Day 82 The still waters run deep!

Monday 11/06/2018 Apartments Cirjak 411 Sveti Petar na moru, Sveti Petar, 23207, Croatia

Up early to get organised to go on our Cruise around the Islands 🌴out front of where we are staying...

The boat we are going on today is a bit bigger than we first planned, the girl we bought the ticket from said there would be about 100 on this cruise....

We had been advised to pre buy our parking ticket that will cover us for the whole day, so yesterday John bought it all we had to do today was find a park... The area around the wharf is pretty busy early in the morning cars and people everywhere... so to find a park just in front of where the boat was leaving from was a bonus...

The boat looks like it might hold about 200 so only having a 100 might not be so bad...
We found a seat down on the main deck inside, deciding if we sat out or in the top deck we would most likely great very sunburnt... they said we could have juice and water free all day... had to laugh 😆 at the juice 🥤, it maze well have been water they had watered it down so far it had only a faint juice colour and taste, but it was wet.... funny thing was as the day progressed so did the dilution of the juice and by late arvo it maze well have been just water with a slight orange shade to its colour more like a pee colour ha ha....

We soon discovered why there were 100 on the boat, a bus 🚌 load of teenagers joined us, with a hum of teen talk soon covering the whole boat... I have decided that it doesn’t matter what language a teen speaks they still all act the same from country to country that has modernisation in it..... some of the not so modern countries you do see a difference. But the girls all dress to impress, the boys all look like they are sulking, all had mobile phones, ear plugs, all chatted and acted just as they do at home.... good to see Teens are the same world over...

So off we set on smooth seas... the islands 🌴 of this area are mainly pretty bare, with only sparse vegetation, they are mainly all limestone unreal to see their structure and the spaces of the Rocks in different patterns... if we had gone down further in the archipelago it would have been bare islands... would so love to see this from above. However these islands were just as fascinating geologically......They call this Zadar Archipelago (info taken from the web).... (The group of over 100 islands, called Zadar archipelago in Norther Dalmatia, represents the real paradise of unspoiled nature, far from the mass tourism like those in the south. Although more numerous but in relatively limited area, often bare, mostly semi abandoned islands, boast with beautiful bays, beaches and lush inland scenery. Most of these off the beaten track islands, mostly lacking in significant tourist facilities, still represent an unavoidable summer destination, sometimes unreasonably bypassed by the major tourist flow.)

This section if the Croatian islands is only part of a massive archipelago system up the west coast of Croatia..... info below on the land of 1,000 islands... I had read somewhere there are 1,258 island unreal.....

If they are all like this I can’t say they are beautiful, but they certainly are interesting to look at... there form, structure and vegetation is so unusual like nothing we have ever seen....

We watched the teens and teacher interaction most of the day and to be honest they were a great bunch of kids... well behaved... usual girl giggles but all in all very good kids...

It was very relaxing just sitting then taking the occasional picture as the islands came and went... the scenery didn’t change that much, just the geological shapes fault lines and lay if the rocks etc... They didn’t supply m/tea so by 1115 I had the shakes and silly me did bring extras as everyone had only some pretzels for our walk this arvo...I checked if I could buy something but they only sold beer and coffee!!! But the nice guy gave me some bread.. that did the trick.. this bread seems to be ok so far... by 1215 they had bought lunch around. a whole small fish, a piece of pork and a sauerkraut type Cabbage they called salad... and a whole bottle of rough red in a plastic bottle... we had a Polish couple sit next to us he could speak English she couldn’t... but they both weren’t too keen on the wine 🍷 either... I find red these days upsets my tummy and knocks the arse off me for some reason.......Most upsetting was I got quite sick most likely from the wine... by this time we had docked at the island where the Salt water Lake is and feeling terrible headed onto land to check it out......

John had planned to walk up the hill to view the massive cliffs that along the sea line facing the sea, away from the Lake, odd the way the whole structure is here! Kind of back the front to what you would think!
Anyway we did walk up the hill, me have a spew as we go... after Gaviscon and Haylee’s magic peppermint balls I finally came pretty good... enough to keep going anyway... feeling yukky I didn’t go in to the Lake... the girl who sold us the ticket told us it has healing qualities [hmmm maybe I should have gone in] and is a bit like the Dead Sea... as we had been in the Dead Sea John could affirm no it’s not like the Dead Sea definitely salter than the outside sea but not as salty or heavy as the Dead Sea...
After his swim we headed back to the real sea had a small ice cream not big which was good... too much and I would be sick again, then a swim in the ocean... the colours of the water are just lovely and a very relaxed spot indeed... finished our swim and time had flown so quickly it was time fir us to revised the boat...

