Morgan is getting out. Three years have made him so cynical that he no longer has any feeling for Bosnians other than an intense disrespect. He's like a victim himself and finds he can stick it out only by getting away every fortnight or so to calmer ground.

For our part, we are more than ready to leave in two days and take off for Mostar, Dubrovnik and the Dalmatian coast.

We head out Saturday morning after brunch at the cafe, saying our good-byes to Sarajevo for probably the last time. Several hours on the road toward Mostar, we stop once again at the great little mountain grill that roasts whole lambs over several charcoal spits. The waterwheel that was operated by plastic cups filled with water from an old hose has been replaced with an electric motor and the lamb seems somewhat more like mutton than I'd remembered, but hey, that's progress I suppose.

Back on the road and we stop for a couple hours at Mostar. Reconstruction seems more like a community event here and the Sarajevo avarice is somewhat less obvious. The historic bridge is about to be reconstructed and they're replacing the wobbly suspension bridge with a more secure and less exciting model in the meantime. That's not yet complete and we get another chance to walk across the old cable model. The river is a long way down, a magic ribbon of blue and green between steep canyon walls, outstandingly beautiful. Just downriver, SFOR equipment is slowly hauling all the ancient blasted stones from the bottom of the river and numbering them for the reconstruction.

Then we're off again to the coast and cross onto Peljesac Island for what seems like a forever drive up island where there's a ferry to Korcula, the three of us wondering if Morgan's suggestion is worth the trouble. We're too late for the last ferry, have a difficult time finding a campsite and then wander into a place that's just getting ready to open for the season. Jason negotiates the fee and we set up the two tents. I wander back up where the proprietor is making himself and his helper dinner over a small charcoal fire. He offers slivovice, I accept. Misha comes up to see where I am and he offers hot grilled bread. The conversation is slow and careful in English. I go back to the car and get a bottle of Czech wine, some sausage and cheese and we sit well into the darkness in the wonderful company of these kind and friendly Croatians. "Peaceful here," he says. "No war here, just a peaceful spot away from the world. No one comes here but older Croats." Well yeah, and the occasional car of American, Brit and Czech wanderers.

A graceful evening among generous new friends and we'll catch the morning ferry. Coyotes cry at the moon in the hills, he gestures in their direction, cups his hand, howls and we all smile at one another. Sleep comes easily.

Sunday morning we're early for the nine o'clock ferry to Korcula. A half-hour run and cool on the water but hot and sunny on the island. It's been hot since we left Prague, but welcome to bones that haven't felt much heat yet this spring. Korcula is a beautiful little town, the old section walled as we are coming to expect, the walks steep and narrow. The birth home of Marco Polo is a major attraction and a romantic little house it is---four stories in height, narrow and ancient, a wonderful tower at the top that overlooks the sea and the bell towers of several churches. Christian country---we see no Muslim spires. The house smells pleasantly of old wood. Bells announce noon services, the tone particularly delicate and I wonder if these are the same bells Marco Polo heard as a boy.

The morning is sliding away in blissful idleness and we return to the harbor where a large cruise ship is docked. We have drinks---Misha a Coke and myself a Karlovacko, a beer that's the equal of Czech beers. Later, Misha's father tells us that the Karlovacko brewery was established by Czech specialists and all of the piping is glass---Czech glass.

We ferry back, retrace the tortuous road the length of the island and back through the ancient fort at Ston, turning south toward Dubrovnik. I feel just the slightest bit compulsive about this southward leg, as if I'm forcing an issue in my determination to see the city I missed last year. It's an easy and scenic drive down the coast and we arrive late in the afternoon

Dubrovnik is now a large city and the old walled section is far back down an inlet of the Adriatic that is river-like. We miss several turns, find ourselves twisted about and lost, then ferret out directions to the old city and finally arrive. The walls are magnificent---rounded and turreted, buttressed and scrubbed clean, revealing an interior city that is nothing short of magic. A map at the entry shows the amazing amount of shelling that occurred during the recent war, as well as which specific buildings were damaged---another evidence of Bosnian outrageous and unnecessary behavior aimed squarely at intimidation. These are narrow and steep-stepped streets that seem Italian and Greek at the same moment. No automobile traffic is to be found anywhere within the walled city, which is a lesson yet to be learned in Prague.

We split up as is Jason's habit by now. Misha and I have learned to blunt the edge of the apparent snub by the luxury of being alone together. It has become obvious on this trip that we are most happy traveling together and most out-of-synch negotiating schedules with others. But just as we sit down to steamed mussels and wine, Jason reappears and we dine together, then split again and meet at the car to head upcoast.

By early evening we're at Trsteno, hardly 50 kilometers up, but suddenly find a lovely and friendly campsite. We agree to stay two nights and catch our breath before the assault on the balance of Dalmatia and home. Our host is Nicola, a middle-fifties philosopher with a broad smile, tender appreciation of a small English vocabulary, a bad left eye and a touch for things horticultural. The place, unlike others we've seen lately is carefully mowed and abundantly planted in flowers.

Jason disappears and we walk down to the sea along a cobbled path among trees that drops consistently and persistently. I have in the back of my mind the climb back, but it's engaging and in a half-mile we've dropped perhaps two hundred feet, maybe a bit less. The little harbor is nearly empty with an ancient seawall and just a few modest fishing boats bobbing at anchor. We watch the sun begin to set and stop a time or two at strategically placed benches on the way back to catch breath and listen to the birds. These Trsteno birds, like birds everywhere, make a special event out of the end of a day.

Sleep comes easily.

Monday, the first of June is a day spent wandering through the botanic gardens that adjoin our campsite, washing a few clothes and chatting with Nicola. The Yugoslav Army, mostly Macedonians according to Nicola was in the village for six months, demanding food and deutschmarks on a daily basis, commandeering everything that wasn't nailed down and threatening, looting, destroying. Half the village left and half stayed. Nicola lost everything but the property and very nearly lost his life. He is a kind man with a peasant style of courage that can only be admired.

We are so naive, we Americans and have always been and may always be. The world is full of Nicolas, the people who stay and carry on, who pick up pieces and prevail. We are mere tourists, a metaphor for our foreign policy and there is nothing so humbling as to be an American poking among the ruins of yet another failed policy. The thugs of this world have learned to read us, know what we will stand and how far we can be pushed. They depend upon it. They thrive by it's clocklike regularity and we thereby encourage a proliferation of what we cannot abide and will not prevent. The clock is being wound again at this very moment in Kosovo.

So Nicola smiles and takes our small camping fee, offers brandy and the opinion that Croatia is done with fighting. Bosnia Herzegovina he's not so sure about, but Croatia he feels is done with it.

Up on the main road that passes through Trsteno stand two of the world's largest sycamore trees, said to be over seven hundred years old. They look to be the trees within whose branches the Swiss Family Robinson might well have built their tree-house. Immense and overpowering to contemplate, yet so leafy as to lose themselves from prominence unless you know they're there and look for them. That may be what has saved them from deliberate destruction, unlike the fabled bridge at Mostar and so many other treasures, it's entirely possible that their natural camouflage has saved them for centuries. An old man sells me homemade peach brandy, home-dryed dates and something he calls St. John's Bread, which is a dryed and sweetened seed-pod of the locust. He's charming. While we're talking, a group of schoolchildren arrive and twenty of them holding hands cannot circle the sycamore.

In the afternoon, Misha and I drive back down to Dubrovnik, continue our love affair with the city and dine lavishly once again on Morgan's generosity. We leave reluctantly, having dreamed a life here, our modest cabin cruiser moored in the quiet old harbor, a renaissance apartment renovated not too many steps up one of the charming side streets with a rooftop loggia crammed with potted plants and overhead grapevines. Tomorrow we head seriously up-coast. It seems Jason needs to be home and the money is low as the money is always low.

Tuesday we're packed and ready to go by eight and stop for coffee at Neum, on the little neck of land that serves as access to the Adriatic for the whole of Bosnia. Somehow Croatia has ended up with the lion's share of the Adriatic coast. Gas is momentarily cheaper here as well and we top the tank. We stop for a picnic breakfast at Makarska, where Misha took a holiday one summer with her parents as a child. The town hasn't changed much, a pretty little seacoast village much like many others, drawing perhaps a few more tourists than most. We picnic on a bench near the waterfront.

By early afternoon we are in Split and we've seen SFOR vehicles steadily for the past hour, the first in Croatia. Jason mentions that Split is the docksite for UN supply, the pipeline for nearly all food, fuel and whatever it is that sustains a long-term military occupation. It's a dreadful city and I'm out of sorts trying to find the centrum, taking several wrong turns. It's blistering hot when we finally find the old city. We park, are rather cordially run off the parking space by a police officer and find another. Not so shady, but legal. We lock up, split up and agree to meet back in an hour.

