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.

the iceland diaries : hotsprings and skinny dips

Hrunalaug

It's summer and I'm shivering in my bikini on the grass. I step into the river, which is hot enough to sting my skin. The whole situation contains so many alien ideas that I have trouble processing it. 

We stay the previous night in Árnes, a tiny town in the south of Iceland that, on our map, seems to sit on a little island between two rivers. When we arrive at the hostel in the afternoon, the office door is open. Our hesitant hellos go unanswered. A sleepy old black labrador waddles over too us and gives us a friendly sniff before plonking herself down and offering her belly for a pat. A woman comes past. She smiles and asks if we're for the hostel. We nod yes and she says, 'She's at the centre. She'll be back soon.'

'She' arrives a while later. She's square and middleaged. She's got the kind of bustling buoyancy that makes me sure she's somebody's mother. She leads us into our dorm, a huge room off a large garden, with a kitchen and separate bathroom, several cosy couches, a large dining table with four chairs, and a single bunk bed. It's the least dormish dorm I've ever encountered. It's like an overgrown granny flat that someone has accidentally left a bunk in. It's fantastic. She says, 'My husband is cooking the dinner, you understand? You know something about the area? I come back after eating to show you the map.' She leaves without further ado. Candice heads for the shower and I lay on the couch, sooking over a headache that I suspect is the result of driving all day without sunglasses.

The faint smell of garlic accompanies our host's return. She immediately launches into an enthusiastic apology for her absence, and then for her smell, which apparently requires explanation. 'My husband likes to cook the white onions with the fish, you understand? She forms a small heart shape with her hands. 'It's tasting nice but smelling bad.' We laugh together. I love how easy she is, how homey. The way she confides as though we're longtime friends having a knee-slapping old joke at the expense of her adorable oaf of a husband. She takes out a large map and lays it across the dining table. 

'You go here to Stöng. See the viking house at Thjorsardalur. Better than the other viking house. Not so many people, you understand?' She draws a circle on the map. 'You drive up here in the mountain, fourty minutes. Closed now, you go tomorrow.' She draws another circle. 'You go here to Hrun. Here are hot mud. You have a four wheel? No? Small car I think will be fine. They make the roads last week. Drive up up here, go left here.' I nod like I know what to make of it all. Finally, she draws another circle. She grins slyly at me. 'You go here to Hrunalaug. Hotsprings. Very beautiful. Very lonely, you understand?' She looks at me significantly. I don't understand. She says, 'You like this one. The young people they like this one. Nice hot spring. They go all alone.' She giggles conspiratorially. 'You like this one,' she says again. There's something about the way she says it that reminds me of kids in primary school giggling in biology class when the teacher says penis. 

We set out early the next day to Hrunalaug. Of course we're going there. I'm so itchy curious to find out what the silly grins were for. We follow some sketchy signposting and the vague memory of her instructions until we get to a patch of bitumen on the side of a bald hill. There's room for three cars, but we're alone. The weather is mild, overcast with a light breeze. I'm wearing jeans and a jumper. As we round the crest of the hill, a small creek comes into view, and then a hut that seems to grow from the grassy bank. Beyond it, a small concrete pool has been built into the stream. With the wildflowers covering the grass and the unvarnished wood door of the corrugated iron hut, I feel like we're stepping into some long forgotten pastoral scene, left to return to nature.

Inside the hut it's warm and damp from the steam off the water. The water is so hot I have to edge in slowly, let each part of my body adjust to the shock. For a while we sit there, marvelling at the hills around us, the little unkempt hut, the grass, the flowers, the fact we're in Iceland, the breathtaking aloneness of this place. The rest of the world could be in flames and we'd be none the wiser. It would almost be a sin not to make this a skinny dipping kind of day. We realise what is so funny about Hrunalaug as we strip off and giggle out quick hopes that noone arrives unannounced. 

Seljavallalaug

We arrive at Seljavallalaug after eight pm. It's only a short drive from Skogar, where we'll spend the night. The endless daylight has its advantages, and one of them is twenty-four hour nature activity potential. The carpark here is a hike from the pool, along a gully nestled between high peaks. It's a beautiful walk, especially in the cool low light of the evening.

