by Kyle James
7/21/15
Kolocep, Croatia → Mljet, Croatia
When I realized this was the last time I would wake up in this single bed full of sand and dried blood, a deep depression fell over me. We had been having so much fun on this island that I had forgotten we had to leave soon. Part of me wanted to scratch the rest of the trip and settle down here. Start a family and a small business that only provided enough money to live on. Maybe help Narissa out with the kayaks or assist the island grandmother in moving her fresh produce from the ferry to her market.
I had not yet gone to bed in Kolocep without being bloody, drunk, sunburned, or bruised, yet I had loved every minute of it. Although we were already six weeks into our trip, this was our first real adventure. The metropolitan cities of Central and Eastern Europe were amazing and well worth the visits, but they were similar to the United States in many respects. Kolocep, on the other hand, was as slow and simple as a sloth. This rugged mass of land in the Adriatic had brought out the best and worst in us. Kolocep had set free the organic parts of our souls that had been dying to escape for years.
We took our final walk down the 150 steps and parked our packs at the bar to share one last beer with Neil and Bryony. Our boat was “supposed” to arrive soon, but the ferry rarely arrived right on time—another aspect of island living we could get used to: not caring as much about everything having to be on time. We ordered one more big beer and watched as the massive boat curved around the corner of the island and into the cove. Neil and Bryony graciously offered to buy our beers as we pounded them, and then we got in line, waving farewell to our new friends.
We asked the man if this boat was going to Mljet, to which he replied, “No, you need to go to Dubrovnik first.” We nodded and boarded the ferry. The rest, it seemed, we would figure out later.
Our next two hours were spent sitting on top of the boat as we cruised past Kolocep and the other two Elaphiti Islands. We watched the sun set over the water and enjoyed the slight chill of the occasional mist that would wash over on the side of the boat and spray us. Normally, water in our faces would be annoying, but the Adriatic was like our baby girl: she could do no wrong.
We heard over the intercom that we were approaching Mljet, and we headed down into the cabin to prepare to depart the catamaran. When the boat pulled into the port, we were slightly confused. There was a gas station, a rental car shack with a few cars, and a single bus sitting on the one-lane road. The only piece of information we had was that we knew we had to get to the village of Sobra. We stood there aimlessly as everyone seemed to disperse to his or her respective methods of travel. Fortunately for us, we could use the elimination process as good as the next couple, and we walked to the bus.
“Sir, are you going to Sobra?” I asked the bus driver, hoping he spoke English.
He looked at me and said, “Sobra, ten kuna.”
That’ll work, I thought, and handed him the equivalent of a dollar fifty.
The bus then dropped us off and disappeared up a hill. Sobra is a community of houses on a hill, with those closest to the water only yards from the sea. Ash and I stood aimlessly yet again, trying to load the directions from our phones to find Anita, our next Airbnb host. We must have stood out because a woman approached and said, “Hello, I am Anita.” I was surprised she didn’t even ask if we were Kyle and Ash. Must not be too many random tourists around these parts.
We walked to our studio on the water, and it was then that she told us we had been upgraded to the full apartment rather than the studio at no additional fee because we had arrived so late. (I was unsure how this had worked out, but I was not complaining.) We walked into our room and, well … it had character. The view from our long bay windows was amazing—there was nothing but the sea, only twenty feet from our apartment. The rest of the place was a bit more rustic. The bed had one sheet for us to use as covers, and the AC was not on. I quickly turned on the unit, and it sputtered like an old car. We left for dinner to try to give the place time to cool down.
After a nice dinner with the cool ocean breeze as an appetizer, we walked home along the water, ready to call it a night, and prayed that our apartment had cooled off. I had closed all the windows in an attempt to let the AC unit do its job. This plan backfired worse than Prohibition. Our apartment was a hotbox. We both started sweating profusely upon arrival. We were not in Kolocep anymore. How I longed for our porch up on the hill, with the blasting AC and matching twin beds.
7/22/15
Mljet, Croatia
We didn’t wake up—that would require us to have been sleeping in the first place. Frequently throughout the night, we would take turns walking to stand in front of the air conditioner to escape the heat of our bedroom. Every time I would doze off to sleep, I would quickly be shaken awake by my good friend homeostasis, advising me to get my thermostat down if I wanted to rest.
When the sunrise snuck through the cracks in our windows, we agreed it was an acceptable time to wake up and start cooking the breakfast we’d picked up at the small market the night before. We ate eggs and the off-brand version of the off-brand version of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. After breakfast, I went to take a cold shower to rinse the sweat of the night off my skin when all of a sudden the light turned off.
“Ash, knock it off. I am in no mood for shenanigans.”
But she replied with the five worst words since “I didn’t get the video.”
“The power just went out.”
No big deal, I thought. I don’t need the light to shower. I dried off and went to read the rest of the news on my Twitter feed. Shit, no Wi-Fi. Now heating up again, I walked to the AC unit to get some sort of relief, but there was no air coming out. I wanted to alert Anita of our situation, and went to send her a message about our power outage. Shit. No Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi and AC were the two most important of our four prerequisites when looking for an Airbnb; now we were without both. Unable to do much else, we left to rent mopeds so we could get around the island for the week we were here.
