Tag Archives: Croatia

Day 8 – Croissant in Croatia, Beef in Bosnia, Dinner in Dubrovnik. Luggage in Limbo

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September 22nd. Today should have gone like this:

  • Breakfast at the hotel
  • Taxi to Zadar Airport
  • Drive rented car to Dubrovnik Airport
  • Be transferred to Gulet to meet new group
  • Drinks and Dinner

But it didn’t. It was much more, erm, fun!

Breakfast came and went, as expected. The first variation from the plan came in the form of an extra passenger – our guide, Željko. He needed to get to Dubrovnik to guide another tour group; his only option to get there on time was to catch a bus at 2am. When we heard about that, we suggested that perhaps he might like to come with us, leaving at about 8am. Unsurprisingly, he agreed.

On our taxi ride to the airport, his phone rang, and one didn’t need to understand Croatian to realise that he was receiving bad news. It transpired that he had left vital paperwork back at the hotel – tour notes, vouchers, all the vital stuff that he needed in Dubrovnik for his next group! Fortunately, there was enough slack in our schedule to allow us to take him back to the hotel and then on to Dubrovnik.

So, papers collected, we headed back to the motorway and started the four-hour drive southwards. I was a little concerned about the border crossings we’d need to do through Bosnia, and so my idea had been to ensure we got back into Croatia on schedule before thinking about maybe a rest stop.

However, Željko had other ideas, and suggested that we stop for lunch – in Bosnia! As usual, he had a good suggestion, and so we found ourselves at the Hotel Orka, eating a traditional “Bosnian Pot” – beautifully tender beef chunks and vegetables in a very tasty sauce. As well as the beef, I swallowed my principles and took a photo of my lunch. But I’m not about to go as far as sharing it with you!

After lunch, we set off with (we fondly imagined) enough time to get us to our destination on schedule. We had reckoned without a few factors, though: hitting the border back into Croatia just at shift change time and so sat in a queue to get through for what seemed like an age, but probably wasn’t; being stuck behind camper vans; being stuck behind people on a slow moped. So we arrived at the Sixt car hire return at Dubrovnik airport somewhat late. However, Jane had managed to alert our new tour guide and so the taxi was waiting for us to take us onwards.

“Onwards” was, we found, subject to the vagaries of the weather. Apparently, a strong north wind was in prospect and so our cruise boat – a Turkish gulet – had to plan to leave early to avoid getting trapped in Slano harbour. So, our group were actually on the tour of Dubrovnik that had originally been planned for tomorrow. Amazingly, in the melée that is downtown Dubrovnik on a Saturday afternoon, we found our guide, Filip, and joined him, after he’d given the taxi driver instructions about where to leave our luggage. Filip, in turn, found the rest of our group and we continued with the tour of Dubrovnik old town, with Filip helping the official guide, a lass called Ana, by giving our group lots of historical, geographical and archeological information as we went along.

Memory plays strange tricks. It had been some 11 years since our last visit to Dubrovnik (see the photos here) and I had clearly remembered the difference between the original roof tiles of the old town and the new ones which had been used in the reconstruction after the Serbs had bombed the crap out of the old town in the 1990s Balkan War. But I had remembered the new tiles as being of a uniform colour, and they were clearly not so, now.

(above you can see the brightly coloured modern tiles as well as the faded colours of the originals). So I wondered if these new tiles had started to age and change colour unevenly. But no – it was basically a false memory on my part, as a quick check on Flickr told me. It’s clear that a single or mixed colour is a matter of choice.

The short tour passed some steps which I’m told feature in a certain vastly popular fantasy drama from HBO

but I wouldn’t know anything about that. It also gave us a sharp reminder of what an utter zoo Dubrovnik old town can be… and this is AFTER the cruise ship crowds had left…

…but there were still wedding celebrations going on.

So, tour over, we got on to our bus and headed out to meet up with another van upon which was the group’s luggage. Well, most of it, anyway. Some was missing – ours! Since this included my backpack with virtually all my camera gear in it, I was as worried as Filip was embarrassed. To cut a long story short, they did eventually find our luggage and brought it to the boat quite soon after we got there. Our boat, a gulet called “Perla”, was awaiting the group at Slano harbour, and looked lovely in the evening dark.

We embarked and finally had a chance to get properly introduced to the other nine people in our cruise group over dinner and drinks before turning in for the night. Getting under way early was going to be the order of the morrow in order to get to Korčula and Brač, and that’s what the next gripping instalment will cover. I bet you can’t wait!

