The spine of Šipan

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. 

  

  

  

Šipan Island changes gears

There were a few families loaded with bags of gushing flower bouquets on the 45-minute ferry to Sipan Island. It was the eve of All Saint's Day, so apparently there are a lot of ancestors buried there. I'd read that the Elaphiti Islands are the least developed of the islands along the Croatian coast. We chose Sipan for a day trip based on the relative frequency of the ferry this time of year (two trips per day). The flowers and passengers unloaded quickly in Sipanska Luka, one of two small villages on the island, before the ferry departed for the day. A few empty boats bobbed in the sun as the ferry passengers dispersed. The shops around the bay had all closed for the season except for a small store selling ice cream, fishing tackle, and some bottles of wine.

While we waited for the hourly bus to Sudurad on the other end of the island, the end of a movie played out across a gravel parking lot. One by one the main characters, four women in their twenties, dragged a summer's worth of suitcases and duffel bags from a hotel with its curtains and wooden shutters closed. Soon the local heartthrob pulled up on a moped, and they were joined by the wise father figure -a squat hotel manager, who helped them load a car until it sank. They all turned to each other for a long round of farewell hugs and kisses. With the hotel now shut for winter it was easy to see that its staff was now departing after a long summer together. A couple of group photos later and their car scooted off, followed by the moped. Our bus pulled into Sudurad in time to see them all embracing again before one girl dragged her bags onto the waiting ferry there, bound for points further up the coast.

While some locals milled around the dock saying good-byes to the few others getting on the ferry, we found the only open bar/cafe to sit down and catch up with our journals over cappuccinos. Over the next couple of hours, the only activity in Sudurad seemed to be the group of men gossiping in front of the only other store, our waitress who'd get up to change songs on the jukebox, and a busy little cat. This adolescent size-cat went through cycles of climbing onto our laps to take a nap, pushing its nose onto our table, running off to chase something, and clawing its way back onto our laps again to crash.

   

   

   

Coastal ferry daydreaming

Some time during the night I realized the ship began groaning more forcefully and frequently lurching. Early in the dawn we were woken up by our wine bottle being knocked off the tiny desk and onto the floor by one sudden jarring of the metal ship hull. After we'd gotten up I could see that we were passing alternately between long islands and out to sea. While we were on the seaward side of the islands the waves were much bigger, naturally, and the ship's movements weren't coinciding with my insides'. A half of a dramamine calmed things down, but so did the ship's accelerating speed. It soon became apparent that the captain was ramming our boat through the rougher waters, and when I looked at where we'd been sailing overnight, I realized that our noisy, rattling sleep was certainly preferable to the nauseous one it could have been. 

A free breakfast came with our cabin tickets, and we made it to the on-board restaurant just in time to dish up our plates from the buffet, and then watch the crew take it down while we ate. Jen had a bowl of cereal with milk that had long ago come to room temperature. I was jealous. The water was separating from my scrambled egg curds and the jelly was balling up as I tried to spread it on my toast. I really can't blame the ship, however, since there couldn't have been more than a few cabins occupied on the ship that night.

  

  

The rest of the day was spent alternately getting lost in thought, reading with cappuccinos, and being so overwhelmed by the scenery we'd stand out in the blustery wind until it wore down our skin. As the hours passed, we drifted in and out of the straights between the islands. The mountainous ridges rising straight out of the sea were mostly wild and forested, and the lines exposing the layers of bedrock arched steeply down into the earth's crust. Over time, small stone villages with uniformly red roofs would drift momentarily into view, clinging to the edge of the land. Occasionally we'd spot a small church high up a mountainside, a clue that roads must snake along them somehow.

At one point in the afternoon the ship was backing into a port, and we went out onto the deck in time to see a tall and compact village easing toward us. Korcula is surrounded by a partial wall from the middle ages that is so high I felt like I could help someone aboard from it. I later read in the Rough Guide to Croatia that if you don't go to the island of Korcula, and you see it from the ferry as it makes a stop there, you'll immediately regret it. I suppose I should've read ahead, but the trip wouldn't have been long enough, and anyway Dubrovnik was only three hours away.

 

 

 

Time enough for the korso

It became obvious that Rijeka is a port city as soon as we got off the train. The station was surrounded by a large series of silos, presumably storing grain from inland fields before it's loaded onto mediterranean ships. The city, surrounded on three sides by steep hills sparkling with lights, sits at the upper end of Kvarner Gulf along the eastern Adriatic Sea. The warm humid air filled our lungs thickly, a formal announcement that we had entered a new climate.

It seems that in all mediterranean countries, the evening korso, or promenade, is ritualized to the point that at least a few main pedestrian streets in the heart of any town fill with socializing strollers of all ages on any given evening. We had a few hours to kill before our ferry would be heading down the coast, 

so we joined them here for a while before grabbing a pizza and stopping for groceries for the 20-hour trip ahead of us.