Part 5: Venetzia to Dubrovnik (Island Hopping)

The adventure continues as I'm heading steadily East and South.

A final sunset at the agriturismo where I stayed with my family in Greve, Italy

After leaving Italy and some wonderful family time, I took the train to Venice where I met up with my college buddy John. For those of you that don't know him, he's famous for his masterful handstands, his dual love of meditation and gangster rap and, (this one was new to me as of this trip) his catchy renditions of pop songs on the ukelele. Put that all together and you get a perfect travel companion!

John strumming the ukelele on our patio in Venice

Crossing a canal near the Jewish Quarter in Venice

 Already in Venice, John earned some serious gold stars when he found us a free apartment to stay in. With our own kitchen and courtyard we started off with a level of luxury that I'm not bound to see for some time. This was my second time in Venice on this trip but after two more days there I knew I still saw only a tiny fraction of what there is to see. We wandered through some less traveled neighborhoods during our time and we gathered information about the next leg of our journey: Croatia and the innumerable islands waiting to be explored. But still we had no real plan by the time we left except to take the train to Trieste and follow our nose from there.

Our first swim in the Adriatic

 Trieste is a wonderful place where you can really feel that you are at the border of a different culture and landscape. The city has a rich history of inspiring creativity with writers like James Joyce and Ranier Maria Rilke spending time there while they composed there famous works. Trieste was also our first taste of swimming in the Adriatic which would be a daily habit for the next two weeks. The water is very salty and buoyant and warm and the Mediterranean way of slowing down and taking some time for the beach and the sun each day was evident immediately. We made fast friends with four French girls staying at our hostel and before I knew it I was in John's lap crammed into a tiny car with my head out the window like a dog, heading into town for dinner.

The joy of meeting others in travel is hard to overstate. You can get to know people in just a few hours when at home you may pass a neighbor every day for years and hardly know a thing about them. Hearing other peoples stories as you cross paths in travel adds deeply to the experience. This was only my third night with John but already we were sitting down to dinner with new friends discussing the pros and cons of Foie Gras and explaining that, contrary to international belief, Americans do actually eat vegetables sometimes. By the end of our time together John and I would meet friends from: France, Italy, Spain, England, Slovenia, Germany, Austria and of course Croatia as we worked our way through the islands.

Sunset in Pula, Croatia

The next day we caught a bus to Pula, Croatia without a hint of what we would do when we got there or even how we would make it to the islands beyond. But after a bit of wandering and no luck inquiring about places to camp, we met Antonio, a Spanish circus artist on a tour of Eastern Europe in his van, and after that, we needed no plan.

John with our new friend Antonio

In addition to unicycles and juggling pins and elaborate costumes, it turned out that Antonio also had musical instruments and climbing gear in the back of his van. In no time we were touring the night life of Pula sampling the strange local booze and playing even stranger music from the back of Antonio's van with John strumming the ukelele, Antonio, plucking an odd Brazilian guitar of sorts and me doing my best on a mini breath-powered organ keyboard sort of thing. Before we knew it we were lost in the outskirts of Pula searching for the mysterious Club Zen (we never found it, I think the locals made it up actually) and it was 4:00 in the morning. Needless to say we slept as late as we could the next morning before we were baked out of our tents by the hot sun.

Some old rusted machinery buried in the woods

Antonio and the makeshift climb on the quarry wall

Following another set of dubious directions, we went in search of a rock climbing area nearby and just as we were going to give up hope we stumbled upon an old quarry with stunning walls of limestone carved away and the rusted out vine-covered machinery left behind. Antonio nearly put his hand on a rattlesnake at the top of one climb as he called out, "Ooooo, there is a serpent up here!"Hearing him describe the snake's hooked nose and coiled position made me climb very carefully after him. But all was well and as the sun set there was Antonio juggling his five pins against the last light on the quarry walls. That image will stick with me for a long time.

Antonio's van was a real work of art                         I love how the pins match his shorts

 We would have traveled on in Antonio's van for longer, but his vacation was nearly over and he had to make it back to work, and by work I mean a street arts festival in Marseilles, France. But our ferry was in the same direction so Antonio drove us to the landing and we had one final glorious swim in the Adriatic before parting ways. We climbed barefoot up the sharp rocks and jumped from high cliffs as we saw the boat already heading for the dock.

Nomadic breakfast

Looking South toward the islands

 Somewhere along the boat ride, John and I realized it was the 4th of July and we halfheartedly celebrated the occasion. But we had no large American flags to wave, which was lucky for us because it would have been a good way to lose any potential friends on our boat.

The harbor in Cres town

The next two days were spent on the island of Cres, dodging German tourists and large naked sunbathers. It was all quite nice but not the least bit remote and we were keen to get a bit further from the crowded scenes. So eventually we just walked out of town in hopes of hitching a ride to another ferry boat and a new island. Some nice Germans saved the day on a long hill in the grueling heat and the next thing we knew we were floating towards Rab island on another boat. It was a very idyllic scene save for the Croatian pop music (some odd mixture of Techno beats and Mariachi-style instrumentation and vocals) blaring from the loudspeaker.

Quick dip waiting for the ferry

John looking like a genuinely All-American!

