split, hvar, and plitvice - croatia

After a short one hour flight from Prague, we arrived in Split, Croatia. I wish all flights or train rides could be one hour.. it was so nice and short! As soon as we stepped out of the airport (which is probably the smallest I've ever seen) there was just sun and palm trees everywhere. We missed the main shuttle into town, so we headed over to the public transit bus stop with a guy from Ottawa and two Australian girls. While we were waiting for the bus we had a couple taxis stop and ask if we wanted a ride. We said no; they were too expensive. I think the driver said he would take us all for 175 Kuna, but we tried to get it for 100. One guy actually came back a little while later and said fine he would do it for 100 Kuna. Somehow we fit 5 packs into the trunk and we all squished in. It was still more comfortable than the bus would have been though! He dropped us off at the main harbour which is where the bus, train, and ferry terminals are all located. It was so blazing hot that I just wanted to drop my pack and dive right in. The water was beautiful, blue-green and so clear! We had booked our room online, and only had an address and a shoddy map that I had hand drawn from the website. We were staying in someone's home, not a hostel, so it was a lot harder to find. Private rooms are the best way to stay here, there aren't many hostels and hotels are expensive. The harbour is crowded with little old ladies holdings signs that say ROOMS! and then they lead you to their house. Kind of like the old ladies with parking signs at Playland that lead you to their garages, lol. We walked and walked and walked up and down the main road looking for our turnoff, but streets are not marked very well here at all. For some odd reason Mike turned down this one little street that didn't even look like a street, more like and alley, and boom there it was. What a lucky turn! We were so relieved to have found the place. The lady is so nice, and the room is great. It's upstairs with it's own patio and kitchen. It's so nice to have the privacy here where we can just relax. Sometimes it's a bit tiring being in crowded hostels and always having to talk to people and tell them our same story of where we're from and where we're going. Don't get me wrong, I love
all the new people we're meeting, it's just nice to have some quiet time once in a while! Once we got settled there was only one thing left to do - go to the beach!

The beach was packed with people, in the water and all along the shore. Mike went swimming but I just laid in the sun and people watched, because my blisters were still pretty fresh and the saltwater didn't feel too good on them. It's amazing how tanned everyone here is! Girls with blonde hair who would probably be quite fair, SO dark, like almost black. I'm not kidding! Not like a fake orange tan either.. haha. Even all the little kids running around. It's interesting, everything seems to be so laid back in Europe. Kids running around at a beach in Vancouver would be pale white, lathered in sunscreen, wearing a hat and sunglasses. Not here though! Apparently skin cancer is not a concern. After the beach we went to the supermarket and took advantage of the fact that our place had a kitchen.I bought some broccoli from the market as well, and the lady tried cramming so much into the bag to make it weigh more. I had to take the bag from her and empty some of it out, sheesh so pushy! We had spaghetti and bread and a $2 bottle of wine. Unlike the other cheap wine we've bought, this one actaully tasted cheap, lol. It wasn't that great.

The next day was a relaxing one where we just slept in a lazed around on the patio in the morning. In the afternoon we walked around Split and toured Diocletian's Palace. Diocletian was a Roman emperor who built his retirement palace here in Split (Italy is just a ferry ride away). Within the palace walls are tons of streets and squares, which now house all sorts of businesses and restaurants. It was an interesting mix of old and new. Also within the walls was an old Catholic church (which my guidebook says is the oldest in the world) and bell tower, which we climbed for an amazing view of the town and harbour. Afterwards, we wandered around the market that lines the harbour and sells all sorts of everything you could imagine. I needed a new pair of sunglasses because my other ones broke, so that's what I was mainly looking at. At one booth as I was trying some on, we were talking with the guy who ran it. He was so funny. Mike was just sort of standing there, and he's like "Why aren't you trying any on? Your sunglasses are screaming for a change! Big is in now!" Lol, it was soo funny. We also went to the bus station to figure out our plans for the next day. We really wanted to go to the Plitvice Lakes, even though they were kind of far away. The bus left at 7:30am though, so it looked like it could be done.

