Croatia and Diving!

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Wow, i am so far behind! I'm in Italy now writing about Croatia! That was like 6 countries ago! The first major place we went to was Dubrovnik. I was really excited about it because it us we here they filmed one of my favorite shows (game of thrones). It has really tall walls that are just beautiful. We didn't get as much time theree as I would have liked, but theere was enough time to see a few things and walk most of the walls. Tere was a large fountain that you could drink from and it was pretty cold! Theere is also a small ledge that if a single man can hop onto it and stay up there, he will find himself a wife in Dubrovnik, lol. We only had one single guy on the tour and he didn't want to do it, lol.

Dubrovnik is a unesco world heritage site. Unfortunaty, during Croatia's war fir indeoendene, the montenegrans were in serbias side. Because of that, they attacked Dubrovnik just to cut at croatias morale. But, because it is a unesco site, it is supposed to be off limits for war, so it just ended up making Serbia and Montenegro look bad in the eyes if the world. I'm not sure how'd much to tell you about dubrovnik, becaus words really don't do it justice. The walls are high and red and all the buildings inside are similar. In game of thrones, it is supposed to be kings landing, but most call it the red keep.

The tour ended in split. Split is a really awesome city. When I came to Croatia before, I only went to Zagreb and I loved it. Split I love too, but it is different. It has this water walkway called the riva. What dominates most of the riva is Dioclytians palace. He was a roman emperor! It was actually his idea to split (I wonder if that is why it is called split? Naw....) the roman empire into two. If you remember from my Istanbul post, emperor Constantine was the one who took over the east part and made Istanbul the capital. See how it all connects? 😊 dioclytian was also the first emperor to stop being emperor because he wanted to, not because of death. He basically invented retirement and made a sweet palace complex to live in. I was lucky because my hostel was actually in e old palace complex!

Split had some other cool things to see as well. Theree was a statue of a guy that looks like gandalf from lord of the rings, but his name is Gregor of nim. He was the first person to translate the bible into Croatian and brought christianity to them. It also has a very large fish market that still suspiciously smells like fish even when all the fish are gone and it is late at night.

After split, I met up with a friend and we went to korcula island fir the scuba portion of my trip! The friend I met up with was one I met when I was in Zagreb 4 years ago, and we kept in touch! He was very helpful as a translator as well! Unfortunately, my scuba part did not goet off to a great start. The directions said to get a water taxi for 1 euro.....water taxis didn't start so early in the season... So we waited for about an hour before getting a real taxi which was about 10 euros, grr, then we get to the scuba center. I had to try on some wetsuits, and those suck to get on and were soooooo hot. I was red and sweaty by the end of it! Then there was a problem with the apartment I was supposed to stay in... They had forgotten to tell the owner! Luckily they found me a nicer one, and I didn't have to pay the diference, but I was in a pretty bad mood by the end of it. All the mistakes, heat, and having to carry all my luggage everywhere.

The diving was pretty good. Not as clear as the caribbean, a d not as much life as the great barrier reef, but still good! Maybe I've been spoiled lol. I did finally get to see asn octopus, and I've n ever seen one of thebefore, and I saw a few. One even changed color! I also saw a few fireworms. They look like centipedes about a foot long with lots of feathery projectiles. When they are nervous, the feather things turn white. They can sting you which is where they get the name fireworm.

I dove 10 sites total, but two were very memorable. One was a wreck dive. It had been a floating restaurant and boats would moor up to it. Theere was a fire and it sank. You could see ball sorts of things under the water. Oven, toilet, bottles, forks, knives , cups , chairs, all sorts of restaurant things. Tee wwere a lot of nets down there too. I think some were put there on purpose for fishing, but I think some got tangled up accidentally. I found a huge hermit crab stuck in some,. I had seen hermit crbs before, but this one was so big. He had two anemones on his back and large claws. He was stuck and when in first came up to I'm, he was waving his claws at me, but then he stopped when intried to rescue him. I hope he knew I was trying to hellp. He was soooo tangled up from thrashing around. It was wound around him over a dozen tmes, I brought my guide over because he had a knife, and ibtried to mime to him to cut him out, but he refused. I was sad the rest of the dive. Whenever he asked about my air or if I was ok, I mimed that I was crying 😞 when we were back on the boat, he said he could tell by it's coloring that he was dying. And if he tried to cut him out, it could slip and killl it anyway, sad days,

The other cool dive site was a cave! It was sooo cool. The first time we descended, the current s so strong and it blew us off course. The guide had to leave us at the bottom to surface to find out where we were. Before he left he toldus to kneel. Kneeling conserves oxygen because you aren't having to move. You just empty your bcd of air and chill on the ground. One of the other covered was floating though and moving his arms. I had to tell him to kneel a few times. Another girl kept floating off even though she ws trying to kneel. I had a similar problem my first dive, and fixed it forher. Our guide saw me and told me later I should be a dive instructor because I was a natural teacher. Then I told him I was a teacher at home 😊 that made me feel good! I was diving with them for 5 days, when ost people were theree for 1-3, so they got to know me pretty well. After my Croatian friend left, I was bored, so the dive crew invited me out for dinner. They all lived together and we went to this really good pizza place and had a lot of fun. This was also during euro up and Croatia was playing. Theere was a bar next door, so we heard eveythig without having to be in all that madness. When Croatian scored for the tie, there were huge cheers and yells and people threw glasses, lol. Kinda glad I wasn't there!

On my second to last day, I walked the ong walk around the harbor to see about renting a scooter to get to the korcula side of the island (I was on vela luka). Korcula side is where Marco polo was born! It would've been expensive and the man was pretty adamant that if I had never driven a scooters before I would wreck it. So how does anybody learn? I went to an intent cafe and left my notebook there. I hadn't relized it until I was about 1 min from home and it is about a 40 something minute walk. I. Needed it cuz it had all my history noteds I had written, budget, hostel info, and notes of what to do when I got places. Because they were my buddies then, they drove me across the harbor in the boat since they were going on errands anyway. The captain is a Croatian that seems more Italian to me. Venice had taken over Croatia for a time, and he said maybe that was why. He was a little crzy, but hfe was great with boats and funny. And like 2 days before that he let me drive the boat for like 10 minutes! The other crew member was the one who said I should be an instructor. He is Irish and studied. Aout seaweed for a long time so he knew th most about the flor and fauna, I had fun talking with him. Because he us Irish and so pale, he's was mostly red a lot and wrapped his head up like a turban. But instead of just the top of his hed, hew did the whole thing. I wish I had gotten a pic!

When the boat is going fast, because it is inflatable, you had to scoot to the front to keep it down from the wind. Because he trusted me, he let me come in front with him and we got to lay on it. It was kinda like riding a horse verrrry fast and it was very fun when we went over a wave. Tere was a lot of bouncing and once I thought I would fall off, but i was holding on. Dermott (irishnguy) also let me tie up the boat! We ended up finding my notebook, buying some groceries, dropping off sow other clients, and I had a blast.

Oh, I forgot to say that most of the channels were in other languages instead of croatian which is confusing. So Tomislav (Croatian friend) was frustrated that he didnt know what they were saying. I was proud I was able to translate the German stuff 😊 not verbatim, but generally. It helped that there were shows I had seen in English, so I already had a vague idea.


My last day, dermott took me over in Thor (none of the boats had Croatian names... Thor, Apollo, and hercules) to the ferry and I made my way back to split to await my next trip.... Croatia to Czech republic!

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Photos

Single?
This is where you hop up if you are a single guy

Vela Luka
The town o9f Vela Luka where I waas in Korcula