Croatia

I would like to apologize for the delays in my posting. Last week Laura and I were in London and only had access to an iPad. As amazing as it is for web browsing, it is not the best means of blogging. As you know Laura, Ashley and I were last in Croatia. After a few days in Dubrovnik and a disastrous all-day car ride we finally made it to Split. Our original plan was to spend the night in Split and then head off to the island of Hvar. However the great part about traveling is that plans can change. We ended up renting a 2 bedroom apartment in Split for three nights and instead decided to take a few day-trips. 

All set in our new (automatic) rental, the first day we headed to Krka National Park. Located 2 hours outside of Split- this car ride was a breeze (especially compared to our last one!). Named after the Krka River, the Park covers an area of just over 142 square km and includes two thirds of the river itself. The top sight in the park is its magnificent waterfalls, including the famous Skradinski Buk falls which are one of Croatia's most famous sights. While you are able to swim (only at the bottom falls) we opted not to as there were so many fish. Here is something I did not know about Laura before. She is TERRIFIED of fish. She is ok with tropical fish whilst diving/snorkeling, however put here in a body of water where she cannot see them swimming and she freaks out! So needless to say, after we walked around the park for a few hours we decided to head back to Split.

The next day we decided to visit the famous Hvar. The island of Hvar is the queen of the Croatian Dalmatian islands. We had heard that it was the place to see and be seen. This was not the case when we were there. The main town seemed rather abandoned and most of the shops and restaurants were closed. Perhaps this was due to the fact that Croatia´s tourism starts in July. We were glad we made it out for the day as it was a beautiful town, but we were happy with our previous decision to not stay overnight. Laura and I have decided that on our next trip to Croatia we want to hire a yacht and visit all of the coastal areas for a few weeks. Maybe then we can party like rock stars in Hvar!

Ashley was flying out one day before Laura and I so we headed to Zagreb for one last night as a trio. That night we went out to dinner at a traditional Croatian food. Now let me tell you there is no such thing as Croatia food. Croatian cuisine is known as the cuisine of regions, since every region has its own distinct culinary traditions. We found that in the south it was mainly influenced by Italy (though sub-par) and in the north more Hungry. That night we had our best meal in Croatia - beef stewed in wine and vegetables with gnocchi. MMMMM!

Our last day Laura and I visited Plitvice Lakes. Plitvice Lakes is breathtakingly beautiful. It’s a national park composed of 16 turquoise lakes and waterfalls.  We walked the 4 hour trail around the Upper and Lower lakes in awe the entire time. I do not think the pictures fully do it justice.

This car ride is a joke!

After having such a great time together in Dubrovnik, we convinced the Aussie girls to rent a car and caravan to Split with us instead of taking a flight (which they had planned to take, but had not booked yet.) I bet you they are wishing they hadn't listened to us! We woke up Friday morning a little hazy from the night before (the buck's night/hen's party). At breakfast Mika, the wonderful lady at our hostel told us that it was so smart of us to have rented a car! We would definitely be (about 200km north of Dubrovnik) in 3 hours no problem!  Well let's just say the day didn't go quite as easily as Milka had predicted... in fact it was quite the opposite. I think Laura said it best in a text to Nat when she said "This car ride is a joke!" Here are the top ten reasons (in chronological order) as to why:

Lia taking the wheel!

1)     So let me back track a bit and explain the driving situation. When Laura booked the car online before we left there were no options for automatic. For those who have traveled outside of the US you know that this is quite standard. Well neither Ashley nor I know how to drive a manual car and Laura's only experience was one week in Australia back in 2007. So needless to say she was a little weary about how the week would go. Our first night in Dubrovnik we decided as long as we didn't have to go up any hills we would be a-okay. Problem is, Croatia is ALL hills. Ok so, moving onto Friday morning. As I mentioned we were not in tip top shape, so driving into town to meet the girls was quite the task…. Quickly we realize Laura was not going to be able to drive that day. Luckily Lia, an experienced manual transmission driver, was kind enough offers to drive. Before we left Lia was freaking out because everything was backwards compared to cars in Australia. It took her a few moments to gather her cool and figure out the shift and clutch with her opposite hand and foot. After a while she got the hand of it.... We just had to constantly remind her what side of the road the cars were on every time the turned a corner.

2)     Hangover from hell + looking at photos on the very curvy roads of Croatia = Puke City

Looks like a cute pic of the girls until you notice me dying in the corner!

