split and hvar

I visit Split because it's the best way to reach Hvar. Not to say that it isn't a destination in its own right, but just that I am incredibly undereducated and had basically had never heard of anything in Croatia besides Zagreb and Dubrovnik until about a week before I arrived. Having spent the best part of the day lounging on my favourite beach in Zadar, I don't arrive in Split until the sun is setting. It's a sweaty uphill hike to my hostel in fading daylight. 

I feel the need to get something off my chest. Are you sitting down? I don't very much like hostels. I suspect, actually, that I'm not alone. There are good ones, but in general they're grubby and noisy and overall rather unpleasant places to stay. Unfortunately, they're cheap (I use this term comparatively) and come with the convenient benefit of like-minded company. This is what travellers like about hostels. But I just can't believe that anyone would take a dorm if you offered them a private room with access to a common area and kitchen and friends, at the same nightly price. Don't trust anyone who tells you they like hostels. They're a liar and a scoundrel.

Fortunately, Split town has enough loveliness to make me forget I'm staying in accommodation that is the strange love child of a nightclub and an army barracks. I spend my first morning treading water as post-party recovery, and the afternoon climbing the modest hill to get a beautiful view over Split. There's a bar at the lookout. Later, I find a vegetarian restaurant that fries lots of cheese. And there's a lot of nighttime fun to be had here. All is well. 

The next day sees me beneath the city, in the damp stone basements of Diocletian's palace, construction completed 305AD. I'm becoming more accustomed to encountering immensely old things. Compared to the new-world girl who went about touching the walls at the old church (14th century) in Delft when she first landed in Europe and saying vacant things like, This is the oldest building I've ever touched, oh wow, oh golly, I'm positively immune. So I went strolling casually about the cavernous belly of Split's old town and then got an ice cream before heading off with a soft-spoken german girl to book tickets for the next morning's ferry to Hvar. 

Hvar town used to be the kind of sparkling European resort frequented by the rich and famous on their summer yachting holidays. Then it was discovered by all the plebs like me, and now it's become one of Croatia's top nightlife destinations. It's also a quick ferry trip from Korcula, where there is supposed to be some excellent scuba diving. I'd bookmarked Croatia as a place I'd like to dive even before I knew I'd be living in Europe. The underwater caves around Korcula sound simply spectacular. 

The passenger ferry from Split takes under two hours. I'm absolutely impressed that the ferry company can make a short boat trip between gorgeous islands on the sparking Adriatic a perfectly miserable experience, but they manage. Without difficulty, it seems. We're set up in an air-conditioned cabin, protected carefully from the sun, salt, and sea breeze. The windows are set just high enough that we don't have to endure the sight of the sea close at hand, and there are polite signs all over the cabin informing us that it is totally unnecessary to move from our seats during the trip. Well, great. I grumble heartily and locate my few scraps of aircon proof clothing.

Hvar town is beautiful, shiny with the wealth of summer tourism. The wide harbour is lined with bars and restaurants that play music throughout the day and well into the night. Glitsy mega-resorts sprawl their way along the shoreline, their seaward sides adorned with cascading waterfalls and pools and endless, endless banks of sunchairs. This is no modest seaside town; this is tourism in full swing. But somehow, against a lot of my usual feeling about tourist areas, I love it. There's still the undercurrent of slowness that pervades all seaside holiday spots, but it's slowness in a very clean and very bright, expensive way. A way that reminds you that, come nightfall, this place will be thick with young people and gigantic fruit cocktails. And you know, that's okay sometimes.

One morning (okay, so it was like, nearly midday) I hike up to the ruin of the old Fortica Španjola fortress, which stands sentinel over the town. The views back down to Hvar and the harbour are stunning, even under a light haze of cloud. I sit on the edge of the fortress walls in the breeze and watch the white speck boats and their fanning wake tails in the bay below. The red roofs roll in gentle waves over the city. People get stuck in places like this. I don't think it's the party that keeps them. It's the next day, the warm daze of midmorning with nothing to do. It's the way the bay is fat and blue and lively with islands, the same every day. It's the icecream. And it's the tall tower in the piazza, the stone that was here long before this place knew tourists and will be here probably long after the industry fades. 

Another thing Hvar does exceedingly well is sunsets. Each night I watch evening fall from a different vantage point. My second night sees me sitting on a wide deckchair on the rocks with my same gentle german friend and someone she met someplace else in Croatia and has found here again. We're drinking warm wine from the bottle, passing it hand to hand the three of us. They're leaving tomorrow and I won't be pleased to see them go. We gaze up at the spread of stars like salt on a dark tablecloth, talking about how very small we are. How very insignificant our relationships and woes. How little the vast universe cares for our trials and small joys. We have great false profound moments there, and what else can you talk about, tipsy under the stars? 

We find our way to bars and those big fruity cocktails and end up on a boat being whisked across the bay to Carpe Diem Beach, the club set on its own little island. It's vastly expensive and horrendously pretentious, and the DJ is not about to skyrocket to worldwide fame, but the fact you can stumble right from the dance floor into the ocean definitely has charm. And I do like catching a boat home from a club. Can't do that at home. 