Day 7 – Boiling Bojinac

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September 21 – Jane’s morning:

There has been a settlement on the site of the modern town of Starigrad (“Old Town”) since Roman times. Until the tourist boom of the 70’s it was a small village whose inhabitants decamped during the summer months with their sheep and goats to summer pastures in the mountains, travelling up in May and back in September or October, depending on the altitude of their pasture. Our walk today followed one such path – although calling it a path is pitching things a bit high

as it is only barely distinguishable from the surrounding rocks! We started early but still toiled upwards in direct sun

Our guide Zeljko had spent two summers as a shepherd in the mountains while he was at university 35 years ago, helping an elderly couple whose sons had taken conventional jobs, and he explained that everything needed was hauled up by mule or donkey, and people lived – and died – in the mountains. If somebody died a party of 6 men carried the body down the trail, since as devout Catholics the body had to be buried in consecrated ground with due ceremony; and church, priest and cemetery were in the village far below. The pall bearers were only allowed to put the body down to rest at certain spots (just one place on our route, about half way down) and the resting place of the body was marked with head – and foot – stones. Later flat slabs would be laid at the spot, and such “graves” can be found on various trails on the mountains.

Headstones would be marked with some arbitrary design or shape since the people were illiterate.

Up we toiled, rewarded with wonderful views,

scrambling over sharply eroded rocks

And encountering fierce wildlife

Until after about 3 hours we reached the first flat pastures

and a shaded spot for a well earned lunch

Just another 15 minutes led us to the highest point of our hike at 840m, known as the Doorstep, with amazing views and rock formations

And then it was (mostly) downhill to the pickup point where our driver was waiting.

Steve’s morning:

Drinking beer and bringing the blog up to date as far as September 20.

Our evening was spent with a final group meal in the hotel restaurant, doing the usual end-of-holiday stuff such as exchanging e-mail addresses before retiring for the night and some well-earned sleep before the excitement to come – getting back to Dubrovnik. Read all about that varied day in the next exciting instalment!

Day 6 – Too, The Woods!

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September 20th. I billed the start time of today as “relaxed” – 0830 – but things still seemed to be a bit rushed as we went for a (rather sparse) hotel breakfast and then dashed about getting ready, including me trying to remember which bits I needed to take with me in order to whizz the drone up at lunchtime and discard anything excess in the backpack (we’d been told that there was about a 300m ascent which, in the context of the week, isn’t much, but – still….) and so I wanted to carry the minimum I could.

So I discarded a heavy DSLR and a fairly heavy video camera, thinking, “Hah! that’ll make the backpack lighter!” However, there appears to be a discontinuity in the laws of physics around my backpack, which stubbornly insisted on being exactly as heavy as it had been all week with those things in it. Go figure.

Ominously, on this morning, we were transported by a pair of LandRovers instead of our usual comfy tour bus MPVs. Everything seemed OK for a few kilometres as we followed a (much more comfortable-looking) Mercedes people carrier and a couple of pickups up an (admittedly steep) road. I was beginning to think that the LandRovers were just theatre when all of a sudden we swung off a perfectly good road on to a narrow and rough gravel track – with passing places and potholes. Despite the best efforts of the lad driving our LandRover, all my teeth were just about still in place by the time we stopped and got out to start on our walk.

(in the photo above, you can see our high point – the lefter of the two saddles in the mountainsides).

So we started out, and entered – bliss! – shade for the uphill part of the walk.

The trees in the photo above are showing that they suffered some damage in the forest fires of June 2017, but not enough to kill them – though the hillsode was littered with the corpses of pines that didn’t make it; trees just cut down to make them safe and then abandoned because noone could figure out what to do with the trunks.

The track wound up

and up

enabling me to establish my place in the order of things, which is firmly at the back of any group going uphill. Every so often there was a decent view on offer.

and Željko explained some of the geography of the route. At one stage, he darted off the path and came back with a vast wild mushroom

which we actually ate later that day, over lunch (of which more later).

The walk wound down through some lovely beech forest (which, as well as being attractive

was in shade, so for a few short moments I actually enjoyed the walking instead of cursing uphill effort or downhill stones).

There were a few items of note on our way downhill to lunch. For example, evidence of some scientific experimentation being done to explore insect life which was beginning to affect the local pines,

some unusual rock formations,

which Željko referred to as “radiators”, because of the vertical grooves etched by erosion, and some mystery berries.

