Hrvartska

Which is the Croatian word for "Croatia". The country became independent following a war with the Serbian-led remains of Yugoslavia in 1991-1995, one of the seemingly infinite number of Yugoslav wars. Although not yet part of the EU, Croatia is reasonably pro-Western. My roommate on the sailing trip was from Pennsylvania and told me that a number of his countrymen were convinced that Croatia was a dangerous place for Americans to travel. This is odd because Croatia is one of the more reliably pro-American states in the region. Although NATO didn't intervene in the Serb-Croat war itself, they did launch Operation Deliberate Force against Serb forces in Bosnia in 1995. Croatia was of the view that they'd take any bombing of Serb forces that they could get. On one of the islands I visited, there was a shop selling those unfunny alcohol joke shirts (stuff like "One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor"). Nestled inamongst these shirts was one emblazoned with the legend "Don't worry NATO...", then a picture of a warplane, then "CROATIA is behind you!".

Anyway I've gone off on a bit of a tangent here. I flew out of Valencia to Split via Rome and arrived quite late Friday night. I was worried about whether I'd be able to find any food so late, a worry which turned out to be ridiculous when I got into Split, which was buzzing with tourists and had about 8 million restaurants still trying to ply their trade. It wasn't surprising that I knew almost nothing about Split. My travel preparation has got so lax at this point that I landed in Croatia without even any clue what the local currency was. I just went to an ATM and asked for 1600 something somethings, which turned out to be "kuna". Based on the publicity each city gets, I was expecting Split to be small and Dubrovnik to be large, but it turns out Split is 5 times the size of Dubrovnik. Oops.

Anyway, I made it into Split and hit the sack in preparation for my tour the next day. My hostel had a bunch of jerks in it, the type where everything they say or do is designed to make themselves look cool, and I was dreading spending 8 days with those type of people. However when I boarded my boat the next day, we turned out to have a really good group of people, all pretty easygoing. The places we visited were:

Hvar - The rich people's playground. I wandered up to a fortress on the hill behind the town and got a great view of the harbour, but I forgot my camera so that will have to wait until I get the pics off someone else. At night we visited another fortress which had been converted into a nightclub. I and several other sailing trippers stripped down and went swimming in their big indoor fountain. They were cross.

Mljet - Very small township with a national park at the back with a couple of lakes. Pretty without being all that stunning.

Dubrovnik - Old walled city, very pretty.



Korcula - Also known as "Mini Dubrovnik", another walled city. Nice but nothing special.

Makarska - Huge tourist town on the coast, lot of partying. There's a nightclub inside a cave on the edge of the ocean, so you can go swimming mid-party. Really cool place.

Omis - An old pirate island. Not a lot to do so we had a pirate party on the boat. I purchased a sword which at the press of a button lit up and made "CHING!" noises. This was a hit.

Pretty short summary, but then there's not much to say about endless swimming, sunbathing, and beer drinking on deckchairs. I had a great trip - this is the kind of thing tours are built for, visiting towns where you really only need one night to check the place out. The whole trip was drama-free except for the last night where our (female) guide drank way too much, for reasons I won't get into, and was sick. I was looking after her and came pretty close to getting into a fight with a drunk Italian guy who started trying to feel her up. Interesting times.

Today I'm heading to Dubrovnik where I'm spending a quiet night to break up the trip to Budva in Montenegro. I have 4 nights there before heading on my rafting trip down the Tara canyon.