The concrete pool was built in 1923 and is filled with natural geothermal warm water. The large surface area means that the water is cooler than at Hrunalaug, but still warm compared to the outside air. We share twenty five meters with eight others at various times. Beer bottles stand here and there on the edge of the pool. Everybody carries away their empties. It's not the kind of place that attracts messy tourists, I suppose. Though I love being alone, it's kind of nice to have the soft sound of conversation floating across the water as I look up at the misty tops of the mountains that surround us.

Bláa lónið - The Blue Lagoon
No account of swimming in Iceland is complete without a mention of the Blue Lagoon. In 1976, a pool of waste water formed at the site of a recently established geothermal power plant in Grindavik. A few years later, people discovered that the milky blue water improved the symptoms of minor skin ailments and started bathing in it. Thus, the Blue Lagoon was born. There you have it folks. The biggest, bluest tourist attraction in Iceland, the aesthetically gorgeous and oddly magical Blue Lagoon, is a man made puddle of waste water. But don't let that deter you. 

If you like extortionate entry fees, wealthy middle-aged europeans, and nothing-to-the-imagination communal change rooms, the Blue Lagoon was custom built for your, well, your custom. Alternatively, if you're willing simply to tolerate these things for the sake of a unique and somewhat alien experience, you'll add the Blue Lagoon onto your Iceland itinerary. 

On the day we decide to visit, the clouds are low and there's a constant mist of rain over the vast plain of volcanic rock. It feels like another planet. The air is dense and the colours washed out. We follow the signs to the lagoon, waiting for it to come into sight. It doesn't. The carpark is half empty, probably blessed with thinner crowds by the bad weather. We walk behind a tour group of elderly brits through the thin mist, walls of volcanic rock on either side of us, towards the entrance. Outside the entrance, the pool spreads into a wide lake.The lagoon glows milky pale against the rock. It really is beautiful. If I had doubts before now about paying the ridiculous entry fee (40 euros in peak season) they were assuaged by the stillness of the water.

After showering - as instructed to do politely by the notice on my personal locker door - in the trauma-inducing communal shower room, we walk through the shiny spaceship halls to the lagoon entrance. Aside from the lack of concern for my modesty, I can't fault the setup. The building is constructed mostly of glass on the outer walls, and the view out across the water is impressive. The lagoon comes in under a wall near the entrance, creating a slick indoor bathing area. There are hundreds of towel hooks just inside the entryway, and fountains providing cool water to the overboiled patrons returning from their dip. The cafe has seating beside the tall glass wall, and outside, in the lagoon itself, a bar serves beer, bubbly, and fruit smoothies. Little bridges criss cross the narrow outlets. There's a strange sense of calm over the whole place, like the steam is laced with sedatives.

The water is exactly the right temperature. Entering the lagoon is stepping into a parallel dimension, where normal rules like physics and social convention don't apply. Everyone here seems a bit more beautiful than usual. People drift slowly around, talking in low voices. Some have white mud smeared over their faces and arms. The steam rises off the water's surface and mingles with the moist air.

After a good soak and an exploration of some of the more unpopulated inlets, we head for the change rooms (ergh) to discover quickly that everyone here is actually not more beautiful, by any means. We leave via the viewing platform, which looks back over the lagoon and the black dots of heads moving at a steady pace across its still surface. In the distance, the smoke stacks of the geothermal power plant are visible through the mist.

the iceland road trip

I've got a new landscape love affair.

They call it the land of ice and fire. The sky stretches on forever. In four days we drive through vast plains of volcanic rock, through marshes, wide stretches of farmland, through fields of purple flowers reaching to the horizon, past high mountain ranges, past lakes, past glaciers, past craggy cliffs striped with waterfalls, along a grey and vicious coastline. This is a landscape like none I've seen before. I have so many takesmybreathaway moments I'm surprised I breathe at all.

There is something beautiful about being alone. I don't mean sitting in a room alone in a flat in west London. I mean standing on top of a bald crest and seeing the land spread out below you and knowing that noone will come this way in the half hour that you're stopped for lunch. I mean hearing nothing but wind and the sound of your own breath. That's Iceland.

This country makes it in to the top ten least densely populated countries in the world. So does Australia, actually, but it's different. Standing in the middle of my sweeping red country feels less lonely somehow. It's dusty and close and covered in roos and emus and venomous reptiles. It feels like there's this steamy, seething kind of life all around you, which I love. But I don't get that feeling in Iceland. There are moments where it's more like being totally alone on the surface of the cold world. For the girl that currently lives wall to wall to floor to ceiling with at least six strangers, in a city of over eight million people, it's such an immense wonder to be alone.

