Thur 26th Apr 2017 - Mon 8th May 2017 // Written by Clément
Vidéo of the country : AroundEarth: Croatia
-As we staid 11 days in Croatia, doing a day per day report seemed long and boring so we will do a little different this time and go through it city by city-
*Pula
On Thursday 27/08, we were doing our first steps in Croatia in Pula, a city with a rich and complex history that you can still feel today through the numerous Greek like ruins, especially a magnificent and famous amphitheater. We walked all day in this gorgeous city, but after a few days in big cities, we wanted some peace and nature and headed further on the coast and slept near Rabac, a small city on the way.
On the next morning, the rain was still there, and maybe even more violent than the day before. Not being able to do anything under the rain, we were both getting frustrated and feeling like we were losing our time. A quick check online enabled me to see that it was supposed to keep raining all day, but apparently it wasn’t the case further south, so we decided to head to Zadar. We drove all day under a crazy rain, most of the villages we crossed were almost flooded and on the small roads of mountains above the Mediterranean Sea, most of the other drivers were stopping on the side of the road, too afraid to continue. But we had known worst and we arrived without major complication.
*Zadar & Novalja
Around 5pm we arrived to Zadar, and as expected the rain stopped. We walked in this city that was looking a bit like Cannes, many yachts, luxurious buildings, and a nice promenade along the see with this very famous wind organ, but nothing truly remarkable. We thus left the city for a small island connected to Zadar by a bridge. It was a bit randomly decided, and we’ve been really surprised to see the place was incredible. The road took us to this place looking like a different planet: sea on every side of us, mountains behind the sea, and a ground full of white rocks and dust where nothing grows. At the end of this road: Novalja, the Croatian Ibiza. Unfortunatly we were there out of the season, but you can feel that night life is flourishing there in summer.
After a good night, we decided to take a pretty unique walk to the edge of island on the rocks. Hunger came with the effort, but before having our food, we had to wander from shop to shop for a while, as we were out of gas for the cooker… After many disapointments, we hopefully found an Intersport that was selling loads for our device (thank you france). In quest of water, we found the GPS to what looked like a lake, and discovered that it was actually a national park where we found some incredible waterfalls, where we spent the afternoon. As we already had done more than 2500 km in 10 days, that’s to say twice what we were supposed to do, we tried to find a place near some water, the beach, and a town center. We settled in Sibenik after finding there everything we needed.
*Å ibenik
Settled in Sibenik for some days at least, we decided to do the chores needed. We filled bottles and showered on the parking, after cleaning our clothes under the amused looks of passers-by. We spent the afternoon in the city, making our own path and crawling under some grids when needed. After finding an outlet in the street, we plugged all our devices for a quick charge, gave some news and photos to our families, ate, and went back on the beach near the van for the sunset.
Still in contact with some local Rotaract clubs, we learnt that the refugee camp we had scheduled to visit in Slavonski Brod had been closed at the beginning of the month, and our plan for giving away the collected stuff vanished. We thus looked for a plan B and quickly found a place in Belgrade, where a Serbian artist has decided to dedicated a big house in the town center to host refugiees. Seduced by this great idea we decided it would be the perfect place to go.
After 2 nights in Sibenik, it was time to move. As we were supposed to meet Lucas, Maeva and their friends in Split on Tuesday, we decided to start closing the gap. We found some beaches near Split with a great view and cute villages and we settled there for the day. We almost parked on the beach, just near a working shower (rare thing in the country) and a water point. The sunset on the village was wonderful, colors seemed from another world and we spent the evening contemplating it while doing some ricochets.
*Split
Meeting Lucas and his friends in Split had been a lot of fun. Speaking to some people after several days by ourselves was pleasant, and we walked all day in Split, a city is full of life and history which is the 2sd biggest of Croatia, and famous for the deomatien’s palace. Lucas and his friends had to go back to school unfortunately, and after this day of wandering and having fun, we decided with Jordan that we will spend the evening jumping in the sea from rocks.
On the following day, we found a Bar with Wi-Fi and electricity where we spent quite some time. Once we were on point on our Facebook and YouTube, we went back to the see, where we found old Croatian guys playing blitz chess (that's to say with only 4 min of time to play the game), so we decided to duel them! This was a lot of fun, but quite unsuccessful as we both got destroyed quickly. Wanting to meet some new people, we went in town and met around 10 people, mostly from England and Canada travelling around. We partied in bars, played some games and talked, before going back to the van for the night with Jordan.
*Makarska
Our next step after Split was Makarska, so we headed there. The road was punctuated with unpredicted stops as usual, but we arrived and spent some days there. After finding a cat Island and spending some time observing their organization and life, we tried to find some place to plug the van and play some music, but couldn’t unfortunately… The city was quite small yet very nice, surrounded by mountains and sea, but we quickly saw that there wasn't much to do for us there.
*Dubrovnik
Listening for the advices of our friends, we then went to Dubrovnik, very nice and famous city, especially since most of Game of Thrones has been recorded there. To go there, we had to cross a part of Bosnia, and as usual, the van was rigorously controlled and searched at the border, asking us if we had some weed and if they had to send dogs. But the guard was nice at the end, and managed to cross the border without more troubles. It was already late so we slept in Bosnia, in a very small village only connected to the town by a 7km dirt road, and the next morning, we were back in Croatia, in Dubrovnik. The city really is wonderful, with incredible walls and medieval buildings, but unfortunately way too touristic. Everything is expensive, there are no free parking, and fines for not paying parking are around 100€ (we had 2)! Still, we had three British friends met in Split that were coming there so we decided to wait for them and spent a night with them.
On the next day, after visiting the city, we joined our friends at their hostel, where we could take a hot shower and enjoy some British tea. We went out for a vegan restaurant and spent the night in a bar near our van. Tired of having 100€ fines every day, we decided to leave the town straight after the party and slept neat the Bosnian border as it was the next step.
It was Monday 8/05, we had been in Croatia for 11 days and it was time to discover Bosnia and start the humanitarian part, even if we knew we would eventually miss those awesome coasts. But we also knew we would come back to this incredible place one day.