Croatia Sept 2008

---

This was probably the most relaxing holiday we have ever been on. I remember working with a Croatian lady in Sydney and when she found out I was coming over to Europe she said “You have to visit Croatia, it has the most beautiful beaches. The water is incredible, much better than here.” And I smiled politely and said yes of course it is - still under the closed minded opinion that Australia had the best coast in the world. You can see from the photos that she was right.

This 2008’s travel must do was Croatia. Everyone who we knew who had been there loved it and had the most amazing photos to share. The plan, take a week off and “sail” down the coast of Croatia. It’s not difficult as it literally is THE thing to do in Croatia. I say sail but I’m pretty sure those masts are just there for decoration. All of the boats are equipped with motors, which is how we got around. Didn’t see the sails out once. The mainland is pretty dry and rocky, not dissimilar to the Aussie hilly bushy areas but they have white rocks, lots of limestone. Bex and Sash were both pretty keen for a summer holiday so we had a nice little foursome for the trip.

We left London at the end of one of the worst summers I’ve had here at about 17-18deg C. We arrived in Split to 28 deg C - it was heavenly. As soon as we found our boat everyone stripped down to swimwear and thongs. There were 33 on our boat all up and we were again very lucky to have a stellar group on board.

There were about 20 odd boats in the harbour and they all leave on the same day from Split and do exactly the same tour, but they do the ports in a different order so that they don’t clog the small ports.

The first day we sailed to Makarska, which is still on the mainland but a bit further down the coast. We were served lunch as soon as we got on board so the sail down the coast was spent in a deck chair enjoying the sun and sea breeze. It’s a good thing we all brought a good book to read, although a few minutes in the sun after being fed and I was dozing - in fact I spent most of the trip dozing. It was the perfect sumo life. This was a typical day:

Wake up between 8-9am and eat breakfast.
Sit on deck in the sun and read book.
Boat anchors in secluded bay. Go for a swim.
Dry in the sun.
Lunch.
Nap in the sun on deck.
Go for another swim.
Read a wee bit.
Pull into port around 4-5pm.
Go for a wander.
Come back to the boat for a few drinks.
Go out for dinner, more drinks, dancing etc.
Go to bed knowing that I only have to get up to do it all again!

The food on the boat was fantastic. The cook was this old Croatian mama, who must have been about 60. Apparently she’d been working on that boat for 15 years and had been doing this job for at least 40 years. She was a fantastic cook.

Makarska was a small town but it had lined the harbour with bars and restaurants, capitalising on the tourists. So we had a fab seafood dinner and then made our way over to the one and only club, which just happened to be in a cave on the rocks by the sea! A really novel idea for a club but as with most Euro clubs the music was pretty bad. But hey, we were on holiday!

The next day we sailed off to the island of Mljet but we stopped mid morning for a swim. Mljet was tiny and is famed for it’s salt water lakes. It was wonderfully warm and us girls were a bit dozy from our afternoon nap so we hired a mini brum brum car and cruised around to check the place out. There wasn’t much to do there so we had a quiet night, had another lovely seafood dinner and had drinks on the boat.

Our third day would take us to Dubrovnik. As it’s such a historic city they dropped us there at lunch time so we could explore the city a bit. The city of Dubrovnik is very cool. It was pretty hot, it must have been around 35 deg C. It’s been so long since I’ve experienced warmth like that my body nearly went into shock! I was moving at a snails pace, which I’m sure you can imagine delighted Bazza no end. I had also managed to hurt my toe on the first night. I think someone stomped on it at the cave club and the joint had swollen and I couldn’t walk on it properly - which of course Baz kept forgetting, which wouldn’t have been a problem except that for the first time in our relationship Baz kept stepping on my toes!

So we wandered through the streets, walked the amazing city wall, had a bevy and chose our restaurant for dinner. We had the best meal of Croatia in Dubrovnik. It wasn’t cheap but it was fabulous. Bex and I shared a seafood platter and we were lucky enough that one of the boys on our boat knew his wines and picked us the only good wine we had the entire trip - Croatian wine is awful, unless you pay about GBP30 a bottle, which is expensive even in London. I did feel a bit bad as I’d had so many Croatian vodkas before dinner as Baz kept refusing to stop gas-bagging and leave for dinner that I’m not sure my taste buds were at their optimal for appreciating the wine!