3)     After about an hour of driving we decided to pullover for lunch. After a few minutes Nat looks at her phone and says "Um guys? I think were in Bosnia..." Yeah right... then we looked down at the menu (that was extremely cheap) and noticed that the cover did read "Hotel in Bosnia and Herzegovina". Hmm ok maybe... Still not convinced we decided to ask the waiter probably the most ridiculous question ever, "excuse me, what country are we in?" Turns out Nat was right...we made our way into Bosnia, but on earth did that happen? Turns out there is a little sliver of the country that comes out to the coast in between Croatia. It should have dawned on us when we passed border patrol and they asked for our passports - but in the state we were in we just assumed that it was a check, I mean they didn't stamp our passports! We remedied that out the way out and made sure to ask for a Bosnian stamp on our way out of the country a few kilometers up the road.

Waiting for the cop to write the ticket...

4)    Back on the road, happy as can be... We didn't make it too far before getting stuck behind a huge truck going a snails pace. The roads are only one lane and really windy so we were following slowly for what seemed like an eternity...then we finally got to a straight road with enough room to pass! As we zipped around the truck we saw an oncoming car that appeared to be a police car. He flashed his lights for a second and then continued past us. We were all a little jostled, but figured that he was just doing that to be smug. I mean what did we do wrong... I will tell you - I guess the one time the road was actually straight (i.e. the ONLY safe time to pass the truck) the line center divide line was solid (i.e. a no passing zone). Did we realize this as we were passing.... of course not! We were thinking this is a good time to pass, as opposed to the other cars who were being deadshits (Aussie term for lowlife/retard) and whipping around the truck at any blind turn.

Well the same cop who passed us came back to pull us over about a mile down the road.... he didn't seem to see our reasoning. We were convinced that we could just play the "stupid tourist" card on him and he would let us go with a warning....but no. He said we had to pay him 500 kuna ($100) on the spot and if we didn't have it we would have to follow him to "judge." After pleading with him for awhile, and a couple of conversations we couldn't understand with his colleague, all of a sudden it was now 300 kuna we had to pay him. Fine. We didn't want to deal with the process of following him to a judge so we gave him 300 kuna and planned to get back on the road to meet up the other girls who were giving us "What the hell?!" stares from their car. Then, after we had already paid him (what I assume was a bribe bc who pays fines on the spot!?) he proceeded to take another million years to write us a ticket. Because that was necessary.

5)      Deciding to laugh off our first incident we got back on the road. Mind you we were already 2 hrs in and only about a third of the way to Split. Oh well we would make up time. Or so we thought. We didn't really take into account any other problems. That was until all of a sudden we hear a loud boom/crash noise. At first I thought we hit something but Lia quickly realized we blew a tire as the car begins to swerve a bit. She miraculously pulls over to the side of the road into a look out point (I guess luck was on our side there?). "I know how to change a flat tire so no worries!" says Laura. So we go into the back to pull out the spare and found a warning triangle and reflective vest which we quickly donned. Half as a joke, but honesly it was a good idea - those Croatians drive sooo fast around the small windy roads.

We got out all the gear, but the bolts were screwed on too tight for any of us to make them budge. At this point it had been about 10-15 minutes since we had been on the side of the road clearly in distress.  Guess how many people stopped to offer help? ZERO. I would guess that about 30 cars passed without so much as slowing down. Keep in mind that we are 4 girls (in reflective vests!) on the side of the road with our spare tire out and our hands raised trying to flag down the cars....and still NO ONE STOPPED! And this included a cop car! Sure pull us over when you want our money but no need to pull over to see if we need help. We are just sitting on the side of the road in the blistering heat for fun! We finally found a man who was nice enough to help us (that is after I flagged him down and pleaded with him). He actually turned out to be really nice, despite the fact that he spoke ZERO English.

6)     So...off again! Heres where it started to get comical. As we were going about 130 km/hr on the highway, a MASSIVE beetle flew into the window and smacks me sqauare in the face. I immediately screamed as it bounced off my head and in between my seat and the door. Lia asked if she needed to pull over, but I said as long as the bug was dead it couldn't harm us... then it started squirming around and causing all 4 of us to scream in fear. Lia decided to pull over so I could flick it out the car.

7)    The other car thought we were cursed as they had to continuously wait for us. Though as they were leading the way I blame them (rather their GPS) for the next one. After about 30 minutes of driving on deserted and really treacherous mountainous roads (rocks were literally falling off the cliff as we were driving past) we come to a construction site where the road disappeared into a terrifying 3km shear drop... I guess they were in the process of blasting the mountain to build the road... "Thank you GPS in the future I think we'll stick to the old fashioned road map!" - Nat. Heading back out we realized we passed a HUGE sign saying road closed... Oops!

