On the Adriatic, off the beaten track
sets sail to some of Croatia’s lesser known islands and ports.
On the tiny Croatian island of Zlarin there is an equally minuscule museum devoted to the island’s 400-year heritage of coral diving.
The two-room museum has Roman amphora dredged up from the sea, paraphernalia related to diving for coral... and a wall of poems. The museum guide is enthusiastically explaining about the corals but I’m transfixed by the poetry.
Don’t ask why my strange heart loves you
Do you know how corals are formed at the bottom of the ocean?
Waves are talking about a sleeping beauty
But you live far away from the waves’ voice Your thought is a steep cave Against which my life is crashing in vain
Croatian poet Vesna Parun, who died in 2010, was the author, and once lived on Zlarin; if I was in charge of the tiny museum shop I’d sell more books of Parun’s poetry and less coral. The coral incidentally is strictly protected these days – only a few divers have licences to harvest restricted amounts.
Zlarin, where motor vehicles are banished and the population burgeons from 300 in winter to 3000 in summer, is not as wellknown as some of Croatia’s other Adriatic islands, such as Hvar and Korcula, and therein lies its charm. Visit before or after the peak of summer and there is still room to sit under mulberry trees in the tiny town square at the head of the harbour. There was still space too, for our ‘‘ship of dreams’’, which unlike Parun’s was bluehulled not white, to tie up at the stone pier.
Zlarin lies at the entrance to the St Anthony Channel, a dramatically narrow channel that burrows into the Croatian mainland, its entrance guarded by the 16th century St Nicholas’ Fortress. We motored in, bound for Skradin and Krka National Park.
Krka, with its kaast canyons and travertine cliffs, is a watery world of waterfalls, streams and lakes. It’s a smaller version of the better-known Plitvice National Park but with a fraction of the visitors.
Crystalline waters flow through thick forest, a marked contrast to the landscapes of the islands to the west, where olives, tenacious pines, grapes and herbs cling to arid limestone slopes.
Among the labyrinth of waterways that leads to Krka is the town of Sibenik which, unlike most others in the region, doesn’t owe its origins to the Romans or the Venetians but to the Croatians themselves.
Sibenik was founded by Croatian kings about 1000 years ago and one of its most impressive buildings, other than the massive hilltop fortress that dominates the town, is the Unesco-listed St Jacob’s Cathedral. Construction of the cathedral started in 1431 and took more than a century to complete.
We view the cathedral’s dome (modelled on the Duomo in wooden fishing boats and dinghies still retain their places in the tiny inner harbour with a new marina providing space for yachts and motor cruisers.
We walked around the coast through groves of pine trees and found ourselves in a tiny cove of turquoise water where a few yachts were at anchor.
A man leaned on the balcony of his stone cottage that looked out across the sea. He was Croatian, but from the capital Zagreb. ‘‘But now I only go back there for a month a year and even that is too long,’’ he said gesturing at the view, his grapevines, a pomegranate tree in full bloom and a tiny olive grove.
That evening we ate dinner in a restaurant beside the local boats and close to a 300-year-old palace. There was fresh bread, chilled Croatian white wine, a platter of seabass, prawns and tiny octopus. Our bill was delivered with shots of Croatian walnut liqueur, rich, bitter-sweet orahovac.
The island of Vis was until 1991 a closed military zone as it was a base for the Yugoslavian navy. The Yugoslavs were not the first to recognise its strategic location – it’s the most easterly of all Croatia’s islands. It was once Greece’s largest colony in the Adriatic and over the centuries was controlled by various European powers. During World War II Marshal Josip Tito, partisan leader and later president of Yugoslavia, set up headquarters in a network of caves in Vis’ mountainous interior.
Today, however, Vis is at peace. We anchored first in Stoncici Bay and ventured ashore to walk through a hillside of wildflowers to the only manned lighthouse left on the Adriatic, an octagonal tower built in 1865. The lighthouse keeper let us walk around to the tiny promontory jutting into the sea. Growing among cracks in the retaining walls were wild caper plants, their flowers a spikey froth of violet stamens.
We tied up that evening in the town of Vis – palaces and small houses hugged the shore and bells rang from the church of St Jerome on its own peninsula across the bay.
We walked through stone-paved streets, glimpses of the Adriatic appearing through doors and gateways. Behind a set of rusting gates, a neglected garden lapped around the walls of an old villa, shutters hung lopsidedly from blank windows. I wanted it. I’d drop anchor here and grow capers and make walnut liqueur.