Destination: Slovenia – Saying Yes
From the Substack Mindful Travel Confessions by Camila Castro
There’s a version of me that would have asked a lot of questions of Domen, my Slovenian guide.
Where, exactly, are we going? What will we be doing there? What should I expect? That version of me — the one who used to plan every detail of every trip before leaving the house — would have wanted a full briefing before agreeing to anything.
In Slovenia, she didn’t show up.
I’m not entirely sure when she stopped showing up in general. Somewhere between years of learning to travel more mindfully, and a Destination: Unknown adventure that made surrender non-negotiable from the very start, that version of me quietly stepped aside. And what replaced her was something I can only describe as a willingness. A quiet, steady yes.
Slovenia tested that yes in ways I hadn’t anticipated. And rewarded it beyond anything I could have imagined.
“I came home with a greater willingness to say yes. To follow the lead of someone who knows more than I do. To allow the day to reveal itself rather than demanding it announce itself in advance.”
The Alpine Pastures
I already knew, from the plane window and from a couple of days wandering Ljubljana, that Slovenia had unbelievable natural beauty. But stepping into the high-alpine pastures of the Velika Planina was something else entirely. Domen and I took the chairlift up, arriving at the top where the temperature dropped sharply, and the landscape opened into something that felt less like a hike and more like walking into a story.
We made it for the tail end of the crocus bloom, all vivid purple, covering the pastures in a carpet so beautiful it seemed almost unreal. We were lucky, Domen told me. We followed the trails, gently intersecting the lovely landscape, through clusters of traditional shepherd’s huts — a few still used as they were in the past, most now modernized as weekend homes — winding our way up to a small church on a hill. The outdoor altar and every carved detail had been made from wood, raw and simple, as if it had grown directly from the ground it sat on. For someone who doesn’t practice religion, I found it one of the most genuinely spiritual spaces I’ve ever seen.
Before we set off, Domen showed me a mountaineering passport station at the trailhead — a metal box where hikers stamp a book to record their ascent. The ink was dry that day, but the tradition itself moved me. It said everything about Slovenia’s relationship with the outdoors.
There was more snow than I expected. The path was slippery and muddy in places, but the crocus kept appearing around every bend, and the views of the snowcapped peaks above the pastures were the kind that make you stop walking and just stand there to take it all in.
When we stopped for lunch at a cozy mountain hut, Domen suggested I try the jota (a Slovenian stew of pickled cabbage, or turnips, and beans and sausage)... it was the beginning of a love affair with jota that lasted the rest of my trip.
The Wellness Valley
If the Velika Planina was Slovenia’s pastoral masterpiece, the Logar Valley was its alpine fairytale.
Driving in takes your breath away. One narrow road winding through a long, green, quiet valley, extending all the way to where the mountains stand guard at the far end, Austria on the other side. Scattered farms and chalet-style boutique hotels are arranged almost poetically along the road, as if nature itself had composed the scene.
Domen told me this area was still relatively off the radar for visitors, and it felt like it. Quiet, unhurried, almost isolated — but in the most restorative way imaginable.
My hotel, family-owned and run, sat with gorgeous views of the valley spreading out around it. I hadn’t expected to find a full Ayurvedic spa tucked into such a remote corner of Slovenia, but there it was, and I spent a morning moving between saunas and steam rooms, and a cold plunge in the natural swimming pond (from which I helped a hotel employee rescue a family of toads). It was one of those mornings that you don’t plan and can’t replicate, the kind that only happen when you’ve stopped trying to control what the day looks like.
Later, Domen and I drove the Panoramic Road — a route that cuts through the mountains and winds all the way around the valley, offering views of everything below: farms, pastures, forests, peaks, the valley floor laid out like a painting. It reminded me of The Sound of Music in the best possible way. The kind of landscape that makes you feel, simultaneously, very small and very alive.
“You Are Not Hiking Down Today”
The paragliding was the biggest surprise of my trip.
We were in Bohinj; my favorite place in Slovenia, if I had to choose one. Domen picked me up after breakfast, telling me we would be going for a hike up to a beautiful viewpoint. Sounded good to me. We climbed through an enchanting forest, stopping to admire a small river and the stone bridges spanning it, and I wasn’t particularly curious about where we were headed. I was just happy to be out in Slovenia, moving through it, discovering it the way you only can on foot.
We arrived at the viewpoint — the lake spread out below us, glittering in the sun, peaks surrounding it on every side, two finger-like valleys cutting into the scene. We sat on a bench and talked, and I marveled, as I had every day, at where this decision to undertake such an unusual trip had brought me.
And then I noticed what looked like a small putting green on the edge of the ridge.
