Saturday – end of week 3

What a day we had today. The drive from Rovinj (pronounced Roveen) to Zigovošće (pronounced Zeegovosh) was supposed to take five and a half hours according to Michelin, but ended up taking over 9, with only two short stops – one for comfort and one for petrol. We found out at the end of the day that Saturday was the first day of the school holidays, which explains the 16km (2 hour) tailback to get through one of the tunnels and then another hour to get through another tunnel and then the crawl along the coast road from Split to Zigovošće. Needless to say, we arrived at our apartment at the end of the day hot, tired and grumpy.

Anyway the roads themselves were largely great. From Zagreb down to Split is a dual carriageway with a 130k speed limit (meaning unlimited). It has endless tunnels, two of them were up to 6 kms long and many over a kilometer. The amazing thing is they all appear to be new. The motorway is being extended from Split to Dubrovnik and will be completed by next year. I only mention the roads because of the endless discussion and constant inaction we have around Wellington on road construction. As a further example, there is an 8km stretch of coast on the road to Dubrovnik that belongs to Bosnia, so you have to do a border crossing to travel from one end of the country to the other. The Croatians aren’t happy about this and are going to build a bridge out into the Adriatic to go around Bosnia – brilliant.

Anyway, we’re now in Zigovošće. Zigovošće is on the Dalmatian Coast between Split and Dubrovnik at the foot of the Biokovo massif. The Biokovo massif makes for a very dramatic setting, with the small towns nestled next to the sea at the foot of the mountains rising straight out of the Adriatic. The island of Hvar (one of Croatia’s hotspots) is just a couple of miles off the coast and there are many other islands that you can take car ferries or tourist boats to, so visiting them and Dubrovnic will take up a large portion of the week, along with some R&R on the beach.

The beaches on the coast are not the white sands that we are used to, but white golf ball size pebbles which move like quick sand when you try and make a graceful entrance or exit from the water. The pebbles are the reason that the Adriatic is so Crystal clear – they don’t get churned up. The Adriatic is also a very calm sea – you can drive a 15ft runabout from Croatia to Italy - 123 kilometres away - with no worries, and many Yugoslavs did that in the late 1950’s to escape communist rule.

The apartment is very nice – it’s the second storey in a 4 storey house on a steep hill and we have a massive balcony with views out over the Adriatic. The owners live on the floor above us and they are a really interesting couple and delightful hosts. Zigovošće has a number of small restaurants and a massive hotel at the far end – the hotel Nimfa, which despite the implication of the name looks like hell on earth. It has an all inclusive restaurant and a disco. (no, we are not saying this because we went to it)!