9/6/09 10:59PM
i have these vague memories of being a kid and getting sunburned. we'd head up the coast for a few days and go camping near the beach at some little hamlet between Perth and Lancelin and i'd forget to sunscreen some part of me (often stupid things like the tops of my feet or knees) or just neglect to put more on half-way through the day, then spend the next couple of days avoiding hot showers. i should have realised that i'd turned into a fucking pom after going through a year of winter. i've been spoiled by the English weather and piss-poor sunshine. i've spent hours in Green Park on sundays with my shirt off and barely gotten a tan. 3 hours on the top deck of a boat sailing the Adriatic and a moment of stupidity where i forgot to wash the salty water off myself and i've gone red as a fucking lobster. i'm amazed no one's tried to revoke my passport.
what a fabulous day that was tho - my first day actually sailing since this trip started turned out to be day 3 of the trip, clear, blue and sunny with crisp morning air which rapidly turned warm as the sun rose in the sky and the white top deck became rapidly populated by reading Aussies and Kiwis in their swimwear. i thought i'd turned both sides nicely. i thought i'd gone into the shade early enough. my biggest mistake was not rinsing off after we stopped for a swim. salt water residue continues to dehydrate the skin long after you've gone out of the sun, turning "a light burn" into "you are destined to peel". it was glorious though - peaceful, quiet, nothing but the flipping of pages, some chillout music over the boat's hifi, thrum of the diesel engines and wash of the sea off the bow.
i'm a little irritated though - we were due to set sail from Split on Saturday at around midday, but were held in port due to strong winds. as a result we got an extra day to wander around split and i'm missing out on the dive i was so looking forward to. i made the most of the day, wandering around with various people from different boats (there are a few different boats and tour companies doing more or less the same route as we are, so we've seen a lot of the same faces in port). on Sunday morning we were picked up by a bus and taken off on a day-trip to Mostar in Bosnia which is famous primarily for its bridge (dating back to sometime around when Jesus rode dinosaurs through Mordor), the Serbian army shelled the fuck out of it during the war back in the 90's. it was rebuilt out of the same materials, using the same methods, almost stone-for-stone and now you can't tell it's ever changed) and its impressive collection of bombed-out and bullet-scarred buildings. we go a good couple of hours wandering around and being shown some of the landmarks, including a "traditional Turkish house". Turkish house in Bosnia? WTF? well it turns out that the Ottoman Empire once stretched well into Eastern Europe, leaving a strong Turkish influence in Bosnia which would explain why so many of the cafes had food i remember my grandmother making in my childhood - halva, chevapi, turkish delight, baklava and that spiral ricotta and leek pie that i've come to love more and more as the years have gone by. we were given enough time to wander around the place before the bus took us back to Croatia, past a couple of old forts and villages, then north up the Dalmatian Riviera to meet back up with the boat at Makarska.
the last two days have been pretty much the same thing: drag myself out of my cabin (there's 14 of us on a boat that can carry 24 so i've managed a cabin to myself which is good since there's fuck-all room in it) and up the stairs into the Saloon where Mate (pronounced Mar-teh) has breakfast laid out. fresh bread, cheese, maybe ham, maybe boiled eggs, terrifyingly bad instant coffee that i've been sinking 2 cups of each morning, cereal go down my throat before i grab my book and head upstairs onto the top deck and into the cool breeze and bright sun which bakes more and more as the day goes by. most of the tourists can be found up there lying around in their swimwear (or less in the case of V, the Maltese Sydney-sider) at various stages of the day. sometime before lunch we'll drop anchor in a sheltered cove somewhere and it's time to go swimming in the cold, clear water, taking it in turns to dive off the top deck, or higher - off the captain's cabin: a 4-6 metre jump depending on your level of commitment, a fraction of a second of freefall before the splash. i've got some great photos - anyone who's not game for the jump's been willing to take rapid-fire photos. after a while the bell will ring for lunch and we'll be fed soup and mains - chicken, beef, fish, all sorts of odds and ends, all if it good (although some of the girls have complained about it being to salty. me: i like salt. i think it comes with the heritage. while we're eating the captain will weigh-anchor and we motor on into a different port.
after Makarska we pulled into Mjlet, a small town notable only for the national park it shares an island with on which there is a lake, in which there's another tiny island with an old monastery on it. we're offered a BBQ dinner that night on the boat - 30 Euros for more meat than we can handle followed by crepes, and all the beer and wine we can get down our throats in 3 hours. somehow i managed to not wake up with too much of a hangover the next morning, which is good since yesterday we pulled into Dubrovnik while we were polishing off our fish and rice.
Dubrovnik is one of those places i think everyone should see. it's an old, walled city of limestone and terracotta which has been beautifully maintained and, if necessary, rebuilt in the original style with the original materials (i think it's a hobby in this part of the world). broad, elegant streets intersect with tight, stepped alleyways. hanging with the Kiwis, it took us 2 hours to walk around the top of the walls - stops for photos, stops for ice cream, stops for drinks. you'd have to be really talented to take a bad photo in Dubrovnik: it's so achingly and effortlessly beautiful that you just want to fill your memory card. it gets even better when the walls run down the sea-ward side of the town where in 2 different places i saw hidden passages open out onto the rocks at the base of the walls and people have set up bars overlooking the ocean. go for a swim, get in a bit more sunbathing in the baking sun then hop back up the rocks for a beer? yes please! although, i had to forego the sunbathing bit, red as i was from the previous day.
i can't go on about Dubrovnik enough. all i can really say is that you Should Look At Some Of The Photos And See What i Mean. i can't get over how this place was brutalised during the war - i've seen some of the photos of streets i've walked down and buildings i've stood under, debris in the streets, roofs shattered and caved in, and now it's all been restored as if none of it ever happened, the fresh terracotta on you can see from the walls the only sign that anything ever happened.
today we pulled into Korcula (Kor-chu-lah) which is kinda like Dubrovnik's smaller, less developed sibling. what it lacks in scale, however, it makes up for in cocktail bars. i lucked into a quick dinghy-ride with the captain and spent an hour or so wandering around looking for the house where Marco Polo grew up, generally running into various people from the different boats and wandering around with one or another until i got bored of the idea, before joining a couple of the girls for complicated cocktails overlooking the marina. we wound up skipping the big drawcard in the end - a bar on the top of one of the old watchtowers which you can only get to up a ladder and where the drinks are raised up the outside of the wall in a little basket on the end of a rope. we've agreed that tonight's to be an early one in preparation for the Hvar, the second to last stop and a renouned party stop, so i'm taking the opportunity to chill out and enjoy the rocking of the boat.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment