Brief Bio
LUKA HORVAT, A GUIDE
At 18, just before graduating high school, I put school on hiatus and worked on ocean freighters. Before I turned 19, I had visited and set foot on every continent except Antarctica. Travels and adventures have fascinated me since I was a child when I first picked up stories about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and comics about the wild west. I loved that bearded guy and his bear in the Grizzly Adams series. Travel and independence were my obsession.
I sailed as a Ordinary Seaman (O.S.) and Messboy (one who takes care of the crew’s messroom on a ship and waits on the tables) for five years, and then I went to live in Amsterdam. I moved from Amsterdam to Ljubljana, working and studying there for several years. I graduated from naval high school, I’m a sound engineer by profession, and I’ve done anything and everything in my life. I spent the last 12 years working in the world’s largest media corporations, reaching the mid-management level.
My corporate job is such that I travelled a lot in the Balkans, from Slovenia to Macedonia. I got to know people and local regions – my own backyard. I have worked, collaborated and negotiated with directors and heads of various telecommunication companies. These people love to negotiate over a table full of good food. So I also got to know some good bars and restaurants in former Yugoslavia territories.
I’ve been hiking since I was little because my father and mother took me on trips to Italy, Slovenia and Austria. I have competed in skiing; I have loved skiing and hiking since I can remember. I have passed many Croatian, Slovenian, Italian and Austrian mountains, explored various corners, nooks and crannies, and I am happy to return to all of them again and again. In the first decade of the 21st century, I worked as a specialised vessel crew member as part of research and rescue operations in the Arctic Ocean (Barents Sea) and the North Sea.
In 2010, I cycled through Norway from the south to the north. The trip lasted three months. I didn’t cycle it all; sometimes, I put my bike in a truck and rode between cities with truckers. I wanted to get to know Norway from top to bottom, a nordic country I admire, and enjoy its wilderness. I was sleeping in a tent in an open arctic tundra, and crows were landing on my tent. It was like a movie.
I put all my experience into this agency. I have been a mountain guide in the Opatija Mountaineering Society for ten years and regularly take club members on hiking / mountaineering trips around Croatia and Slovenia. I have a lot of experience, contacts and knowledge; I love this job and work towards creating the best-specialized agency for adventure tourism in Croatia.
The destruction of the environment makes me sad, and as long as there is one tree standing, I will go there and make a picnic under its canopy. I am meticulous when I am creating trips. I strive to find routes that go through the least degraded environment and where nature is spectacular while keeping an eye on safety and accessibility.
I am a licensed mountain guide. My license covers all Croatian mountains and almost all weather conditions. I regularly undergo additional training and renewal of knowledge for licenses under the UIAA standards. I maintain my knowledge by guiding, attending independent exercises and exercises organized by alpine mountaineering instructors in my parent mountaineering society.
