Scootering (sorry dad)

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There is an amazingly sweet girl who works at the Green Lizard Hostel named Kristina and today we decided to make the most of her day off work and hire a scooter to fly around the island on. Two scooters would have been ideal but Kristina clearly didn't trust herself driving and the economics worked out better with one scooter also, so we ventured out on one. After a late start to the journey (2pm ish) we hired our scooter down in the main square of Hvar town with the much appreciated help of Kristina's 1st language (being from Zagreb) and I was the driver. The scooter cost 200 KN between the two of us for the day (around 50 bucks) which was a very reasonable price. It did seem a little dodgy compared to how it all works in Australia. There was no written contract or anything close, we were literally given the keys to the scooter in exchange for 200KN and one document (my drivers license), apparently you dont even need a drivers license to rent them, or a helmet (or any protective gear for that matter) to ride . The scooter was an older 50cc heapa without a working speedo, I had little faith in the vehicle and our safety, especially when the only piece of safety equipment I had was (effectively) a bicycle helmet. But having said that, once we were on the move all was forgotten. The island is incredibly mountainous and with two people on a 50cc scooter, the going was incredibly slow. Id say we would've slowed down to around 15km/h when trying to scale steep inclines. We took the old (and thus somewhat neglected) road from Hvar town to Stari Grad which was a 45 minute treck if we didn't stop. The old road took us to the top of the mountains where we enjoyed some amazing views of the surrounding Adriatic sea and islands and frequently surrounded by lavender fields and ancient towns with many ruins. Throughout the journey we visited several small villages such as Stari Grad, Jelsa, Vrisnik and Vrboska and explored the region pretty thoroughly. In an attempt to find a secluded beach we once again stumbled across naked people. It seems as if clothes only fly when your in town here in Croatia.

The highlight of the trip around the island was amusingly a place just 10 minutes from Hvar town near a town called Milna. About 2km inland from Milna on a run down track is a 'Ghost Town' which is beautifully nestled in a gorge in amongst the mountains. All of the buildings, paths, roads, etc are incredibly run down and over grown with lush vegetation making for a photographers paradise. Apparently the town was abandoned because it was too far away from the major road, water sources and the Adriatic sea. As we reached this place at dusk and were completely alone, it had a really eerie or spooky feeling and towards the end of exploration of the town I decided to stick my camera into a pitch black room in a house to take a photo of what was in there, my camera's automatic face detection feature switched on which freaked me out so we booted it out of there.

I have to admit that I felt so ashamed of the fact that I was driving a scooter after all the shit Ive been giving them over the years and I feel that I have let my fellow bike riders (including dad) down. But it was definitely worth it.

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