The next afternoon I'm wandering alone on the dock all awash with icecream lickers and hangover blackeyed demons with their packs on, ready for new adventures. I buy three huge ripe nectarines at the market and suck on one as I walk. A pretty young Croatian with a wicked tan is pitching his taxi boat services to some French tourists. I think I'll join them  on their way to the Pakleni islands. He's very convincing. (Beautiful beaches! only 40kn and fifteen minutes away! very quiet! some of the best island beaches! some of the most beautiful bays in Croatia!) I saw islands like these from the window of the plane, all along the coast. They're so round. They seem to float on the surface of the sea like oil in a pot of water. They look like paradise, and I'm not disappointed. I spend all day, alone, soaking up the gentle high sun through the pages of my book.

When I arrive in Hvar, I have just enough money aside from my birthday to indulge in a little underwater sports on neighbouring Korcula. I need to make something clear here: I'm looking forward to diving as the highlight of my trip. I've been talking about diving in Croatia for years, in the kind of boredom-inducing way that I'm sure makes people tire of me quickly. Like being shown the full, unedited contents of someone's camera after their long summer holiday. Anyway, I'm really, really looking forward to diving. 

And so comes another point on my extensive list of Reasons to hate all hostels, without exception. People like to run the aircon at subzero temperatures in dorm rooms--a habit I find totally inexplicable and immensely frustrating--and this causes me to develop a nasty case of the snots in Hvar. I know an attempt to dive will end in disappointment at best and a set of ruptured eardrums at worst. 

So I can't dive. My Croatian vacation is blissful but sadly incomplete. I book another bunk and scratch Korcula from my mental itinerary. I spend all day on the beach. So it's not that bad, really. Actually, the only thing that could possibly make this situation better would be taking myself out to dinner, avoiding my dorm room completely, and watching another glowing Hvar sunset. So that's what I do.

zadar and krka

I can't get enough of the sun on my skin. I don't care if I'm leathery and cancerous in thirty years. The feeling of spending all day in the sunshine is so worth it. It's also worth the sick scent of salty BO and sunscreen and the tingle of warmth that I suspect will tingle it's way right on to a healthy sunburn. I've never known a stronger feeling of absolute, mindless contentment than the one I get from sitting in the sun by the water.

A logical life choice, of course, was to move from Queensland, Australia, where car license plates bear the cheerful slogan The Sunshine State and it is possible to sit in a teeshirt at midday in your backyard year-round, to London, United Kingdom, where the average temperature is 10.4C and for most of the year the sky resembles a collection of ancient, soiled bedclothes. I'm getting used to it, but I'm not going to lie about how much I started to pine for a sweaty, barefoot beach holiday.

I set off abroad on my own again. My taste for solo travel is a constant mystery to most of my friends, who I'm sure are worried I'll be dreadfully bored without them. It seems they can't imagine anything more horrible than getting to decide exactly what to do and when to do it, for ten days straight. If you haven't tried travelling alone, I suggest you do. The worst that can happen is you discover your company is intolerable — to yourself or to others — which is something you probably need to know anyway.

My notes for the first day of my Croatian getaway read as follows:

Tube late; coach delayed; plane delayed. This bodes well...

Such unbridled enthusiasm. I must have been hungry. What it should have said is: Leaving a chilly and unrelenting rain behind; all else irrelevant.




I fly into Zadar, because it's cheapest and conveniently central on the coastline. I change (very enthusiastically, with much flailing of limbs and two-legs-in-one-hole issues) into shorts at the airport and ask a few loitering taxi drivers for directions until I manage to stumble across the bus stop, and the local bus into town. Zadar, like just about every other city in Croatia, is arranged into two distinct parts: the pale stone haven of the old town, and everything else. I get off the bus outside the old town walls, with the intention of wandering in the warm afternoon through the centre to the seafront and making my way three kilometers or so back along the ocean to my hostel, charmingly named The Wild Fig, which puts me in mind of craggy Mediterranean cliffs scattered with fruit-laden trees and half naked ancient Greeks in gold painted headdresses. It's all very languid and peaceful.

Well, I've done a good job of being under-prepared, as per usual. I walk half way before realising I don't have a map, or battery on my phone, or really any idea where I'm going other than the name of the hostel and street address on a small slip of paper in my backpack. I walk what feels like maybe two and a half ks along the coast and assume I'm getting close. I dive inland into a spaghetti mess of little stone streets that swallow me for a good half hour before landing me kindly in the bustling central bus station. The hostel is supposed to be nearby — I have some vague memory of reading this on the website — so I count this development as 'progress'. Even better: there's a large, plastic covered map. Half the street names seem to be missing or abbreviated, but I find what I think will be the right street, try to mentally photograph the cartoonish square kilometre surrounding it, and set off. An hour later I'm back at the bus station cursing these winding roads to hell and wondering how I missed the street in the first place, as it seems to lead directly out of one end of the bus station. Anyway this is all very embarrassing but I find it in the end after having an effective tour of Zadar's suburbia and acquiring a charming tan line from the straps of my backpack.