The tourist trap club in Dubrovnik is called Fuego and it’s a “Latin Club” even though it doesn’t play any Latin music at all. It does, however, have a bar upstairs playing hip-hop and a dance floor downstairs playing Euro-techno complete with mirrored walls and 3 shiny poles! And for the entertainment of their customers upstairs they installed a video camera to capture every twirl, slip, shimmy and slide on those poles only to broadcast them upstairs on a projector screen. Baz had shaved his head so he was pretty easy to pick in the crowd ;D

Dubrovnik was as far south down the coast as we went, so then we started to head back up to Split. Our first stop was the island of Korcula. We stopped in another quiet port town and it was at this point that we realised they stopped in one party town then one quiet town alternating each night. We wondered whether this was more for their benefit than ours as the crew slept below the social space of the deck but they always left their door open as it was so warm. They also had to get up at 6am every day to clean the boat before we all got up and prep for breakfast. I think it might have been Dubrovnik, actually, where we got told off by both the barman and the captain for making too much noise at 5am as we’d woken them up. Not something you think about when you’re on holiday and drinking like there’s no tomorrow! Ooh, and I’ve just remembered a story. On said night, just after we got told off the first time, we were called to the rear of the boat by one of the guys on tour. A very attractive couple from one of the other sail boats had broken onto the private super yacht moored beside us, starkers and were going at it right on deck! Good thing for them they were both pretty hot. They were polite enough to stop and wave at us before he decided to start playing with himself and they both ran off to do...well I think we can probably guess ;P

Anyway, so Korcula was fairly quiet and pretty with another wall, but we were a bit walled out after Dubrovnik. What they did have that caught our fancy was a cocktail bar at the top of one of the turrets of the wall. It conveniently looked out over the sea so we sat up there drinking cocktails and watched the sunset. It was beautiful. We had another lovely seafood dinner (which Baz was getting quite sick of by now, but I was only just getting started!) and retired to the deck of the boat for drinks. By now we had kinda made friends with the crew and they’d forgiven us for being inconsiderate brats so when they told us we had a midnight cut off, we obliged.

It didn’t take long to sail to the island of Havar but as we couldn’t port till 4pm our crew pulled in to a little bay on another island across the sea from Havar for a few hours for swim time. Every day I was amazed at how beautiful the water was. It was the definition of crystal clear, you could see 8-10m straight to the bottom. It was incredible. And it wasn’t cold - it wasn’t warm but it wasn’t cold. And for me, that’s saying something.

Hvar is the playboy island. It’s where all the rich and famous play and the harbour is full of enormous private yachts. There are 2 famed clubs on this island, one Carpe Diem which is the most expensive bar on Hvar, so presumably the most expensive bar in Croatia, and another that is located at the top of a hill in the woods and is huge! It was all outdoor with a pool and a dance floor under a gazebo that played Euro techno, with a little “pool house” type building next to the pool that played hip-hop and came complete with paid dancers! Who actually didn’t dance at all, just stood around under the gazebo looking very sour and left the dance floor as soon as anyone else got up to dance. They also had a projector screen playing soft porn, much to the delight of all the taken guys and the frustration of all the single guys in our group. Oh, and it even had it’s own fast food counter as everywhere in town closed well before the club did - how thoughtful.

Ah, another morning after partying, another cooked breakfast. Most of the breakfasts consisted of fresh, crusty white bread with an assortment of jams, honey, pate, cheese and devon. But usually after the party nights they’d give us a treat. After Dubrovnik they made us Frankfurt sausages and after Hvar they made us scrambled eggs - they were awesome, sooo buttery :D

On our second last day of sailing we headed to the island of Brac. Brac is one of the few islands that has a proper sandy beach. Most of the beaches are pebble beaches, which goes a long way to keeping the water so crystal clear. But they built a sandy peninsula on Brac that is very pretty. But we pulled up on the boat and to be frank I couldn’t be bothered swimming ashore just to see the sand as then I’d have to swim back. Presumably Baz felt the same as he didn’t make the trek to land either.

We settled into port later that afternoon, and true to pattern it was a nice quiet port town. We headed out to the sailing club for dinner that night and boat partied on till cut off time.

The last day was a really sad day. We all felt it. We all spent as much time as we could in the water as it was the last day that we’d get to swim - some of us for a really long time. Baz and I had taken our snorkelling gear with us in the hope that we’d see some cool stuff. Unforts, even though the water is crystal there is absolutely no sea life. A few wee fish bowl fishies and shedloads of non-poisonous sea urchin (which Sash managed to tread on), but that’s about it. When we pulled in to Split later that afternoon Bex, Sash, Baz and I stood and watched the mainland get closer and our chests all felt a little heavier as the most relaxing week of our lives was coming to an end.

We all went out for a big group dinner that night, where we were met with even more rudeness than usual - in fact the waiter in the first restaurant we went to yelled at us and told us to leave because there were too many of us and they didn’t want to serve us. Weird. You’d think that this would happen just about every Friday night when all the boats moored up after the tours all ended. Anyhoo, we managed to get fed and then headed out to the clubs. The clubs are all in a row, along the beach and were absolutely packed. They also came with go-go dancers. Probably the most solidly built dancers I’ve ever seen, you definitely wouldn’t mess with them.

