The Fanta Pants Diaries

When Bec and I were back in Rome, we shared a short bus ride with a couple who lived just near my home town of Ballarat, back in Australia. We got to chatting, as you do when you come across other travellers from your home turf (and as an Aussie, this happens endlessy. We’re bloody everywhere), about where we’d been and where we’d recommend. During this rather one-sided conversation (uh, we’ve been to Rome, that’s it. Sorry), they recommended going to Sarajevo, and even suggested a hostel that they rated pretty highly.

With no real itinerary, and no schedule to keep to, we thought stuff it, lets go to Bosnia. And so at 7.30am on the morning of the 17th of September, we were at the bus station in Dubrovnik, about to get onto a bus heading to a country that we knew absolutely nothing about. I’m serious here, absolutely nothing. We didn’t know what language they spoke or what currency they used. A can of coke might have cost 1 thingy, or 1000 thingies, who knew? And with no guidebook, we didn’t even know how to find this out.

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15th of September, and we’d had our fill of doing bugger all in Korcula. Three hours down the coast lay the city of Dubrovnik, often talked up as one of the most beautiful coastal towns in the world, and it was calling our name.

After taking our last two trips on the ferry, we decided to get a bus down south, but 10 minutes after leaving town, found ourselves sitting in a bus, on a ferry, crossing the Adriatic Sea to get to the mainland. Once we made it across, the views from the bus were amazing. Once again, mountains and cliffs came silently screaming out of the gentle blue water, the bus clinging onto them as it followed the curling road. It was the sort of road you might see in a James Bond film, the narrow two lanes hugging cliffs above the ocean, Bond racing side by side with a blonde in a ferrari, before a bus comes slowly round the bend to split them up. Yes, we were the bus, but thankfully 007 was nowhere to be seen.

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Now Korcula, this was our kinda place. After dodging tourists in Hvar, Korcula was bliss. Our original plan of staying three nights turned into five, yet when I think back to what we did – not a whole lot stands out. Our days consisted of reading, swimming, and sitting by the water. That’s about it.

The town of Korcula is on the Eastern end of the island Korcula, only two or three kilometers across from the peninsula that extends from mainland Croatia. Much like Hvar, Korcula, and the peninsula across the water, was made of mountains rising up out of the sea. The views were amazing, and the water was a crystal blue colour, plenty warm enough too.

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The ferry ride across the Adriatic from Pescara to Stari Grad, on the Croatian island of Hvar, was fairly uneventful. It did, however bring back flashes of a nasty childhood memory. As the boat began to rock back and forth with the swell, slowly churning my stomach like a washing machine in slow motion, I thought of the time when I was about 11 years old, and went to Tasmania, off the Southern coast of Australia, with my family. We caught what was, at the time, a brand new huge catamaran ferry that turned the previously overnight trip across Bass Strait into a four hour cruise. The Sea Cat, it was called. An impressive looking vessel, for sure. The huge swells that day though turned the four hours into about seven. You know those scenes in movies when huge waves are crashing onto the boat, and you’re like, yeah, as if, well that actually happens – massive swells were smashing into the windows half way up the boat. The majority of the people on board, and I seriously mean the majority, were throwing up. My brother and I renamed the boat The Spew Cat.

The ferry to Stari Grad, thankfully, did not get that bad though, and four hours after leaving Italy, we docked in Croatia.

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From Rome, Bec and I were travelling by bus to Pescara, on the west coast of Italy, and from there catching a ferry across the Adriatic Sea to the Croatian island of Hvar. It sounds so easy, doesn’t it.

The bus from Rome was due to leave at 10.30am from a bus station on the other side of the city from our campsite. The helpful lady at the campsite information office suggested it should take around 50 minutes to get there. So, to be on the safe side, we gave oursleves and hour and three quarters. We’d rather be waiting around at the bus station than frantically running with our big heavy packs on to catch the bus just as it leaves.

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On our last full day in Rome, Bec and I planned on taking a paid tour of the Sistene Chapel with Harry, our young English guide from the tour of St. Peter’s Basilica. We organised to meet at 11.30 in St. Peter’s Square, and so jumped on an 11am shuttle bus from the campsite. On each day previous, the bus took around 15 minutes to get into town, and so the 11am bus would give us plenty of time to find Harry and the red umbrella he used to distinguish himself in a crowd. 15 minutes, that is, on other days. On this particular day, it was a painfully slow 45 minutes before we got to Vatican City, and another few before we made it into St. Peter’s Square.