I had forgotten as we were leaving the Lake a young guy I thought was a teacher had pulled us up, he had about 60 kids in tow... he was asking how to get up the hill to view the cliffs.. so John told him... I said to John he must have heard us talking because he spoke to us in English!!! Didn’t think anymore about it until we got on the boat and the young guy come and sat near us and started to chat. Robert Schultz born in Croatia... we had a long Conversation with Robert who I am guessing is about 24-25 max... turns out he is the tour guide fir the high schoolers, they come from Zagreb and are on a 4 day excursion to National Parks, Robert takes high school groups to tour NP’s as he has a diploma in Geography... His plan is to set up his own tour company to take small groups out... we told him we thought that would work as many people travelling would prefer small groups than a large group and many people enjoy National Parks... He picked our brains for over an hour just wanting to talk, really lovely young guy but very serious...
Before we knew it we were back to where we started.. Robert came over to thank us for the chat and we wished him all the best for his future endeavours....

One thing we did note while in the water was the sheer number of Yachts and other small cruiser craft out in the water unreal.... so seeing the Marina pretty full and there were heaps and heaps of boats out there, they must have a huge amount of Yachts..... some would have been private but a lot were hire ones you could tell by their colours... Hiring a boat here would be unreal, as so many islands and so many villages dotted around all the islands, you would never be stuck looking for something to look at here... Certainly not as pretty as the Whitsundays, but probably more to see and do with so many places to stop at if you wanted to... I can see why this industry is thriving here..... just across the water from our apartment is a huge island and we can count at least 7-8 villages we can see and there are a lot more you can’t see... a good places to explore....

We jumped in our car which was still there I was concerned this morning had parked in the wrong spot... but all good must have been right... we headed home, a rest dinner and bed.... another good day...

The Land of 1000 Islands
Igor Rudan

Additional article information

Along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea which belongs mostly to the Republic of Croatia there are more than 1000 islands. Most of these islands are small and uninhabited, with only 15 islands with an area greater than 50 km2, and a population over 1000 (1). Only 47 islands are inhabited and most of them only with a few families. Croatian islands can be divided into two groups: northern and southern. The northern group comprises the islands of the Kvarner bay, Velebit channel, and Zadar archipelago: Krk, Cres, Lošinj, Rab, Pag, Ugljan, Pašman, and Dugi Otok. The southern group includes the islands of the Central and Southern Dalmatia: Brač, Šolta, Hvar, Korčula, Vis, Lastovo, and Mljet. The total area of 47 inhabited islands is 3138 km2, or 5.6% of the total area of the Republic of Croatia. The total population of the inhabited islands is slightly over 100 000 (or slightly more than 2% of the total Croatian population). Today, almost all of the island communities face the problem of depopulation. Before the 1991-1995 War, according to 1991 census, the proportion of persons older than 60 years was 23%; today it amounts to more than a third . The proportion of women aged 20-29 on the islands is about 10% or less, which is considerably below the national average. The main reasons for depopulation of the islands include difficulties in transportation to the mainland in the period outside the tourist season, higher prices of goods, lack of economic resources and workplaces as a consequence of tiny markets, problems in education system due to small number of children, lack of secondary and tertiary health care facilities, and many others. The current population structure of Croatian islands is the result of many changes that occurred during their long, rich, and turbulent history which has been very well documented. Therefore, it represents a rare example of a true “metapopulation,” ie, an extremely sub-structured population and is thus a useful model for many anthropologists, human biologists, and biomedical scientists . The earliest available data show that the eastern Adriatic region was inhabited as early as the Neolithic by non-Indo-European populations. Around the year 2000 BC began the settlement first of Proto-Illyrians, and later Illyrians. In the fourth century BC, first Greek colonies on the Adriatic coast were formed, and the colonization was continued by the Romans during the period between 3rd century BC and 6th century AD . The first great influx of Croats (Slavs) into the area occurred between the 6th and 8th century. The existence of very old Croatian toponyms implies that the Croatians inhabited most of the Eastern Adriatic islands very early, assimilating the remaining Illyrian, Greek, and Roman settlers. In 1409, the whole region, except the islands of Lastovo and Mljet, which were part of Republic of Dubrovnik, fell under the Venetian rule, under which it remained until 1797, when the Venetian Republic was defeated by Napoleon Bonaparte and ceased to exist. During that period, Venetian monopoly resulted in a limited autonomy of the islands..... more on this at this site.... was very interesting.....https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC21…Read more