Croatia - Part 3

Heading South

It's the morning of September 17th and Jane, Chris, Joy and I are heading off in the hire car from Split to Dubrovnik, another First, about 230km to the south.

We leave Split by the main A1 motorway that runs behind  the costal mountain range across the rather harsh limestone landscape behind the coast.  After an hour we decide to again divert back across the range, and get down on to the slower costal route.

View over the Adriatic from the road across the range

Turning a corner on this minor road, we suddenly see a whole vista of the Adriatic coast open up before us. Again, photos don't do justice; it was a magnificent view over the costal strip and the islands. The road was pretty precarious too, I was thankful for the barriers.

We followed the coast road the rest of the way to Dubrovnik.  Lots of holiday towns, still pretty busy with families on sunny beaches. The weather was still quite hot and water was warm. We did stop for a dip in one beach.  It was so pebbly that we had to get into and out of the sea on all fours, like crabs, sorry no photos of that!

Bridge into Dubrovnik on the far shore.

 Then round another bend, and there was the magnificent bridge that leads to Dubrovnik proper. This jewel of a town is squeezed in between a mountain and the shoreline, with the old walled port city nesting in at one end.

The old walled town of Dubrovnik seen high up from the top of the cable car.

What a place, and what a history. And not just ancient history; the UNESCO listed Venetian old town was the subject of a 6 month siege in 1992!  The Serbian and Bosnian army were on the surrounding heights, and they lobbed 3,000 shells and mortars on the town, where about 3,500 people, including women and children were sheltering. They were eventually evacuated by the Red Cross and finally the Croatian army came and broke the siege. I find it had to believe such events happened in modern, post WW2 Europe...... Talk about failure of diplomacy.

Chris and Joy in one of the typical side streets, near the second oldest Synagogue in Europe

The old city was badly damaged, as you can imagine, nearly every roof gone, and many buildings burnt.  But they have rebuilt everything in "original" style, leading to a place that is so polished it looks almost Disneyfied as a result.

And full of tourists.

We walked right around the old city walls, looking down on the masterfully restored buildings and streets. You would not know there had ever been a problem.  But the people who live there are not forgetting what happened anytime soon.  We did a guided tour led by a local girl who was 8 when the siege happened.  Many depressing stories of death, heroism and corrupt politics.

And now all the neighbouring countries, having achieved their independence, including Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro want to join, or have joined, the EU. To join you have to have "good relations" with your neighbours.  Through clenched teeth, the locals can just bring themselves to say "hello" to any visitors from those countries.

The old City Walls, as seen in Game of Thrones.

One strange anomaly of the outcomes negotiated to end the fighting, was that Bosnia was allowed to have access to a 20km strip of the coastline, in an otherwise landlocked country.  No port there or anything else much, just coastline.  So when driving to Dubrovnik you actually have to cross two borders where they check passports into, and then out of, Bosnia. Interestingly the Immigration Officers spent more time inspecting and recording our British passports than Chris and Joy's Australian ones!

All the time we spent in Dubrovnik the weather was really pretty good, 24C or more most days and walk enough for just a thin jumper at night, with the occasional shower just to keep the streets washed down.

The (mostly new) roofs of the old town from the city walls

We had a few days enjoying Dubrovnik, including watching the sunset from the top station of the cable car that goes up behind the town.

Sunset over Dubrovnik.

This was the hill top that the Serbian Army occupied to shell the old town, and there is a fortress up here that now tells the story of the siege, manned by veterans of the campaign. Down in the town itself there are detailed maps at may points that show where each individual shell fell and the damage done.  There is also a very moving memorial room in the Town Hall to commemorate those killed in the "Homeland War", as there are in most towns along the coast such as Trogir, and Split.  Croatians neither forget nor forgive!

We did not manage to get to Serbia on this trip, but I suspect the same could be said in Serbia.

