The bold announcement from our tour guide that one good rub on the golden goat would take the rain and clouds away was the only impetus I needed to scramble up onto the statue and rub it with all of the vigor possible in my little arm.

I booked myself onto an organized tour because the days and days of rain made it a bit impossible to get in all of the planned hiking and nature walking through the north of Slovenia. The Emerald River day tour was pricey – like way out of my budget, but what the heck, how could I miss the opportunity to hike in the highest peaks in the country and raft down one of the most gorgeous rivers I’ve seen yet?

I couldn’t. So I piled on the layers, donned my raincoat and ran out the hostel door into the waiting van that whisked us off to our first stop – the golden goat that protects the Triglav National Park. From this point there was supposed to be some spectacular snow peaked mountains behind the goat…yet this whole day started to seem oddly reminiscent of the sad hike through the Himalayas because the drizzling weather just refused to clear as we made our way up into the mountains.

The drive up into Triglav was pretty wild – nearly a hundred numbered and sharp hairpin turns…I hopped out of the back of the van after the first few turns and traded places into the front seat in the hopes of keeping my breakfast down.

With a bit of numbing cold rain we slogged our way up to see some more sad vista points – they were pretty, but this was about the point where I had to realign my expectations for the day and decide to make the best of it no matter what the weather.

A lot of the trip was structured around the gorgeous Soča River that originates in Slovenia. The source of the Soča is a small gushing blue-green hole between some rocks – pretty but not all that spectacular unless you consider the ridiculousness that it takes to actually see this spot. Our guide led us on one of the most dangerous hike/climbs that I have been on to-date, especially if you consider that it was drizzling down rain during all of this making the rocks exponentially more dangerous.

I literally climbed on all four at points, scrambling up the rocks and then had to flatten myself against the cold, gray, wet rocks with a death grip on the only thing keeping me from falling down into the Soča – a think steel cable drilled into the rock paralleling the faint path. I asked the guide if anyone dies and he assured us that no one from the day tour does, just stupid the tourists – not very reassuring if you ask me!

During lunch we noticed that the golden goat must have responded to our frenzied rubbing because the sun actually began to peep through the clouds and the temperature warmed up just a hair – which was perfect timing because I was about to get wet. Really, really wet.

The aqua waters of the Soča River beckoned to me all morning and with the sun finally shining I was actually psyched for the rafting trip; the rapids were only a grade III – easy-peasy after the level IVs in India!

Meet my guide:

Oso, as in bear, in Spanish. But when he introduced himself we misheard and dubbed him “Awesome” for the trip. But, awesome he was not. My rafting guide was a sadist.

Truly! I kid you not. He did everything in his power to dump us into the river at every possible opportunity. The first time it was pretty hilarious because we all fell for it and laughed it off. His trick – get us to “high five” the paddles just as we entered a dip in the river…no one holding on, we all fall. Plus, he purposefully went through the easy rapids so that we (and I was in the front position) would eat as much water as possible.

Funny stuff, but by the fourth and fifth time we got dumped it was getting old and this Florida-girl was a Shannon- sicle. He claims that he dumped us in so that we wouldn’t pansy out when it came time to jump off the rocks into the river. And while I still hold fast to the belief that he just truly likes to watch us suffer, there was some truth to his theory. Since I was already wet and cold I was the first one from the group to take a running leap off of the rock into the water. Carpe diem and all that jazz right?!

Another first for me was the car-train back to Lake Bled, our starting point. We parked on the train and our guide popped open the cooler and handed us an ice-cold Laško beer. The best part about the beer? Our lucky goat was right there greeting us from the side of the can! The flavor reminded me of a Heineken actually but better, smoother. It went down nicely after a hard day of hiking and rafting and nearly falling off of cliff faces.