourist infrastructure is badly developed, foreigners can’t use mobile phones. It is an island from Robinson Crusoe and if you want that and forget about any kind of comfort, you can’t be disappointed. Let me also mention that there is wild war in Yemen and there is peace on Socotra. I don’t know if there is a direct plane connection with United Arab Emirates as connections to Sana are cancelled at the moment.

Pleasure. Again, it was a recommendation from a friend who was a fan of American and Canadian national parks. And at the end this friend couldn’t come with us as he got his fourth baby and family commitment was more important. But three people went and made joint decisions. We were in New York for a few days, then we rented a car and made a circle around Providence, Plymouth, Boston, some national parks. I was most impressed with Hopewell Rocks in Canadian province New Brunswick. This is a city with the highest difference between high and low tide in the world. We continued to Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Niagara and returned to USA, where we visited Washington and Philadelphia.

I was thinking about it after finishing high school and now, when I’m unemployed. But this hasn’t happened yet and now it doesn’t look like it was going to happen.

 

I slept in hostels in bigger European cities. We also found accommodation in camps, in America and Canada mostly in low-class motels near the road and in Arabian world we found hotels that were quite cheap.

 

 

The group was actually created by my friend Peter in January 2010 and I participated in the first trip in October 2010. He saw that I know a lot about mountains and about planning the trips and that I’m a realist. He quickly gave me the admin rights at the end of December. We always had events in the group. Mostly there were hikes, but we also organized bathing in a spa, sledging and every year we have a traditional event over mulled wine. The number of members grew slowly. In October 2011 we had 100 members, in the summer 2012 there were 300 of us, in January 2014 1000 members and 2 years later there are 8200 members. First we mostly organized events, then the group developed with photo albums, which were reports of tours of the members and other interesting and important posts, connected with mountains and hiking. Today there are a lot of posts, connected with hiking, especially on the weekends. 

 

 

The pros are that you can quickly find out information about a certain destination. The con is maybe that people are taking Facebook for fun and are posting unconfirmed facts. One of the Facebook con is that most people have it for fun, so sometimes a phone call to someone you know and trust means a lot more than 10 comments under a post on Facebook.

 

I want to visit Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia, Georgia, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzystan and Algeria. But these are only wishes. I’m not going to any longer trip since I’m unemployed. But things can change, of course.