Since some few years ago I became very interested in idea of doing the job of an adventure travel guide in Croatia. I was sending some applications for the travel companies on the shore and nobody was answering my mails. Adventure travel guide job positions were nowhere to be found. If the things didn’t arrange in a way they arranged I would probably work as a animation team member somewhere along the coast and basically my job would be to make people happy in any way I can. Simple as that but not what I wanted to do. There was not enough adventure in all that.
But life is life and has it’s mysterious ways when it comes to arranging things. I was doing my student office job at that particular day and it just came to my mind that I should look for some new jobs. And I did so. There was open position for adventure travel guide at Raftrek, Croatian largest adventure company. Of course I knew about them and of course they were on my list and of course I applied. One call, one interview and few weeks later the training has started.
Around 40 persons started with the training with few people quitting after each training. At the end there was only around 10 of us. We had training twice during the working week and on the weekends we would always go somewhere doing the practical work, practicing safety talks, paddling, crossing the river and so on.
It all lasted for 2 months, intensive training that ensured gaining of all needed knowledge. To be honest, we had a lot of fun during these days. Always on the river, somewhere in the nature, kayaking, rafting, enjoying by the campfire. What more can you ask for? And so, what began in March ended in May. Our training for adventure travel guide was done and there was only one more selection in front of us. During the training I was trying to do my best, get all the knowledge I could and to be present on as many lectures as I could. I was willing to put my studies all the way in the back of the list and focus only on this. Hopefully, I managed to do both.
I started to work as an adventure travel guide somewhere in the middle of June and ended at the end of September. Not a single day off and I enjoyed in every moment. I was stationed mainly at river Zrmanja, far from civilization. My first visit to any populated area was after the 2 months of “isolation” and it felt strange. But this was a post about training and we’ll keep it like that, post about life as adventure guide comes next but if you are really impatient watch this video.