Well, not totally alone. Featuring in this adventure is Candice, longtime friend and firsttime travel companion. She enjoys weetabix and has a good habit of travelling to unconventional places. We have similar views on other peoples' expectations and the dos and don'ts of selfies.



We arrive at Keflavik airport midafternoon. Within half an hour we're on the road in our little white Toyota hire. The last year in London I've missed driving more than I could ever have anticipated. After groping around on the wrong side for the handbrake then completing a few hesitant circuits of the carpark, we pull out onto the highway to Reykjavik and I remember that feeling of being on the road. The thing about it is the potential. When you board a bus, the destination is set and displayed in big, polite letters at the front and rear. When you board a train, there's not even the option of taking an alternative route to the endpoint. But when you slide in behind the wheel of your car, you can start the engine and end up anywhere. Endless potential adventures. So despite spending the whole time feeling like I am driving in some kind of bizarre flipped universe, or else just speeding headlong at a mirror, I love every second of driving in Iceland.

Between the airport and the city, we come to terms with the fact that we will not be able to pronounce a single street name, place name, or person's name for the duration of our stay. Much of the journey is occupied by phonetically pronouncing the exit names, with much amusement at our own ignorance. Luckily, they're numbered too. Having taken the role of driver without leaving room for discussion, I've dumped Candice with the unenviable title of Navigator in Chief. Unfortunately for us, it's not her forte. I can't read a map without devoting my undivided attention to rotating it to match current direction of travel, so with most of my brainpower focused on staying on the right side of the road, I am less than helpful. We drive around the city for a good hour, lost in the narrow backstreets of downtown, with Candice exclaiming heartily that all the streets have the same name, which seems immensely unfair.

We spend the evening sitting outside our hostel in the quiet eastern suburbs of Reykjavik with a large road map and coloured markers, making site-specific doodles of seals and churches and doodles (yes, actually - the Icelandic Phallological museum is on the itinerary). We don't realise it's bedtime until well after bedtime. The neverending daylight of summer in the north catches me off guard. Going to bed while the sun is up makes me feel like a child, but I come to love the subtle changes in the light that mean evening, night, dawn, day.

We set out early from Reykjavik. Navigation becomes less of a chore once we're out of the city. Usually there's only two roads to choose from at any given intersection, and the distance between the intersections means we have a lot of time to mentally prepare. The biggest challenge of driving quickly becomes resisting the urge to pull over at every available shoulder and gaze around at the landscape. We spend much of the first day doing this. We're in no hurry and it's not like we'll get caught out by nightfall. I just can't get sick of taking long breaths of fresh air and gazing around me. The views are constantly panoramic. This is a disgustingly spectacular country. There's always something incredible to look at. It's a feast for your eyeballs. It's landscape pornography. It's like standing right inside the glossy spread of a national geographic photography competition. Alright, I'll quit it. But seriously, it's the best.

One of my favourite things is the sky. It's vast, so vast, and constantly shifting. On our first day there are clouds that fold over each other in layers of blue and purple. Some days its clear blue and striped with white cotton clouds and one one afternoon huge grey stormclouds pile on top of each other on the horizon. And on our last day a dense mist covers the landscape so completely that I strain to see the road ahead, let alone the sky. It's cold, not summer like I've ever known it, but the weather has a wild kind of charm.

I want to tell you about the colours, and the way everything feels prehistoric, and how much water there is. There's so much water. I could go on forever. For now, I'll leave you with some pictures and the promise of more wildly enthusiastic praise of Iceland to come.

above the falls at Skógarfoss

the grey coastline at Dyrhólaey

flowers by the falls at Seljalandsfoss

 Þingvellir national park

the church at Þingvellir

Skógafoss 

view of the glacier snout Sólheimajökull

climbing rocks at Sólheimajökull

Gullfoss, the golden falls

Gullfoss

on the edge at Gullfoss

Geysir

view from the carpark at Geysir

frolicking on the side of the road somewhere

 Seljalandsfoss

by the sea at Dyrhólaey

flowers on the cliffs at Dyrhólaey

the Blue Lagoon