Željko referred to these as “Cornell berries” and offered them to people to taste. Jane had a bite and immediately condemned them as being too sharp, which meant that they would have turned my face inside-out, so I declined the opportunity. But it transpired that one can use them to make a liqueur, more of which later (again).

Nice as the woodland was, I beginning to get decidedly fed up with kilometer after kilometer of shambling downhill on an occasionally rocky track. So it was, on the face of it, wonderful when we stumbled across our lunch stop, which is a mountain hut called Ramića Dvori, run by a charming rogue chap called Mario, who specialises in serving a local-recipe bean soup. We knew about it, because we’d had to put in our orders the day before, and Željko asked us if anyone particularly wanted vegetarian bean soup. It didn’t take long for someone on the group to point out that bean soup should in and of itself just be vegetarian, and it turns out that this bean soup actually includes sausage and so is technically a stew. It is my hard and fast rule not to post photos of food, so you’ll have to imagine a kind of ragoût, ‘cos you won’t see a picture. It was delicious and by the time we got there, everyone was palpably starving.

I mentioned that I’d taken the drone with me, and I managed to get a couple of snaps of Mario and the terrace we were lunching on.

Mario was fascinated by the drone:

I mentioned “Cornell berries” earlier. Jane, having tasted (and spat out) one, thought that perhaps these were cornelian cherries. This thesis was confirmed as it turned out that Mario actually made some of the aforesaid liqueur (along with various other hooches of undoubtedly more suspicious provenance). On tasting, it seemed to be wonderful, so a few extra Kuna went Mario’s way so that we could buy a bottle of it. And the proof of the berries is on the label

It tastes lovely in the Croatian mountains – let’s hope the taste transfers seamlessly back to the UK, ‘cos otherwise that’s seven quid down the drain, or maybe saved for unwelcome guests.

Before we left, Mario insisted not only on singing us a song, accompanied by his accordion, but also dragged random passers-by into help him. Just goes to show what a charming rogue the man is.

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And so we departed and continued the long road down back to the Starigrad entrance to the Paklenica National Park.

To paraphrase Hoffnung, on the journey down we met a donkey coming up. Well, actually, I think it’s a mule, but that’s got the wrong number of syllabs. OK, there were other donkeys as well, I just didn’t get the photo of them.

This underlines that the only way to get to and from this mountainside is on the track we were walking – no roads, no cars. So, for example, Mario has to walk two hours down the track at least once a week during the tourist season, and load up his donkey(s) with the supplies necessary to keep himself, his helpers and his restaurant going. There’s dedication for you.

On the way, we passed other places where we could have stopped for lunch or for refreshment, but Ramića Dvori made up in charm what it lacked in menu variety. And anyway, it had beer – there’s nothing more important that that!

As we headed to the park’s exit, we passed (and were subsequently passed by) a mountain rescue team who had been out on a practice session which, sadly, had ended badly. And it became clear that we were in serious mountain climbing territory. There’s a particular face, called “Anića Kuk”, which features some serious climbs, including one in the global top 10 most difficult. Looking at the rock face, one can imagine this is so.

and all around us there were people climbing and practising.

By this stage, we had walked some 13 kilometres and, given an 8-seater bus to take the twelve of us back to the hotel, were offered a choice, for those not lucky enough to get in the first shift: carry on walking; or wait 20 minutes for the bus to come back. Reader, there were those in our group insane enough to volunteer to walk. Aged and wise as I am, I sometimes struggle to understand my fellow mortal. You can be sure that my sharp elbows got me on the first bus home.

After a shower and a rest, Jane and I decided to go for a stroll to explore the fleshpots of Starigrad Paklenica. This turned out to be a swiftly-executed task – it’s not a big place – but did involve seeing a nice sunset,

which set us up nicely for a couple of G&Ts before taking a well-deserved early night.

During the long, long stumble down 1,000m vertical, I decided that I’d had enough of walking in this heat. Uphill, which I hate anyway, is torture for me in 30° heat, and downhill on uneven, lumpy, stony paths had taken their toll on my knees, ankles and goodwill. Knowing that the next day’s walking was going to involve a 600m ascent in unbroken sunshine enabled my subconscious to come up with an excuse to stay at home – these blogs don’t write themselves, you know, and I was two days behind. So I resolved to use Day 7 to catch up with this blog. So the one about Day 7 – the final day’s walking – will actually be photographed and written by Jane. That, if anything, should be the tempter you need in order to keep you reading…..