The port was only two miles away, so we started the trek up the hill. The heat was blistering, but the view of the water refreshed us as we continued to climb.
Halfway up the hill, my left knee started throbbing. This knee sucked. I know that is pretty vague as far as a diagnosis goes, but I’ve never figured out what is wrong with it. I am assuming it’s some type of tendonitis, but without an MRI, there’s no way to be certain. I inherited my uncle Dave’s bad knees. I can only hope I inherited some of his writing skills as well. He is a wizard with words, the Dumbledore of poetry.
We arrived at the moped shack, but there was no one inside. I walked to the souvenir shop next door and asked if the woman knew where the moped rental shop owner was.
“I am the owner,” she proudly proclaimed. She walked out from behind the souvenir counter and into the shack next door. This was one way to cut labor costs.
We told the woman we wanted to rent two mopeds.
“Okay, do you have experience driving mopeds?” she casually asked.
Ash immediately blurted out, “Nope,” honestly and cheerfully. Dammit, Ash, this is like when the laser tag instructor asks if you have ever played laser tag. You always reply yes to skip the tutorial of “Here is your trigger; aim the gun at everyone you see.” Just hand me the laser, boss, so I can light these six-year-olds up.
To my surprise, the lady didn’t even offer a tutorial; she just said she could not rent one to Ash. She told us there had been far too many people injured recently on the island, and that there was no hospital; so if anyone was seriously hurt, they had to get a helicopter to Dubrovnik for treatment. This fact actually worked out well, because they had big mopeds equipped for two people, and renting only one for the week would save us 150 dollars.
Before we left the shop, Ash walked over to the Mljet visitors’ office to meet a girl named Metka. Ash’s dad worked with a man whose daughter happened to be on the island. The man and his family were from Zagreb, but
they had a vacation house here, and Metka and her mother were visiting for the summer. Ash returned with plans to hang out with Metka and her mom at the Mljet National Park tomorrow. Then she got situated on the back of the moped, holding on to my sides and leaving me just enough space to get my feet on the pedals. We sped up the hill.
The wind in my face felt so good. I imagined this was what it must feel like to be a dog with a face full of fur. When we reached the intersection to go back to Sobra, we banked left and headed to the villages in the other direction.
When you don’t have seat belts and are just sitting on a seat in the open air, going forty-five miles per hour feels like going ninety. We flew down the coast on a road that resembled Highway 1 in California. To our left was the rugged mountainside, and to our right, a deep cliff hanging over what looked like endless light-blue sea. We were in a moving postcard.
We spent the rest of the afternoon village-hopping up and down the south side of the island. There were only a few villages, and some had just a couple of houses and markets, but in each place we found someone selling some sort of food or beverage.
We zoomed down the mountain to the last village of the day: Prozura, a small fishing town nestled on the banks of a cove surrounded by islands. Upon arriving in the village, the road that also served as a sidewalk quickly turned into one lane. I felt like I was in a video game as I weaved past street vendors, fishermen hauling their daily catches, and parked cars that looked like they were from the eighties. There were waitresses walking between cafés and the patio seating on the water. I sped under a fortress-like arch made of stone and skidded to a halt outside the last café in the village. Call me Bond. (Kyle) James Bond.
We stayed in Prozura until dusk, watching the sailboats change colors with the sky. As it got darker, it became much more dangerous for moped travel, so we headed home. When we arrived in Sobra, we careened down into our village.
The power was indeed back on, but the AC unit had to be manually restarted. The place was once again a furnace, and the power flickered off and on again. It was going to be a long night of restarting the AC unit. Sleep was a distant thought at this point.
7/23/15
Mljet, Croatia
We managed to get a bit more sleep than the night before, as the island air had cooled down to the low eighties overnight. This was chilly as far as Mljet was concerned. I couldn’t imagine being excited to sleep in eighty-degree temperatures back home. We ventured down to the café to meet up with Metka and her mother to go to the national park.
These two were very serious people. Not in a negative way; they were just serious. At the same time, they were extremely nice. It just wasn’t the Southern charm–type of nice that has hidden motives and fluffy, bullshit compliments—no, their kindness was sincere.
The check arrived, and Metka’s mother grabbed it. (I keep saying Metka’s mother because I can’t pronounce her name, let alone spell it. My best guess would be Svetsaladana. Let’s go with Svets for short.) So Svets grabbed the check, but Ash asked if she could pay for our pizza. Svets put her finger in Ash’s face and said sternly, “No.” Then she smiled and walked to the register.
On the twenty-mile ride across the island to the park, Svets led the way in her car as Ash and I followed on our moped. Svets had offered to drive us, but I wanted to cruise the coastline on our bike and feel the fresh sea breeze.
Thirty minutes later, we reached the Mljet National Park and cruised through the village of Polače, located inside. This town reminded me of a mini-Dubrovnik and was vibrant with fishermen and restaurants. (This is where we would have stayed had we known anything about Mljet before this week.)
