July 28, 2009

The beaches in Croatia are awesome. I must admit to not being very much of a beach person – I always end up covered in sand, dodging waves and bluebottles and flies, sunburnt and salt-encrusted. Everyone else seems to love these exact things, but each to their own. From my point of view, then, Croatian beaches are the bees knees. It’s like an enormous salty lake, clean and calm, with less people than you might expect, and more fish. The water is startlingly clear, and there is no sand, just smooth limestone to the waters edge. With a snorkel there is lots to see under the surface, and because the water is warm you can spend hours lazing around in it, floating on the salty swell.

So it was for the beaches that my friends and I went to the island of Hvar in Croatia. We stayed in Stari Grad, which literally means “old town” – these names are just like good old Australian “descriptive” names, a la the Great Sandy Desert or the Snowy Mountains. The biggest town on the island is called Hvar, and Stari Grad is much much smaller. It turned out to be a sleepy little village in a neat harbour, surrounded by fields of grape vines and olive trees. Deciding that it would be fun to ride across the island we hired bikes, and within ten minutes had the derailleur from one bike break shear right off, pull through between the spokes and the frame, and end up upside down in a mangled mess. After some tense negotiations with the owners of the bike we procured another, and set off on a dusty road through the vineyards towards Vrboska for a day of swimming and sun.

On Hvar there are many producers of Rakija, a type of fruit brandy that I became rather fond of in the Balkans. The excellent markets in Stari Grad had many bottles on display, including a most delicious fig variety. It was fig Rakija that we swapped for our last currency on leaving Croatia and had in our possession for about an hour before it was taken from us at the next airport security screening point. I hope the security staff kept it and put it to good use. Oh well.. even left without the brandy, I do have the memory of drinking fig Rakija on a terrace in Hvar, while the swallows enjoyed the summer evening and swooped around the bell tower of the old town, and voices of a quartet of traditional singers floated up from the laneway below.