Anyhoo, so on our walk back to the boat, while we were walking down the beach, a bunch of guys ran past us who looked like they were semi-serious/semi-play fighting. Later, we found out that these Croatian guys had tried it on with these Aussie girls. Their Aussie boy mates had told the Croats to fuck off, which the Croats responded to by beating the living shit out of the Aussie guys. One of the Aussie boys ended up with his ankle facing the wrong way and they all got arrested. The Aussie guys were supposed to be leaving Croatia the next day, but due to being in prison and hospital were detained awaiting trial. Bugger.

Bex and Sash flew out to Egypt and London respectively very early on Saturday morning. But Baz and I had arranged to fly from Dubrovnik on Sunday night. So we were planning to take the bus down to Dubrovnik to spend another night there before going back to London.

So the 3.5 hr bus ride was actually 4.5 hrs and for some reason the bus went through Bosnia to get to Dubrovnik. Apparently you can’t get from Split to Dubrovnik without going through Bosnia - seems a bit of an oversight when they were demarcating the countries don’t ‘cha think?

We found our little guesthouse high on one of the hills in amongst the houses located just outside the city walls of Dubrovnik. It was so quiet I was starting to wonder if this guesthouse existed but thankfully we found it and thankfully the family that lived there were absolutely lovely. We wandered into town that afternoon and booked the History of the War walking tour that I’d seen on our last visit a few days before. We decided to have an early dinner before the tour and Baz had seafood risotto and I ventured away from seafood and had a steak. I’d never taken the time to look at where Croatia is in comparison to everywhere else, I always think of it as being eastern Europe but actually the sea that we had been sailing separates Croatia from Italy, so it is not surprising that they are fiercely Catholic and their food is very heavily influenced by Italy - lots of pasta, risotto and pizza etc.

We then wandered around to find the 2 bars that are on the rocky cliffs between the city walls and the sea. When we walked the wall previously we saw people at the bars, jumping off the rocks into the sea. We managed to find both of them and settled in to have a drink at the one with good music - and free seats - before the tour.

The tour was fantastic. Our guide told us that there is a lot of censorship about what has happened throughout the years and that a lot of Croatians don’t know the truth about what has happened in Croatia’s history. And as neither Baz nor I knew anything about Croatia’s history, this was incredibly educational.

We topped off our evening by strolling outside the city walls to the rich and famous playground where the huge hotels have commandeered the sandy beaches. But there wasn’t anything out there of interest so we ended up having a very quiet night. We did decide to stop off at a little restaurant that looked like a locals haunt. Unfortunately the owner decided to try and rip us off but we sorted it and managed to enjoy the view.

The next day we had planned to head back to the cliff bar and spend the day swimming off the rocks. Unfortunately Baz got a very bad, very violent case of food poisoning and was unable to leave the guesthouse. Thankfully our lovely host sorted us out with everything Baz needed and as he recovered I spent the day in the garden, on the swing chair reading my book. Our hosts were so lovely her husband drove us to the airport. We paid them for it but it was much cheaper than a taxi and they refused payment for the additional day we’d spent in the room or for any of the supplies they had bought us.

Croatia probably wasn’t as cheap as you’d expect although speaking to others it seems as though it used to be cheap but what with all the private super yachts pulling up throughout summer and all of the tourists coming through they’ve ramped the price of everything up to pretty much match London prices. So eating out and drinking on land wasn’t cheap, it was cheaper to drink on the boat - not dirt cheap but cheaper.

The Croatians themselves took us a while to work out and a few of us from the boat had a good natter about the culture. The majority of locals we met on land were pretty rude, very brash and just had no interest in helping us - and these are all the people trying to make money from us tourists. It was only after speaking to the guys working on our boat and talking about it with the others on the tour that you realise how we must come across to the locals. The price of everything there has gone up so dramatically that young people can’t afford to buy property. Instead it’s all being sold to people overseas. The guys on the boats and people working in the harbour towns work 7 days a week for the 6 months of summer to maximise their earning potential from the tourists. They don’t go home and they don’t see their families or friends. If they’re older and have property they can take winter off. If they’re younger most of them have jobs during winter back in their home towns. Then they see people their own age, sometimes much younger, coming in and spending money like it’s water. They can’t afford to eat in the restaurants or drink in the bars that we go to so we all look like spoilt brats. But once you get to know them they warm up and they’re really good fun.

Such an amazing place to visit, not sure what it’ll be like in 20 years time though - all those boats pumping petrol into the water. It isn’t going to stay crystal clear for long.

---

Photos

Mmm Ice Cream
Bex finds her perfect dessert.

On the Boat
Sash and Bex make friends.

CK
Relaxing on deck.

Our Room
Mmm cosy..

Makarska
The cave club

Makarska
Cave club by the sea

Baz
Relaxing on deck

Sailing
Amazing views

Sailing
Roman forts

Crystal Clear
Baz and Sash taking a dip

Mljet
Sash, CK and Bex near the salt lake

Mljet
Baz and CK at the salt lake

Australia...
I mean Mljet...

Mljet
Gorgeous views.

Mljet
Roman fort

Pink!
Is the new white

A bit of fluff...
...in every port