I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a minor disaster, and our trip to Ciovo Okrug Donji did not disappoint. We had flown into Split, collected our hire car with what I can only describe as misplaced confidence, and set off for what should have been a straightforward forty-minute drive down the Central Dalmatian Riviera. The trouble began when I decided I knew better than the sat nav. "Look," I said to my partner, pointing at a winding coastal road on the map, "this looks much more scenic." It was scenic, in the same way that a goat track clinging to a cliff face can be described as scenic. Twenty minutes later, we were lost somewhere above Okrug Gornji, wedged between a stone wall and a very patient donkey, with neither of us brave enough to reverse.

By the time we found the property, I had aged considerably. But stepping through the door of that holiday home, with its terrace overlooking the Adriatic and the scent of pine drifting in from the garden, I felt something shift. The panic dissolved. We were here, somehow, against all odds and navigational logic.

The next morning, still smarting from my directional failures, I suggested we simply wander without purpose. No maps, no plans, no me pretending to understand Croatian road signs. We headed down a path near the house that seemed to lead nowhere in particular, and within ten minutes stumbled upon a tiny cove that I am almost certain does not appear in any guidebook. A fisherman was mending nets beside a boat no bigger than a bathtub. He nodded at us, unsurprised, as if people arrived there by accident every Tuesday. The water was that impossible turquoise you see on postcards and assume has been edited. We swam for an hour and saw nobody else.

Buoyed by this success, we spent the following days deliberately getting lost. A wrong turn on the way to buy bread led us to a vineyard where an elderly woman pressed a glass of local white wine into my hand before I could explain my inadequate Croatian. Her husband showed us his olive press, which looked older than the hills and probably was. We left with wine, oil, and the strong suspicion that we had been adopted.

Another afternoon, chasing shade down a lane that grew progressively narrower, we discovered a konoba tucked behind someone's garden. There was no menu, just whatever the owner had caught that morning. We ate grilled sardines and potatoes cooked under a peka lid, watching kittens wrestle beneath the table. The bill came to less than a round of drinks at our local pub back home.

I think what struck me most was how these unplanned moments contrasted with the polished experience I had originally imagined. I had pictured myself sipping cocktails at organised beach clubs, checking off recommended restaurants, being a proper tourist. Instead I found myself scrambling down rocky paths, gesturing badly at friendly strangers, eating fish I could not name in places I could not find again.

On our final evening, we sat on that terrace with a bottle of the vineyard's wine, watching the sun drop behind the islands. My partner reminded me of the donkey incident, and I laughed properly for the first time about it. There is something humbling about getting lost, about admitting you do not know where you are going and discovering that this is precisely where you needed to be. I arrived in Ciovo Okrug Donji thinking I would plan every moment. I left grateful that I had failed.