Croatia

We didn´t see as much of Croatia as we would have liked, but what we saw was pretty cool. The first town we stayed in was called Rijeka. It was quite a busy port city and traffic was pretty horrendous, and hotels expensive. The only hotel in the city with a vacancy was the local Youth Hostel which was ridiculously priced at 20 euros per person per night... suffice to say we only stayed one night!

Our plan was to ride down the coast, however, on a recconaissance mission to the island of Krk, we found the highway to be death on 2 wheels. We spent 2 nights on the island and just relaxed and chilled out in the heat. Lots of holiday makers and probably the biggest camping ground we´ve come across so far; it took about 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other!

One of the nicest city beaches we´ve ever been to, I reckon. It´s in Rijeka, and tucked away from the busy road by some 30-40m high cliffs which essentially isolate you from the noise and the hustle and bustle. We ended up playing classic catches with our tennis ball with a local 10 year-old kid who loved it.

Since our mission to the island of Krk was soured by the worst traffic we´d yet seen, we thought it safer to catch a ferry down to Dubrovnik, which is near Croatia´s border with Montenegro. It was an overnight ferry and we bought cheap tickets without beds... the cool thing was, well, you know how on the Spirit of Tasmania you´ve just got to stay in your seat the whole night, well on this boat you could lay down a sleeping mat and camp anywhere! Every man and his dog (yes, there were plenty of cute doggies onboard too) had laid out their mat and blankets to sleep the night away. Pretty cool hey?

So fortunately for us we laid our mats close to these lovely young English ladies whom we befriended and spent the next 3 days hanging out with. They were Nikki and Julia, pictured below.

Julia (playing her Ukulele) and Nikki, chillin´ out on board a ferry off the coast of Dubrovnik. We´d spent the day checking out a nice island off the coast that Jen´s brother Antho had worked on a few years back.

So we spent the next few days checking out Dubrovnik and some of the islands off its coast. We walked around Dubrovnik´s city walls, which was stunning at sunset, and well worth the fee to get on. You could see lots of new roof tiling, evidence of the mammoth rebuilding effort that was required after the bombing not so long ago. There were also roped-off water polo fields in the sea, just off the coast, where club games were being played... Eastern Europeans love their water polo it seems. I wonder what it would be like it the water became really choppy?

Dubrovnik, from the city walls, at sunset.

Open-water water-polo.

After a few days in Dubrovnik, we said goodbye to Nikki and Julia and headed off to Montenegro! Julia lives in Buenos Aires, so we hope to meet up with her when we´re there in January.