Hosts

My hosts are Filippo, an Italian from near Bologna, and Dayane who met him whilst at university there, having been born and raised in Split. After travelling around Europe selling their homemade, completely natural, traditional herbal remedies they decided to settle and start a retreat / yoga centre in a permaculture garden. Out of the blue an uncle offered them the use of an unused plot of land he owned in the centre of Vis that turned out to be ideally suited to their purpose. So for the last couple of years they have been engaging workawayers to help build a geodesic dome, a small house and the start of various gardens.
During my stay I helped lay the fireplace stones, begin the flooring in the dome and begin a perimeter wall to support a stockproof fence, in this case to keep animals out rather than in.
Any walk with Filippo through the countryside around their home took 5 times longer than necessary as he would stop at every different plant to explain what it was and its medicinal and culinary uses. His knowledge was matched by Dayane who spent large parts of the day wandering around collecting fresh food for dinner. It is no wonder they were vegetarians as we had delicious food for nothing! I found after a couple of weeks that I had not missed meat, at least not the hormone and antibiotic laden, machine killed meats found in supermarkets.
Well, I confess to culinary thoughts about the numerous pheasants flying around but not having my Purdey's to hand I could not bag them.
Also present were two of their friends from Italy, Andrea ( aka SKA,) and Monica . SKA is the overly tatooed man in the work photos and Monica is his slightly less tattoed consort. (Not surprising really, as she is the tatooist and he does piercings to earn their living.) They travel in a Mercedes 310 van with 4 fiercesome pit bull / something mongrels who are actually surprisingly timid and amiable.Read more