So American once more. An hour for a historic city. An hour for the most ancient and best preserved fort of the Roman Emperors, built two thousand years ago. We don't see it. We see where it is located, but we don't see it. I can't blame Misha for this American display of snap-shot and run---she is Czech. Technically, even Jason is a Brit, but he is the push at this moment, the one with the agenda. We promise to come back, but it has a hollow ring to it. A cool beer and a Coke on a shady terrace, then Jason strolls by and we are off once more.

Twenty kilometers up the road the land turns flat and farmlike. Another hundred or so we find ourselves taking a sharp right turn at Zadar and head east across the peninsula to the mainland coast road. That ribbon of paving proves to be more mountainous once again, everything dropping rather steeply into the sea and almost always an offshore island to block the view of open sea. Sort of a Balkan equivalent to the inside passage to Alaska. The road is good and has been for most of the trip north from Dubrovnik, but it's very winding and hard to make much time. Pushing hard is the antithesis of how Misha and I like to travel, but we are pushing hard. No campsites seem close and we are all resigned to drive into the night when a site appears at Senj.

Quite a nice place, right on the sea, clean and with good hot showers as well as a lovely terrace overlooking what will very soon be the sunset. We set up, Jason disappears. We roll our eyes at another of his disappearances and share a drink on the terrace---wine for me and iced tea for Misha. The sun is slow to drop at the horizon and we share a lovely hour and a half at our ease. Unwinding from a rather hectic day of driving we slide back into a mood of enjoying the moment---taking what is given and being thankful for it. That may sound sophomoric, but is pretty much the method by which we roam around.

We sleep well. That seems to be a constant, the sleeping well. Tomorrow the run for Prague.

Always great to head home, no matter the trip and Wednesday we get a decent start about nine or so. We wave on our way past the bridge that leads to the island of Krk where we spent a few hammocked days by the seaside two summers ago. The road chokes with trucks near Rijeka, where it seems by the smokestacks that all Balkan gasoline is distilled. A big seaport with a typically dreary port town atmosphere, but as we clear the city limits we find a pull-off where a roadside breakfast is possible. Mmmmm . . . peanuts, cheese, salami and the remnants of iced tea from the thermos. Choice becomes more limited near the end of a trip.

We cross the border to Slovenia at Rupa and fill the car with gas, then head for Ljubljana, an easy destination for lunch.

Ljubljana is that rarity, a city that lives up to the memory of itself. We fell in love with it the last time and wondered if we had perhaps over sold ourselves on the recollection. Not so, the flower and fruit market was better than we recalled---far more extensive and better quality than anyplace we have seen, even Italy and that's saying something. Found our favorite restaurant and the tables were as shady, the food as carefully prepared, the service as friendly and the overlooking apartments as gracious with their flowered windowboxes as we had hoped they would be. Slovenia is a very nice little unknown country.

Off by two and by three we're back in Austria at Villach. Autobahn now and we're cruisin' at 140-150kph, arrowing through mountains in high-speed tunnels and bursting out the other side like a bird flying straight through a tree. Toll stations catch us regularly and I'm somewhat alarmed when I get down to the last 20 DM in my pocket. But that last twenty is in my bedside table at this moment. The tolls came magically to an end in direct proportion for their need to end and who can complain of that? Scattered thunderstorms scrubbed our windshield, the mountain peaks became indescribably rugged and beautiful, then we plummeted down the gorge that leads all water downhill to Salzburg.

Around not through the city this time, impatient now for the Czech border. We peel off the kilometers to Linz, skirting that city as well and are suddenly off the autobahn to find ourselves winding through charming little Austrian farming villages. The mountains have worn themselves away to foothills. A second-cutting of hay lies windrowed, the wheat and oats and rye are heavy-topped and bending against the wind. A classic picture of plenty, a guarantee of barns and silos and trucks-to-market chocked full and farm families sitting contentedly down to knockwurst and sauerkraut, dumplings and apple strudel.

The Czech border. Home. Well, three hours yet, but home in the larger sense of the word and back to a land where the monetary cost of living is achievable. Prague just after ten and our plants are well, thanks to friend Theo's intermediate watering. The flat looks great and the bed is great. We tumble in without further comment, home again, all safe, warm, dry and glad to be back.