We optimistically looked for Harry and his red umbrella, hoping he might still be hanging around trying to fill numbers for his tour. We stood in the middle of St. Peter’s Square, up on tip toes, pirouetting like a mother looking for a lost child in a department store. But it was no use. Harry was gone, and we would be facing Michaelangelo’s masterpiece on our own. Bec had taken a tour on her visit four years earlier, and was able to fill me in on some of the little details she remembered, which at least gave me some insight into the meaning behind the artwork. The halls and chambers of the Vatican City musuem, deep within which the Sistene Chapel hides, are a seemingly endless parade of historic and priceless art, and took a good hour to amble through before we found ourselves at the door to the Sistene Chapel.

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Friday September 2nd, and Bec and I flew from the heat of London into the heat of Rome. We had booked to stay at a campsite not too far from the centre of town, which thankfully provided a shuttle bus from the airport. We had an hour or so to kill between collecting our bags after the flight and getting the bus, and due to the stuffy air in the airport, decided we should wait outside. When we opened the door the heat hit us like a Joe Frazier left hook. The UK this certainly was not.

After a pretty decent nights sleep in our little tent, we caught another shuttle bus from the campsite into town at 9am, which would drop us somewhere near Vatican City – that much we knew. The campsite had provided us with a little pocket map which would eventually come in very handy. But you see, the thing about maps is, you actually need to know your own whereabouts on the map before you can work out which way to go, otherwise the map is about as useless as tits on a bull (as my Dad would say). As we got off the bus Bec, who had been to Rome four years earlier, stayed at the same campsite, and possibly taken this exact same shuttle bus, seemed to find her bearings, “Well, this sort of looks familiar, I think it could be this way. ” But then a bit of doubt crept in, “Although, everyone else from the bus seems to be walking that way, we should probably just follow them.”

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Right folks, sorry for the delay in the updates, but I’ve struck a wee problem. The schmicko little palm pilot and tiny folding keyboard I bought to do all of my writing on has turned out to be the biggest pile of shit since Matrix Revolutions. I just changed the batteries in the little sucker and the bastard reset itself, in the process removing the writing programs I had installed on it, and also erasing every single bloody word I’d written about the last two weeks of travel. I don’t think I can reinstall the writing programs I need, meaning the palm pilot and keyboard are about as useless as Mark Phillipoussis in a Davis Cup tie.

Thus, unless I buy a laptop, I’m going to be writing each of these entries in some dodgy little internet cafe where I’m paying by the minute, and because I’m a hobo (c’mon, I’ve got no home and no job, what else do you call it?), the budget is already tighter than Australia’s immigration laws, so the laptop is out of the question. From now on then, each time you read one of these entries, describing all mine and Bec’s wonderful adventures drinking beer in other countries and generally having the time of our lives, just remember to picture me sitting hunched over the keyboard in some dank, smoky, dirty internet cafe, surrounded by upstart teenage boys all playing the latest online game, and trying to figure out where the hell the apostrophe key is on this crazy Eastern European keyboard, while Bec gives me sideways glances wondering how much longer I’m going to be sitting hunched over the keyboard in some dank, smoky, dirty internet cafe, surrounded by upstart teenage boys all playing the latest online game, and why the hell don’t I just hit the apostrophe key it’s right bloody there!

So, now, where was I? Ah yes, we were on the way to Rome…..

Our day at the Ashes cricket required at least one full day’s recovery, and so we spent the next day hanging out with Kirk, Jools, Rosie and Anna at a local park, and checking out the original residence of Lord Melbourne, of whom our home city of Melbourne is named after.

After saying our goodbyes (and spotting Jools 80 quid for hergroceries when she forgot her purse. No worries Jools, glad to help out), Bec and I caught a bus to London – another easy three hour trip. Once again we had free accommodation, this time staying with Benny Holmfield, and old school friend of Bec’s who had stayed with us in Edinburgh just a few weeks before. Karma – there’s a lot to be said for karma.

Benny was living in a one bedroom apartment in Shepherds Bush (or She Bu, as Benny called it), essentially an Autralian suburb of London. Of course, this being London, he was sharing this one bedroom apartment with a couple of his mates, Simsy and Chopper (such great Australian nicknames). Two in the bedroom, and one in the lounge room. I wasn’t quite sure where we were going to be sleeping – I had nasty images of curling up in the bath with nothing but a toilet roll for a pillow and a shower curtain for a blanket – but the boys had a couple of futons in the lounge, and the worst we had to put up with was Chopper’s snoring. Good practice for the next six months of hostel living I guess.

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Sunday the 28th of August was going to be a big day for me and Bec. It was a day we had been looking forward to for months. We were going to the Ashes, the battle between Australian and English cricketers for a little urn filled with old dust.

Obtaining tickets to this current Ashes series was almost impossible, particularly once the series started and the teams produced some of the most thrilling cricket seen in years.

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