Domen explained it was a paragliding launch point and, just as he said it, a paraglider emerged from the forest trail and began setting up beside us. I watched, fascinated, as he laid out the canopy and harness, checked his lines, and turned into the wind. And then he ran off the edge and was airborne, floating out over the lake like it was the most natural thing in the world. Wow.
“Have you ever done it?” Domen asked.
I told him no, but that I’d been skydiving.
“Would you?”
I thought about it for just a moment before replying: “Yeah, it looks incredible.”
“Great,” he said. “Because you are not hiking down today.”
For a moment I thought he was joking. Then I realized he wasn’t.
More people arrived. One of them was my pilot. I had minutes — maybe five, maybe ten — to absorb what was happening. And what surprised me most was how calm I felt. Not the forced calm of someone talking themselves down from nerves, but something quieter and more settled than that. A kind of peaceful eagerness. Maybe the skydiving helped. Maybe it was a week of saying yes to whatever came next. Perhaps it was simply that by this point in the trip, I trusted — Domen, Explorer X, Slovenia itself — in a way that left very little room for fear.
I suited up. My pilot gave me brief instructions. And then I was running off the edge of a ridge above Lake Bohinj, until I wasn’t running anymore; I was flying.
The conditions were perfect. The day was clear and warm. We stayed up for a long time, the wind carrying us over the lake and the valleys below, unhurried. It felt like we were a feather in the air. It was one of the most peaceful experiences of my life. Not exhilarating in the way skydiving is exhilarating, all adrenaline and speed and sensory overload. This was something else. Spacious. Quiet. A bird’s eye view of all that beauty, taking it in from above, held by nothing but wind and trust.
Afterward, Domen asked if I had suspected anything.
Not for a second, I told him.
He said they had only organized a surprise like this once before. That there was always the chance it wouldn’t be welcome. But he had known that I would be okay with it, because I had been saying yes all trip — following his lead, trusting him as a local expert, letting the day unfold without needing to know in advance what it held.
“It was easy to organize for you,” he said, “because you were willing to just go with the flow.”
I’ve thought about that a lot since coming home. About what it means to be someone things can be organized for. About what becomes possible when you stop asking so many questions and start trusting the people who know more than you do about where you are and what might surprise you in the best way possible.
The Singing Forest
The forest therapy came that same afternoon — and it made perfect sense that it would follow paragliding. One took me into the sky, giving me a bird's-eye view. The other brought me all the way back down, to the ground. Into the details. Into the kind of presence that only comes when you stop moving fast enough to notice what’s actually around you.
Our guide, Maja, had the kind of quiet calm that invites letting go. She led us into the forest and then, gently and unhurriedly, began drawing our attention to things I would otherwise have walked straight past. The different textures of moss and bark under our fingertips. The way individual leaves look utterly unique under a magnifying glass — their veins, their edges, their variations of green. The smell of wet, mulchy leaves and fallen branches on the ground — like decay and new life, simultaneously. The sound of the breeze moving through the trees. The nearby stream, water flowing steadily, unstoppable and inevitable.
This is where I learned that trees can sing. Maja explained that spruce trees are often used to make instruments (violins among them) and demonstrated how each one carries its own note, different from every other tree around it. She had me play a xylophone made from spruce planks, each one resonating differently depending on the tree it came from. I stood in the middle of the forest making music from trees and felt something shift that I still can’t fully name. Not just fascination, but awe.
Afterward, we settled into hammocks strung between the trees, swaying gently while the sun cut softly through the canopy and dappled everything below. Not quite sleeping, not quite awake, just resting, watching the light move, listening to the forest breathe. Just being.
Maja ended the afternoon with a picnic laid out on the forest floor, decorated with leaves and rocks and moss and sticks, every item of food locally made. It was the most beautiful meal of my life. Not because of what was on the plate, but because of everything around us.
I came home from Slovenia, changed, and it wasn’t any particular activity or hotel or visit, but the mindset, the openness I embraced on this trip.
I came home with a greater willingness to say yes. To follow the lead of someone who knows more than I do. To allow the day to reveal itself rather than demanding it announce itself in advance.
Domen said it best, standing on that ridge above Lake Bohinj: it was easy to organize for you, because you were willing to go with the flow.
I want to keep being that person. In travel and beyond. Because, floating in the sky over a lake and breathing in a forest and following a path of purple crocus through an alpine village, I learned that the best things — the most surprising, the most beautiful, the most lasting — appear when you stop asking so many questions.
And just say yes.
About Mindful Travel Confessions by Camila Castro on Substack
For seekers bridging who they've been with who they're becoming, one journey at a time. Writer & Mindful Travel Coach sharing honest stories from the road, frameworks for intentional travel, and updates from my creative journey.