One morning we set off to drive further south into Montenegro, another new country that fragmented from the old Yugoslavia.  We had a slow drive on cranky old roads, not the same wealth here as Croatia, to another of the old Venetian walled towns that are along the coast, this one called Kotor.

Kotor town centre.

Another gem, but not as polished as Dubrovnik.

Highlight of that day was a great seafood meal in in a restaurant managed by a local who had spent 10 years in the UK and USA in hospitality businesses.  Very interesting chats about life back in Montenegro, and the quality of the local olive oils, delicious!

There was also a city wall to walk along; we did the level bit across the harbour front, but you can just see in the background of the picture of the clock tower that the wall also goes 250m up into the mountain range behind, apparently via 1728 steps, (it says on Trip Advisor!).  Back to Dubrovnik that evening.

The Kotor clock, very famous - I'm told.

With all travelling we have done in the last few months I am now formulating an Toilet Paper Index that correlates the GDP of a country with the quality of the paper provided in toilets of cafes and restaurants.  Croatia was certainly up there, Montenegro was not. (Note: there are countries where any would be appreciated!)

Enough of these musings.  We still have Prague and Corfu to write about.  So goodbye beautiful  Dubrovnik, and the next morning we all catch flights, Chris and Joy to the UK, us to Prague.

Why Prague you ask?  I'll tell you all in the next post.

Croatia - on Land

Travels with Chris and Joy.

So it's now the 14th September.  It's a beautiful sunny day and Chris, Joy and Jane and I are put ashore in Split, we are the shore party being left behind as the main event moves on.

Put ashore in Split! Bye bye boat.

We step ashore in time to see some gorgeous lady and her retinue also alight nearby from a chauffeured speedboat, and we followed her to the nearby grand hotel, where we happened to be collecting our hire car.  Her luggage however was whisked off in a van, as we struggled up the hill with our cases! Such is life for us ordinary mortals.  We still do wonder who she was though?

So, we load our cases into the car and off to the hills we go.  It's about 300km northwest by road, the first 200 being on a new 6 lane, mostly empty motorway, that goes up the coast before turning inland behind Zadar and crossing a major mountain range by cuttings, then a tunnel.  Most impressive. We wonder who paid for it, probably EU money!  The land being crossed was still very barren limestone plateaus and ranges; even the pine trees that spread across the ranges were struggling.

The mountain ranges behind Zadar, from a motorway cafe! 

Then we emerged onto a central plain that became much more lush and forested, with farms and cattle starting to appear, until we approached more hills that now form the border with neighbouring Boznia-Hertsogovina.  Here the sun disappeared, the clouds gathered and it started to rain.  We found our way to our hotel just north of  the Plitivice National Park, unpacked and huddled next to the radiators which were on.  It was cold, perhaps 8C outside. But the food was good in the restaurant, we were in pig and cow country here, so lots of hearty stews and steaks all round.

Next day we go to see the famous waterfalls in the Plitvice National Park.  Fantastic views and lots of water.  They had actually had too much rain the the previous month! The river levels and flows were so high that the boat trips on the lakes linking the waterfalls were closed, and so were many of the boardwalks.

Boardwalks behind the top lip of the waterfalls.

 There were still lots of visitors, long queues, and the limited areas that were accessible were heavily trafficked. But we had a great day walking through the quite unreal waterfalls that form naturally by travertine deposits on the water plants. Some grow to 20m high! The following pictures again hardly do it justice.  A quite wonderful place.

There were lots of tracks and trails through the two or three miles of the river valley, and as you can see some of the board walks should really have been closed off, but this was Croatia, so there was less than an Australian view of health and safety.  Which was probably a good thing or they would have closed the whole park, I expect.

Can you see the boardwalk on the far side? No, it's under water!

At one point we had to go across a flooded section.  If you had fallen off you would have been 3 miles downstream in about 5 minutes!

Jane, Joy and Chris leading the way. Huge drop on left hand side!

And the weather even cleared up towards the late afternoon, so we had bright sun as we walked out of the gorge and back to the hotel for another hearty meal and warm beds.

Waterfalls from side streams across the valley, in late afternoon sun.

Up early the next day we make tracks back to Split, but this time off the main roads. We took back roads over the ranges, initially because of a diversion for road works, then because the Tom Tom got lost/confused. It was a serindipitious problem as it took us through many villages that were battlefields in what in Croatia is called "the Homeland War" between 1992 and 1996.  This was a pretty brutal separation of the regions and States that had previously made up Yugoslavia, with pitched battles between Croatian forces and the Serbian and Bosnian armies.

We passed a few roadside memorials of tanks, helmets and guns, and deserted battle-scared villages - as a reminder of the catholic / orthodox "ethnic cleansing".  The wounds are still pretty raw out here in the countryside, each village graveyard has a few graves of local young men and women killed in the conflict. More later in the Dubrovnik post.

Jane, slightly compressed, in Krka.

And so on to a National Park at Krka, just off the motorway back to Split.  We only had an hour or two here. It was again a series of lakes and waterfalls similar to Plitivice, but this set had had a series of water powered mills and latterly hydroelectric generators installed over the years.

Is that enough water yet?

In fact it is famous for being the site of the first hydroelectric generator outside USA in about 1895, designed by Nic Tesla, the Serbian/American electrical engineering genius.

Water driven flour mill. You could buy the flour in the shop.

Plaque commemorating the early hydroelectric plant.

Again there was flooding and the water going down past the mill spillways was deafening, but there was a working flour mill - and lots of tourists and souvenir stalls!

But no time to stay, back in the car, for the drive  back into Split.

This time we are here for 2 days as real tourists to see all the sights.  And what sights there are!  It was the birthplace and retirement home of the last Emperor of the Roman Empire in about 300AD, just before it all fell apart! His retirement home - the Diocletian Palace is still, mostly, there - amazing.  Admittedly the Venetians took over in the middle ages when they built a larger port and walled city, and large bits of it have been used by canny Splitians for years to build there own houses, but the main layout and many original building are still there.  In fact the Palace basements are so well preserved that the "Game of Thrones" unit was there filming dungeon scenes in them for the next series!

Dome roof of Diocletian's tomb, 1,700 years old, using granite columns from Egypt, 3,000 years old! Wonderous stuff.

There is a plethora of high quality local marble from the nearby island of Brac so all these old buildings and pavements are faced in that stone. My highlight was the tomb Diocletian had built for himself in 300AD, which by 700AD was an early Christian cathedral, his bones having been thrown out!

Typical street inside the Palace walls.

In other parts of the city the film crew were disguising modern features in the narrow streets to use them for shooting more scenes of Game of Thrones.

Interesting to watch what has to be hidden and how they do it.

Comms box under plastic ferns!

So much to see.  But we cannot stop more than a few days.  We have to move on, we still have to investigate the jewel of the Adriatic coast that is DUBROVNIK and on the new country of Montenegro.

But that is another 300km to the south, so farewell sunny, hot even, SPLIT, we are on our way!

Croatia - Another First

Prologue

I see that our "last post" was back in September as we were leaving Prague. That is almost 2 months ago now. Haven't we been slack!  

We are currently living in deepest Devon, rain and all.  Jane has gone up to London for a few days, so I finally have some unscheduled time to get us up to date. Here goes.  Will we make it back to the UK?

Croatia - by Sea. September 2014.

I've been thinking that this trip has had a number of "first" and this leg to Croatia is one of them.  Never been here before, never even though much about it as a place to visit.  Then, because that is a place some friends have sailed in before,  here we are.  I just love that.  Think about doing it. Then just do it.

Anyway, it is now September 5th and Jane and I have just flown in from Italy. We flew (on Vueling Airways - another first)  to Split, in central Croatia, where we were to meet lots of Aussi friends from Brisbane and London for a week in a sailing boat in the Adriatic.  

