Day 10: An island in a lake on an island in the sea

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By Riana

It's quite easy to adapt to life on deck. Wake up, slowly get ready for the day, take your book and head up to the deck. Breakfast consists of instant coffee and juice, yoghurt and muesli and bread with ham, salami, cheese and condiments like honey, jam and patés. Then back to the deck, find a comfy spot and continue reading while keeping an eye on the bluest blue ocean and passing green islands.

Breakfast this morning came with an extra bit of excitement: dolphins! I spotted them through the window just as we finished breakfast. We quickly climbed to the top deck and watched them from above. The dolphins were quite far away, but as there were lots of them spread out over some distance, we still managed to see them quite well.

Lunch on the boat is a three-course affair, following the same pattern each day. Starter is a soup, main today was calamari, chips and salad, followed by a dessert.

We docked at Pomena's port and started exploring Mljet island just after lunch.

Mljet National Park consists of a beautiful Mediterranean forest and two saltwater lakes. The best way to explore the park is on bikes, so our tour guide organised bikes for us that we picked up at the entrance of the park. As he said: 'You start one-hundred-fifty meter up, one-hundred-fifty meter down, and then it is flat'.

It has been quite a few years since al of us had been on bikes, and after a wobbly test-run, we started the uphill climb. The hill was not even that steep, but oh my goodness, it was enough for me to have new respect for professional cyclists that look like they dance up the steep mountains.

Downhill was much easier, until we turned off onto a gravel road - turns out even a short distance of mountain biking was more than my hand (healing from a ligament injury) could handle. I pushed my bike the rest of the way down and met up with the others at the little lake where we had a quick water break. My mom and I decided to leave our bikes at the little lake and walk to the ferry stop at the big lake while Christi and Nicola cycled the long way around the big lake to the ferry stop. The ferry runs from two stops on the big lake to an island in the big lake. St Mary's island has a monastery on it.

The island of Mljet had a huge snake problem in the past, so a colony of mongooses were imported from India and released on the island. According to our tour guide there are no more snakes on the island, so you can imagine our surprise when suddenly there was a grey snake crawling next to the walkway and into the bush while we were walking around St Mary's island! My mom managed to take a few pictures, but when she later showed it to our tour guide, he said it was only a legless lizard (which still pretty much sounds like a snake to me!)

Christi and Nicola arrived at St Mary's island just as we finished our walk. They first had a quick swim after cycling around the big lake. After another trip around the island with them, we took the ferry back to the little lake.

We all started the cycle back to Pomena. At some stage as we were heading up the gravel road, I looked back to see my mom stopping next to the road. When I looked back again a few seconds later, she was gone and her bike was sticking out from the bushes. I dropped my bike and started running. When I got to her, all I could see was a hand, foot and backpack sticking out from a bush in a ditch. Then her voice came: 'Ek is okay, sit net vas!' I called the other two and a few strangers also appeared on the scene. We all grabbed whatever piece of limb we could find and started pulling. Christi actually had to pull me back as I was pulling on my mom's hand to keep me from falling in the ditch next to her! Somehow, we got her out and standing in the road next to us. Seeing that she was really fine (apart from a couple of superficial scratches and burrs stuck everywhere from her shirt to her hair) we were overcome with laughter!

Back in Pomena we dropped off the bikes and went back for a quick shower before a dinner of pizza, beer and wine on the harbour.

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