Leaving the village of Sudurad for our hike back to Sipanska Luka, we wandered between quiet stone houses with their wooden shutters closed. A lone white pair of panties hung on a clothesline outside waving in the breeze (a signal to someone?). As our road climbed the hill outside of town past the remains of several stone villas, decaying since the renaissance, it became closed in by rosemary bushes and olive trees.
After a picnic on a hillside tiered with olive groves we continued up the pathway, surprising a few people lost in quiet conversations while they picked the olives. Our road, now a rocky mule trail, climbed the ridge that formed the island's spine until we could see the Adriatic in all directions. A narrow sweep of farm fields filled the valley below us and a tiny church sat on top of another of the island's distant peaks.
A rudimentary map posted at the dock that I'd taken a picture of that morning showed our lane looping back down to the main road in the middle of the island's valley, but as we pushed further the thick brush closed in. Finally stopped by an alert, tense dog next to a stone house, we gave up on our route and found our way through overgrown orchards back to the valley floor, and the main road to Sipanska Luka.
Approaching the town in time for the evening ferry, we passed graveyards that had been bare that morning. Now they overflowed with fresh flowers and many of the same people from the morning's ride over. Back at the waterfront, among those waiting for the ferry back to Dubrovnik were chatting locals and cats roaming the piles of fish nets. Amidst the hustle that surrounded the ferry's arrival, a young island girl stopped her cat from boarding by grabbing it awkwardly under her arm. Without protest, the cat fell limp.
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