Sara supervising the loading.  Note the Mediterranean mooring, stern to quayside.

The weather was fine and hot as we met up with everyone in Split and provisioned the boat with supplies for the week.  We were 8 souls on the sturdy KNOT SO FAST, a 44ft long,  Beneteau sailing vessel. 

Chris, Sara, Captain Ralph, Tom, Ian, Ian L and Joy. Jane on camera

 Led by Captain Ralph and mate(fiancée) Sara, leading hands Chris B and Joy V (who happen to be the captain's Mum & Dad), deckhands Ian L and our Tom K (who, together with the Captain, are ex-sea scouts from my old Pamphlett Scout group).  An experienced sailing team.  Jane and I were just along for the ride!

Captain and crew, which way is north anyway?

With everything safely stowed on board we set off for a week of cruising amongst the many hundreds of islands that lie offshore for most of the length of the Croatian coast along the Adriatic.  Most are deserted or just a few fishermen and farmers scraping a living from a most unpromising raw limestone landscape, olives and goats mostly. But a few of the larger islands have villages and towns on their coast that nowadays benefit from the large fleets of charter sailing boats that are based in the many marinas along the mainland coast.

There are thousands of boats here now, but once you are a few miles out from the marinas there are so many islands that it does not feel at all "crowded" once it sea.  It can become a bit of a bunfight as the last few boats try to moor-up in the evening at any particular island quayside, reversing in to do a "Mediterranean mooring", stern to the quay.  This style of mooring works thanks to there being minimal tides in the Medeterranian, so no worries about mooring lines adjustments and tidal currents when alongside.

Octopus.  Best I ever eaten, not chewy but tender. We got 3 legs each! there was

We set off vaguely northwest for the first few days, dropping anchor in a sheltered bay most evenings, before going ashore to some taverna for a local feast, if someone didn't cook a meal on board.  

The sailing was mostly in force 2 to 3s, which hardly took the creases out of the mainsail.  But one day we did get good 20 knot winds and managed to get the boat up to 8 knots with a heel that was not appreciated by the cooks below, especially as we went about!  Much crashing and sliding about, and holding on!  Sadly the wind didn't last long.  

One night was particularly windy and we had to find a mooring buoy to tie up to as we were not sure the anchor would hold.   But even that resolved to a beautiful clear night by midnight and sunny following morning.

A stormy day in the Med!

Each day we would sail until lunchtime, find a bay to stop for lunch in, eat, drink, swim and then set off for to find the evenings anchorage.  It was a tough life, but someone has to do it. 

We went north as far as Tribunj, nearly to Zadar, if you know Croatia, before turning round and heading south again.  The weather was more mixed in the last few days, and oilskins were found for the crew.  I was excused the rigours of deck duties due to age and because I had come on board with a bit of a cold, but it did get better after a few days and I could taste food again quite well by the end of the trip. 

Evening drinks on the quayside.

Non-sailing highlights of the week were when we could sail up to an old town quay and go and look at the local building and old historical sites.  

Much of the coastline of Croatia is particularly barren and rocky, but it did allow the construction, in the middle ages, of a string of walled city ports that were the Medditerranian ends of various trading routes from the inland Middle East and Asia.  Largely under Venetian control and protection until they were overrun by the Ottoman Empire in the mid 1700's, they still contain a large number of original Venetian style palaces and churches.  And often they were sited on relatively narrow flat areas surrounded by hills (of which Dubrovnik is the prime example, see the next post), giving great views from the top. 

The panorama from above Tribunj below gives you some idea of what I mean.

View from above Tribunj

Well, all good things have to come to an end, and so on Saturday the Old Folks on the boat, Chris, Joy, Jane and me, were put ashore again in Split as the younger members went off to pick up a second, younger crew for their next week on the boat, which then officially became a party boat!  Best of luck to them all.

In Trogir, yet another sunny day.  

As for us, we hired a car and drove north to Plitivice in central Croatia.  

But that is the next post. 

See you there soon.