Sailing Croatia
We got woken up at 5.30am by a loud banging on the door – Lija’s like, ‘is that for breakfast or is the boat sinking?’ and I called out ‘quick get to the boats, there’s not enough for everyone!’ (a la Titanic, for those of you who don’t know) – because the door knocker didn’t actually say anything. I nicked a couple more jams at breakfast and we were off the boat and through customs by 7am. We were in Split, Croatia. We found an internet café open so we sat for three hours *cough cough* updating certain blogs and sending emails.
We dumped our bags on the boat at 10.30am, but our boat was not next to land – it was moored next to two others, so with our packs on and with the help of the boat crews, we stepped down onto the first boat, walked around and stepped onto the second and around again and onto the third, which was ours. As our guide Daniella said, it’s a bit of a hike.
We had two hours before we set sail, so we went and bought super cheap sarongs and beach towels, and food cos we hadn’t eaten since breakfast at half 5am! Split had a huge market and we wandered around and picked up some bananas and an apple each, and a handful of dried prunes.
Our boat is medium sized. It fits 30 people in cabins below deck, the main deck with interior galley including the kitchen and bar, and the upper deck which is carpeted with deck chairs. The three toilets we realised were also the showers, the shower head sits above the sink tap and the water just runs under the door out into the ocean. Our cabins, more like broom closets, with no room to swing a cat, but luckily we only need to sleep there. Our packs are under Lija’s bottom bunk, and there’s a tiny cupboard where we’ve stuck need to get to stuff like toiletries.
The boat is family run, apart from the chef, the Captain’s brother is the barman, and Mama, who we all adopted as our own for the trip, serves up the food and cleans, and Igor, the father, maintains the boat (and yells at everyone in Croatian at night time for being too noisy hehe).
We had lunch – fish soup and then fresh fish with potatoes and spinach absolutely smothered in garlic – oh well we all stunk together! Out of the 30 or so of us, we’re all Aussies who are taking a break from working in London, plus a couple of Kiwis too. Before long we were all getting random nicknames, which I knew well before everyone’s real names!
It’s so relaxing to just do nothing! The water is deep blue in some parts and sparkling green in others. The shoreline goes on forever with huge rocky mountains and small towns with lots of houses in the foreground at times. We stopped in Makarska for the night and Tys and I were pre-drinking Jim Beam and pepsis. His shout and I wasn’t going to say no! Jacinta, Lija, Tys, Alex and I all had dinner for 40 kuna each – that’s about 5 pounds for a big plate of calamari with chips and salad – um, yum!
The whole boat went out to a local cocktail bar, which Daniella was lucky to get us into, and they played a whole heap of Croatian music, sort of pop, sort of dance. I don’t remember the rest of the night but I do know that when I was trying to climb up to my top bunk I hit my head on the ceiling and it hurt!
Tags: Travel
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