Hvar and Co.

The Ferry Four
Naill has dubbed himself, Eimear, Simone, and I the "ferry four" as the four of us met crossing over on the ferry from Bari to Dubrovnik. In a repeat performance the four of us headed off to the island of Hvar. Beautiful beautiful place!

Upon arriving at our little island paradise we were "treated" to a horde of room hockers fighting for our wee pennies. Bit weird actually, having 6 different people argue over you. One woman was especially alarming. All the more so because at first glance I thought she had a small sea urchin clinging desperately to her upper lip. Closer inspection (she insisted on talking a whole 2 inches from my face) revealed that it was instead a particularly gruesome hairy mole.

After finding a nice place (not with the urchin woman) we dumped our gear and headed into town. Craving meat we treated ourselves to some pretty good steaks. I say pretty good, because as far as I can tell there aren't a lot of cows on Hvar. Still the night was good. Even more so because we also treated ourselves to 3 litres of potent house white. Having become quite jolly, the evening began to degrade from there. Simone wanted to check out diving centers and I joined her, but in the process we lost Naill and Eimear. Then Simone and I headed into a club (apparently extremely drunk female tourists don't have to pay cover on Hvar!) and then I lost her too after she headed out to find water at the bar. At this point I found myself completely alone in a strange club with double vision. Yikes!

Still, I managed to work things out. After several fantastically unsuccessful attempts to find the appartment in the pitch black streets, I managed to cajole an American guy into being chivalrous and walking me up and down the dark streets. Still no luck in finding the place though. 3am in the morning showed up and I still couldn't find any of the others or the appartment we were staying in. But the manager of the club took pity on me and after showing him the business card of the woman who owned the appartment he grabbed a buddy's motorcycle and gave me a lift up the hill to the door. So weird being driven around in almost pitch black streets, in a town you don't know, clinging to some strange man's back. That's one for the record!

Once I got back I found Simone and the others in bed. Soo glad to have found Simone. We basically spent the next 30mins appologizing for losing and abandoning each other. Apparently she'd spent a stressful night as well desperately trying all the dark stairwells that lead up the hillside in vain hope that one of them would be the right one. We had a huge hug. :)

So let that be a lesson to you. ALWAYS remember landmarks for where your room is!

Rakija
After Hvar the Ferry Four headed up to Zadar and connected up with Verity, Corinna, and Jinny who we'd met in Dubrovnik. (The boys showed up a day later.) The plan was to head to the Paklencia national park and do some hiking. For some reason I had it in my head I'd be hiking in leafy green woods, but instead was transported to the scortching hot surface of Mars. I swear even the tree sap was bubbling. The aim of the hike was to reach this cave and see the stalagtites and stalagmites. Now I had always imagined that caves were near the bottom of mountains. Not so! This beastie lay at the very top of the bloody mountain. Ugh! I nearly died! Still, such a sense of achievement for having done it and not copped out. Go me!

On the way back we passed a stand where a woman was selling home brewed wine and something called Rakija. Now, my friend Marenko had told me a little bit about this particular beverage. So when the crew asked what it was I had his words echoing in my mind. "Sarah, seriously. This stuff is Croatian moonshine. It'll make you go blind." Funnily enough, having passed on those words of wisdom, the warning instead became a selling point and two 1.5 litre bottles were bought. (I say bottles, but really they were reused plastic juice bottles with coca cola caps. So reasurring.) Over the course of the next two nights we came to call this golden pink liquor "magic juice" and as far as I can tell it's basically a grape brandy. But damn is it good! Though Marenko's warning was not without merit, for the guys who indulged severely in the newly monikered magic juice woke up with a hangover which only a quick trip to the guillotine would be sure to cure.

On a completely different note, Corinna the super genius showed me how to upload pictures through Blogger. Apparently it's got it's own photo storage and resize capabilities. So tomorrow I'll treat you all to a select few pictures of the last 2 months.