I meet people the second I set foot in the hostel kitchen, and an hour later we're drinking wine and heading into the city centre for a festival in a vast dusty carpark lit with spotlights. This is the reason I don't fear solo travel. If you fancy company and have even the vaguest hint of social ability, you can have it. And if you'd rather wander about the wilds of some forgotten corner of the planet alone, musing on the tenuous nature of your life, you can do that too. In fact, you can do whatever you damn well please. And sometimes it pleases me very much to be shouting conversation with strangers over drum and bass and collecting coloured paper confetti in my hair.

I'm constantly amazed by the capacity of the ocean to slow time. The mere presence of a water mass and the lack of  any kind of commitment throws me into a timeless daze and I suddenly feel like it's perfectly reasonable to eat when I'm hungry and sleep when I'm tired and sod everything I've learnt about having breakfast before midday and lunch right on it. People spend all day by the water. Leathery Croatian men wander constantly through the tangled streets under hanging branches of fig and pomegranate and olive. I pick figs where they grow wild and eat them sun hot and soft straight from the tree. Basically the only thing missing from this fantasy is the naked Greeks.

It's afternoon and I'm lying on the hot pebbles and watching a seagull glide over the little cove, the black tips of his wings parallel to the blue-on-blue horizon. The white wind caps of the sea roll in endlessly in my peripheral vision. Green flecks of polished smooth glass show between the pebbles on the beach — scattered tokens of other people's parties licked to smooth jewels by the sea. I'm reading Jack Kerouac and his wild winding prose suits a holiday. I lay there eyes open and daydream of neverending hot nights and foreign tongues on the air and other wonderful things that smell like grand adventure.

Wiry shirtless boys throw themselves dripping and whooping off the cliffs. I think I'll join them in a second, once I'm done with lying here like I'm beached and feeling the cold flecks of the Adriatic splash the soles of my feet.

Now, from Zadar it's an easy day trip to Krka National Park, which I gather is like a slightly less impressive version of Plitvice that has gained popularity by allowing people to swim beneath the falls. I've managed to collect a friend at the hostel (a girl from Brisbane — why do bloody Australians insist on clinging to each other? We're intolerable, aren't we?). A bus takes us from Zadar to Skradin. Next we're supposed to board a ferry that will chuff us upstream to the falls. Of course we walk well past the ferry stop and eventually hit a small information booth containing a cheerful clerk who informs us that we've come a kilometre past the ferry, and it's only four more ks along the river to the entrance. We hike it in our thongs (flip flops, jandals, whatever; you know I'm talking about footwear) and slowly shed sweaty items of clothing. It's actually a beautiful walk. We take a dip into the river along the way to ward off the midday heat.

At the entrance to Krka I scout quickly for a fence to jump before paying the extortionate fee and joining the sweaty, heaving, mostly-naked crowd on the slick bank. The place has been turned into an amusement park. There's a giant verandah packed with benches for the patrons of various abundant eateries, fully occupied. A seemingly infinite string of ice-cream vans lines the path to the water. It is my constant and painful personal trial trying to figure out which ice-cream van will have the best produce in this kind of situation. And I never pick the right one. Maybe they're just all mediocre and I should stop buying ice-cream in tourist traps. Ha. Like hell I'll stop.

My cousin, upon seeing a photo from my trip to Krka, mentioned the word 'soup'. This is a perfectly succinct description. I'm constantly torn between a seething hatred for tourists who ruin beautiful places and the horrific knowledge that I am their photo-taking, ice-cream slurping brethren. It's not a nice feeling, but I'm getting used to it.

We take turns swimming (where are all these people leaving their shiny precious DSLRs and iPhone5s while they frolick about all together down there in the water?). The lake is surprisingly cool, for soup. The water is blue-tinged and clear enough to see the pale rocks that make progress by the shore treacherous. There's a strong current pushing outwards from the falls, which are considerably more beautiful seen from the water. I float about for a bit and try to mentally photoshop everyone else out of my field of vision.

 
 

I revisit Zadar at the end of my trip and spend another two nights eating warm figs and drinking local wine on the beach. This city puts on great sunsets. People gather as the sun goes down and sit on a great set of stone steps that descends from the old town into the ocean. There's this haunting, moaning song that hangs over the whole scene, eclectic notes that are somehow harmonious, rising from the ground beneath the steps. It's the sea organ, an instrument played solely by the motion of the sea and the wind. It's beautiful, and one of only a handful in the world. It is a strange and unique soundtrack to sunsets in Zadar. On my last night in Croatia I walk to the old town with two girls I've met and we climb the bell tower to watch the sun sink low in the sky, then we sit by the organ as the sun sets and listen to the sea sing.