On dry land and without a guidebook a lucky recommendation and a Slovenian gesturing toward the woods led us to our next adventure. With the offer of a tent to sleep in, a kayak to borrow and a reasonable price, we were sold. What we found after a thirty minute walk, was a hidden world. It turned out that the campsite was a Slovenian commune of sorts with many children running around naked and families cooking elaborate meals over hot coals. The shirtless proprietor showed us where we could pick out fresh vegetables and fruit and where we could get beer on tap. It was all on the honor system with each family keeping a tally of their purchases and paying the final total at the end in a wooden box with a hand painted sign, "Bankomat". John and I knew we had discovered a real gem of a place and we celebrated with a simple home-cooked dinner and our first one dollar pints of beer.

Enjoying our Slovenian commune experience

We took the kayaks out to find some cliff jumping

We shared this kitchen with many other families

We settled into the slow pace of life on the Lopar peninsula, getting in the kayaks early before the heat and learning as much as we could about Slovenia from the other families in the afternoons. Milosc, a particularly talkative guy from Lubljana told us about his country's nostalgia for the communist years under Tito and the sense of community that he said capitalism was gradually snuffing out. All the other families were worried that we weren't getting enough meat so we were constantly being offered grilled fish and pork and chicken and anything that was being cooked. It was a delightful community and a paradise for those kids running amok from dawn until dusk inventing new games all the time, rolling in the dirt, catching cicadas, leafing through books about dinosaurs, gloriously carefree!

Three days passed and it was time to move on, with many miles to go to Dubrovnik where John had to catch his plane on the 13th of July. So we hitched a ride from our friend Milosc to the next town and waited for a boat to take us to Pag island.

We only had a couple hours to explore the town of Rab, it reminded me of San Gimignano in Italy but with a seaside perch

 There was no way we could have prepared ourselves for the change in pace and scene that awaited us on our ferry boat. Hundreds of drunk teenagers dressed to the nines were packed into the strange boat that resembled a giant airplane on the inside, with the requisite leg room and lack of access to fresh air. It turned out that the party we had not been informed about was an all night concert on the beach hosted by Fatboy Slim (takes me back to 8th grade or so). After staring wide eyed and reading the strange English expressions on a lot of the trendy t-shirts (mostly unrepeatable phrases) John and I figured that our only real option was to try to catch up and so we did our best with the remaining half of our cheap bottle of wine.

That night we had a nice dinner with some new British friends, who we recognized as the only other backpack toting passengers looking just as lost as we felt. But then we headed out to see what the night life had to offer. We couldn't afford the ticket to the all night beach party, but we found a club on the main street that looked busy enough. And you know, we did our best, we really did. We bought some drinks and we tried to show the locals some American moves (otherwise known as bad moves), but the whole thing was very strange. Maybe we were missing some important cultural cues or something but we were the only guys dancing and the whole vibe was just strange. But it was an experience anyways and the late night kebab and fries was a great way to cap things off.

From Pag it was a long hot bus ride to Split where we spent a couple nights catching our breath and exploring the sites. We were beginning to get weary of the mass of tourists so we took it easy and even enjoyed a little t.v. in our tiny apartment. It turns out that Croatians have a channel that is solely dedicated to spearfishing. That's right, 24/7 underwater footage with sparse commentary of guys chasing after fish with their spear guns. Better than what the cable access channel usually offers I suppose.

The central square in Split

Densely packed neighborhoods beyond the old town walls

From Split it was another four hours on the bus to Dubrovnik, John's final stop and the southern-most city in Croatia. The Semester at Sea boat happened to be in town which meant 700 American college students swarming the streets. It was so startling to be surrounded by my own accent again. The youth hostel was full but John and I met a nice girl, Andrea from Austria, who was also looking for a place to stay, so we went searching together. We were rewarded with a charming room, our own porch and a grand view, all for less than we would have paid for a dorm bed at the hostel. What's more, we shared a round of beers with our hosts who didn't speak a lick of English but communicated all the important messages with smiles and the clinking of glasses.

The moon nearly full in the walled center of Dubrovnik

The view outside the city from the top of the wall

It was our last day together so John and I knew a swim in the Adriatic was in order. Andrea joined us on the cliffs below our apartment and we floated blissfully in the salty water trying to climb back up the steep rock and watching far more daring locals flipping and diving from 50 feet. After dark we finally ventured into the old city of Dubrovnik, a walled version of Venice without the canals but with the addition of many winding stairways and high vantage points. It costs to walk the perimeter of the wall and it had long closed anyway but we were determined to find a way up, and so we did. Tiptoeing along in the darkness with the turrets and massive drop down to the ocean below it was easy to imagine I was a medieval knight defending my home from pirates and would-be invaders. The moon was nearly full out over the ocean and somewhere below in a hidden courtyard, locals were putting on some kind of play. It was amazing to me that despite the crush of visitors and tourist traps, Dubrovnik was still alive with locals living simply inside the walls of the old city. It was hot night and we were still buzzing with the thrill of our adventure as we walked back so John and I couldn't resist one final moonlight swim. The water was silver smooth and we could have floated there all night laughing at the adventures we'd found during our time together. Those moments of sheer joy feeling the fullness of youth friendship, what more can you ask for really. And yet, it wouldn't have that same preciousness if it could last forever and so eventually we swam back to shore and called it a night.

A blurry photo but the best I could get of John and I with our new Austrian friend Andrea

Andrea was also heading South into Montenegro and Albania so the next morning we boarded a bus and I said my goodbyes to John. He wandered down the road with his ukelele and I headed on South across the border.