By the time we’d parked and put our helmets in the compartment of our moped seat and walked to the kiosk, Svets had already paid for our entries to the park. She handed us a few day passes.
The four of us walked slowly down a hill, passing olive tree fields until we reached the centerpiece, Veliko Lake. Svets led us onto a small taxi-boat to cross the lake to St. Mary Island.
After a short ride across the water, we reached an island that hosted an old Roman Catholic church that had been there since the twelfth century. We toured the ancient structure as Svets gave us a history on the ancient ruins and the island as a whole. One particular story stood out to me.
It turns out, Mljet used to be infested with venomous snakes. It became very dangerous for its inhabitants, as they had no antivenom anywhere on the island. If someone was bit, they had to go to Dubrovnik to recover. Not an ideal situation. So they brought in Mongoose Team 6. The mongooses slowly cleared the island of snakes.
It took us an hour to circle the monastery before we headed back to the boat to ride to a small lake. As we were waiting to board, Svets pointed out a tall yellow-flowered plant. It looked more like a tree, as it rose ten feet in the air.
“The agave flower,” Svets said, pointing to the large bud. “Agaves only bloom once, and their flower stands beautifully in the air above all other plants, out of reach of animals. But once they die, they die forever and do not rebloom.” She boarded the boat as I stood there, contemplating this flower.
These plants, somehow through evolution, decided that it was worth it to live a shorter yet more magnificent life than a monotonous, longer life. Sure, they only got to bloom one time, but would you prefer to bloom once and live a magnificent life, swaying in the sky, or bloom every year and get eaten by obnoxious rodents or stepped on by toddlers? I would choose YOBO: You Only Bloom Once.
We headed back across the glass-like water on our small skiff, and when we reached the cars and began our heartfelt good-bye, Svets waved her finger and invited us to come eat watermelon. It seemed like an odd request, but there was no way we were going to turn it down.
Svets told stories about her life in the region while she sat smoking Croatian cigarettes. I noticed a hole in the middle of the concrete and asked Svets if it was some sort of drainage system. “No,” she casually replied. “That is the top of a large anthill.” She told us the ants had survived all the construction, so by the time they’d laid the terrace with concrete, she’d left a hole at the top of their colony so they could continue to survive. If they had survived all that construction, they deserved to live.
“Well, what happens if they start infesting the house?” I asked with honest curiosity.
“Well, then we close the hole,” she replied, smiling and blowing out the last of her cigarette smoke.
7/24/15
Mljet, Croatia
I woke up covered in sweat as Ash buzzed around, going through her morning routine. It was amazing how this routine was transforming from our days in Denver. To start, it began around 9:00 a.m. rather than 5:45 a.m. (contributing to a major difference in attitude and overall morale). Second, she used to take an hour to pick out an outfit, put on makeup, and “fix her hair” (as it if were broken). Now her routine had been trimmed down to fifteen minutes and consisted of putting on a bathing suit with a tank top and gym shorts, lathering on sunscreen, and putting her hair in pigtails or a topknot.
We jumped onto the moped to get the show on the road. When we reached the end of a long street, we followed the path to a secret beach that Metka had told us about. She’d also told us that a few venomous snakes that had survived the mongoose slaughter had recently fallen out of trees, landed on people, and bitten their faces. With this knowledge, we kept our helmets on as we walked under the thick brush overhead.
I captured Ash’s beautiful features with her Canon camera all afternoon as she played along the rocks. I had become overly fascinated with taking pictures with the camera since arriving in Croatia. The landscape obviously assisted in this newfound passion, with its arid cliffs, powder-blue water, and lush forests.
7/25/15
Mljet, Croatia
We decided to head back to the national park today to take advantage of the free passes Svets had given us. We got situated on the moped, and I tried to start the ignition. The damn thing s
puttered for five seconds but wouldn’t catch. I tried it again—nothing. I filled her up yesterday, so what’s the problem? On the third try, she turned on just long enough for me to rev the throttle and get going. This was a great feeling, similar to finally getting the lawn mower to start after minutes of out-of-control cord cranking.
As we headed up the hill and banked onto the main road, I noticed it was blistering hot. Most days the air became cooler when we’d sliced through it, but today the heat stood its ground. We made it halfway to the park and were in the middle of nowhere when we spotted an amazing view of the coast between two mountains where the canyon below met the sea. I pulled the moped over to snap a picture. As I was taking the shot, I heard the moped turn off behind me.
“You don’t have to turn it off, baby,” I said through squinted eyes, trying to capture the perfect shot.
“I didn’t touch anything,” Ash replied, confused.
I walked back to her and the bike and wiped my brow. From only standing there for one minute, my entire forehead was soaked in sweat. I tried to restart the moped, but she just sputtered once again. I tried numerous times, but the sputtering began to simmer down to a soft hum. By the fourth or fifth try, there was no noise at all. She was completely dead. And I was afraid we were too.