The next morning, even though I had set my alarm the same way I do every other night, it somehow didn't go off and we woke up at 10:00am. Dangit! We were so mad because we had it all planned out! I guess it's a good thing we didn't buy our bus tickets ahead of time eh! We decided that we would stay another night and try for Plitvice again the next day. As for that day, we decided to leave our laundry with the lady here and make a day trip to Hvar Island instead. Luckily we were able to catch the next catamaran over there. It only took an hour. As we were getting off the ferry, there was a crowd waiting to get on, and as we passed these two guys, they said to Mike with thick accents and broken English, "Welcome to Japan, Hong Kong is very nice!" and shook his hand. This was funny because Hong Kong isn't in Japan, and Mike is neither Japanese OR Chinese, LOL. It's funny, there really are no ethnic minorites here, and Mike seems so aware of it too. He's always joking about it too, telling me to ask people for directions because they don't want to talk to the chinaman. Anyways, after a little stroll around Hvar Town, which was sooo beautiful, we went for a swim. The water there was even clearer than Split. It looked like a swimming pool! There aren't really sandy beaches here though, people just find somewhere along the rocks and dive in. This is what we did, but we weren't very good at it and ended up cutting our feet up a bit on the rocks. My poor feet, hehe.. at least the mosquito bites on them are gone now though! After swimming we had some lunch, then climbed up and up and up to this old Venetian fortress built on top of the hill. It was cool, with another great view of everything. We walked around a bit more, then caught the bus to the other ferry port where we caught the ferry home. This was a normal ferry, not a fast catamaran, so it took a lot longer. It was around midnight when we got home. It was so nice to have our clean laundry waiting for us (even if it was still damp!). We hung our clothes out for a bit, and then we headed to bed. We set BOTH of our alarms to make sure we would be up for sure the next morning to catch the bus to Plitvice!

We were able to get up the next morning and catch the bus no problem. It started to rain on the way up there, and I was wearing shorts, a tank top, and flipflops. Mike said not to worry, it was a 4.5hr bus ride, so hopefully it would be far enough away to be sunny, hehe.. boy was he wrong. There were only three people to get off the bus at the Park, us and one other Canadian from PEI, Nick. I had brought my runners, so I changed into them. We had also brought our bathing suits and towels in case there was swimming, so we used our towels as cloaks. As soon as we got to the info desk, we asked about the bus home to Split. The lady gave us a little hand-written schedule and told us the last bust was at 8:00pm. We needed to take the last one to get the most out of the day, so this sounded perfect. We also went up to one of the hotels in the area and bought rain ponchos (and I laughed when dad told me to bring a poncho!). We rigged up this get up with our towels and ponchos to keep us as warm as they could. Finally we headed to the park entrance.

The Plitives Lakes are a national park here in Croatia, and are also on the UNESCO world heritage list. The park consists of 16 different lakes in the mountain, all at different elevations, which forms waterfalls all over the park. Big waterfalls, small waterfalls, just waterfalls everywhere and water flowing whichever way it can. It was soo gorgeous, and even though it was almost 5 hours away and raining, it was worth it! The lakes themselves were also gorgeous, the most beautiful color! The water was soooo clear you could practically see to the bottom, and all the thousands of fish swimming all around. There were parts of the hike where we were transported by boat and shuttle bus as well. It was all very cool! We followed trail "H" and because of time constraints, Nick followed trail "E". His trail didn't even take him past the big waterfall at the end which kinda sucked. The whole hike took about 6 hours, which gave us enough time to have some dinner before catching our bus at 8:00pm.

This is where things got interesting. The bus never came. That's right, the last bus of the night never came. Crap. We waited at that stop, in the cold, as it was getting dark, for one and a half hours hoping that it might just be late. After admitting to ourselves that it wasn't coming, we went back to one of the hotels in the park and asked them what we should do. I should also mention that we were practically in the middle of nowhere. The bus stop was just a little hut on the side of the highway, then it was ALL park around us. No town, no lights even! We tried to stay calm, and the guy at the hotel looked at his schedule and said another bus was to stop here at 12:55am. All we could do was wait until then, 3 hours later. We were trying to think of all our options to get back to Split, because we were to check out of our room in the morning. We HAD to get back as soon as we could, and it was 5 hours away! UGH. The receptionist laughed when we asked about a taxi, and said it would cost around 2000 Kuna ($400 Canadian). We couldn't afford that, that's like how much we would spend in a whole week! He said we could wait in the lobby for as long as we needed to though, which was nice of him. We also couldn't afford a room there for the night. It was kind of like a Harrison Hot Springs resort type place, right in the park.