8)     Ok back on the road, we have rerouted where to go. New problem - we are almost out of gas. And of course we are in the middle of no where. When we finally come across one off the freeway only to discover that it is closed… of course! Luckily we were able to make it to another one before running out.

9)     After all that we made it to the airport to drop our Aussie ladies off. We decided it may be a good idea to rid ourselves of the crappy manual transmission car and no spare tire...and get a shiny new automatic car. It cost us 350 euro more to do so...but it was worth it. That car was BAD LUCK. Plus now we can all drive.

10)     So remember how Milka told us the car ride should only take about 3hrs tops? Well... We left at 12:30pm and didn't arrive in the main town of Split until 10:00pm.

Yeah so like I said.... This car ride was a joke! Yet despite all this, we can only look back on that day and laugh because we actually DID have a really good time!

Girls’ Holiday

While we were in Istanbul Laura noticed on Facebook that her Ausie friends Nat and Lia were in town. The trouble with traveling is we do not have cell phones to easily call or use internet on, so we had to rely on FB communication in our attempts to meet up. Needless to say, we were unsuccessful. Laura was excited when she saw that they were also in Mykonos the same time as we were, but again using FB only when we could make it to the internet made it quite hard to find them. Clearly it was meant to be as we ended up running into them on our flight to Croatia! The ladies were traveling with two other friends, Michelle and Ereni. From the moment we arrived in Dubrovnik it became a lovely little girls’ holiday! We had such an amazing time with these girls and were so sad to say goodbye to them!

Our first day we went to a little island off Dubrovnik called Mljet (pronounced Milyet – though I kept calling it Midget bc the l looks like a capital i). Mljet is considered to be one of the most beautiful of the Croatian islands. It is most known for its two salted lakes - Veliko and Malo Jezero that are located at the north end of the island. We rented bikes and rode around the lakes. So remember how I decided I was not a mountain biker back in April? Well add 1.5 months of zero exercise (unless you consider walking down the block to the beach as exercise?) and about 30 degrees more heat (~90°F). Luckily the ride was no where near as hard as Bariloche, but boy did I realize I am out of shape!

(Left to right: Michelle, Ereni, Lia, Laura, Nat, Ashley and Me)

After the ride we decided we needed to reward ourselves with some cocktails while we waited for the boat back to town. We ordered one of the Ausie girls’ favorite drinks (in Croatia it’s called a rattler, I forget the name of it in Australia) - half beer/half sprite (which I guess they call lemonade in Oz). They were quite refreshing and very delicious! We decided to keep the party going on the ferry ride back to town and then went for a nice dinner on the promenade near our hostel.

The next day was spent on the beach (gotta keep up our tans). That night we visited the amazing Old Town. Old Town and its many sights (including the well-preserved city walls along which you can walk) is the main sight of Dubrovnik. I was told that it would be ridiculously hot if we went mid-day so we decided to head over there a little before sunset. After spending about an hour window shopping around town we decided to head up to the walls.

After taking about 1,000 photos we were all ready to eat! Dinner turned into quite the night… at dinner Laura and I convinced Lia and Erine to extend their travels and meet up with us in Central America after they did The States. Clearly we had to celebrate – so every time our liter bottle of wine was empty I would yell “more wine!” In total I think we had about 7 liters of wine between 6 of us.

As we were about to pay our bill a group of guys dressed in yellow shirts came running past. One was in a super-hero outfit. We discovered that this was a buck’s night celebration (bachelor party). After putting on a show for us and taking several pictures, they convinced us to follow them to another restaurant where they would be meeting the hen (bachelorette) party and together the group would go to a “discothèque”.  It ended up being the most random hilarious night ever!

My Summer Itinerary

After 8 months of living in Buenos Aires I leave today at 6:30pm.  While I am SOO sad to leave this wonderful city and all of my new friends I am really excited to embark on a new journey. I will be heading to Europe for the month of June to travel with my friend Laura. We will then head to Central America for the months of July and August before heading back to The States Sept 1. This will my longest backpacking experience - 100 days total. This is 23 days more than my trip last summer!

Argentina > Turkey on Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Turkey > Greece on Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Greece > Croatia on Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Croatia > London on Tuesday, June 21, 2011
London > Honduras on Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Honduras > Belize > Guatemala > Nicaragua >  Costa Rica >  Panama during July and August, 2011
Panama > LAX on Thursday, September 1, 2011

Thank you to all who have started following my blog again.  I promise to keep up-to-date on my travels!  I hope you enjoy!