There was an Italian couple from Milan sitting across from us in the lobby, and I guess he kind of overheard what was going on and he asked what the problem was. He seemed very concerned for us and was trying to help us out anyway he could. His wife gave me a jacket, and we agreed to return it when we visit Milan. We talked for a while, and he told us about the war and how may Croatian towns actually used to be Italian, with different names and everything. When they went to bed, he brought us a blanket from his room, and we kind of dozed off waiting until it was time to trek back out to the bus stop. It was awful going back out in the cold and pitch black along the trail to the bus stop with no flashlight. We had to go early as well, because the receptionist said sometimes the buses are early. We couldn't have missed it the first time though, because me made sure we were there early. We waited at that stop in the rain, fog, freezing cold and pitch dark for another hour, wildy flapping our arms at the THIRTEEN buses that passed us but didn't stop. I guess they were company tour buses or they were full. I have no idea. It didn't help that we kept hearing these animal sounds, and at one point I saw something dog-like scurry across the road in the distance under the one street light at the park's entrance. I was so scared, and at this point I'm crying and just wishing sooo badly that the next bus that came around the bend would stop. It was such a hopeless and lonely feeling. It was the only point in the trip so far that I just wanted to say screw it, I just want to go home. I kept wishing I could call dad and he would come in his van and save the day. In a way we didn't want to leave the stop, just in case it came, but we had to give up at somepoint.

We trekked back to the hotel at like 1:30am, and tried to figure out what to do. We knew we had to call our room in Split and let them know we wouldn't make it back by check out time, but we didn't have their phone number. We needed to get on the internet, but the only place with internet was the next hotel down the road. We didn't want to go back out in the cold so we decided to get some sleep and go on the internet in the morning; they wouldn't check their email until then anyways. The people at the first hotel, Bellevue, were really nice and gave us blankets and let us sleep in the common area until 6:00am, then we put our ponchos back on and walked over to the other hotel with internet. Even the fact that it was now daylight gave me more hope and made me feel better. The night was just awful. Anyways, we were able to contact our room in Split, and book it for another night. We were so lucky it was still available. I don't know what they would have done with all of our stuff that was scattered all around the room! We also checked the bus schedule online and it said a bus was to come at 8:45am, in about 2 hours. The hotel with internet was bigger and fancier than the hotel we crashed at, and we snuck into their dining room and took advantage of their buffet breakfast. I was so nervous about doing that, but once we took off our bright blue ponchos, we blended in quite well. We waited in the lobby until it was time to head to the bus stop again. Surprise, Surprise! no bus came! By this time we weren't even surprised, and didn't expect a bus would ever stop. Finally at about 9:30, two other guys from France show up at the stop, and say they are waiting for the 9:45 bus. We tell them don't get your hopes up! They assured us that it is coming, because that's the time they got dropped off at this exact stop two days ago. We are still skeptical, but have a little more hope.

We talk with them, and they offer us a place to stay in Toulouse, France. Sweet! We take their email address and keep waiting for the bus. Many buses pass, but at 10:15 one finally puts on its blinker and pulls over. Could this be?! A bus actually stopping at a BUS STOP?! Jeez. We were exhausted and slept for almost the entire 7 hour bus trip back to Split. This bus liked to make lots of stops apparently! We arrived back in the blazing hot sun of Split, 35 hours after we had left it for a DAY trip, with my contacts so dry and glued to my eyeballs, and I've never felt so relieved.

This morning we are heading to Dubrovnik (also in Croatia) either by bus or ferry, we haven't decided yet. The bus is a lot faster, but I have some issues with buses at the moment, so I don't know, we'll see. Anyways, time to go pack!

<3 shanon