I had an early breakfast so that I could catch an early bus to Korčula Town to board the Mljet excursion hydrofoil. Tickets were sold at the boat landing. Diana and Laurie were already there. There were quite a few French passengers but they seemed to be a group of indie travellers rather than a tour group. On the way out we had a retreating view of the town.
There were also spectacular views to the mainland to port.
It took 1h45 to reach Mljet over a somewhat choppy sea. I began to regret having had two cups of coffee that morning because I threw up once in the washroom. The other passengers were not enjoying it either.
We put in at the small port outside the only hotel on the island, the Odisej. From there we were taken on a walk over a low hill to Malo Jezero (Small Lake). This is joined to Veliko Jezero (Large Lake) by a man-made channel. Both used to be freshwater lakes, but unfortunately the monks thoughtlessly changed the ecology forever by digging a navigation channel to the sea turning both into saltwater lakes.
Mljet is associated in legend with Ulysses and the apostle Paul. If you know your Latin, you will recognise that the name comes from Melita (Honey).
We boarded a small launch which took us to Sv. Marija, the monastery on an island in the middle of Veliko Jezero. The guide gave us a potted history of the place then left us some free time to wander the grounds.
I seem to recall (as I did not write this in the journal) reading a plaque testifying that this place was not untouched by the curse of war. It said that a few people had been murdered here and their bodies thrown down a pit, although it might have been during WWII, not the recent Balkan wars.
Back at the hotel, we were served a lunch of baked, somewhat bony fish with salad and bread. Desert was an apple. I supplemented it with a banana of mine. In view of what would happen next, I shouldn't have bothered with lunch.
At departure time the crew announced that the crossing was delayed until the choppy sea calmed down. An hour passed, then two and finally the crew announced that they would attempt the crossing, but it would be very rough. It was so rough that I threw up three times, using up all the sick bags at hand. The French girl next to me was stoically kind, handing me tissues when the bags ran out. I muttered my thanks but I was too weak to talk to her let alone ask her name.
Back in Korčula Town, the company kindly provided three of us passengers who were staying outside town with a taxi ride home since the buses had stopped running at that hour. My stomach couldn't bear the idea of a sit-down dinner so I just ate some muesli and went to bed.
At breakfast I chatted with the landlady. They have visited Sydney before during the 2000 Olympics. They know Croats in the my home suburb and the next one. And then my usual question: Why didn't Serbia let Croatia leave Yugoslavia peacefully? Well, she said, they were used to lording over us and they wanted the coastline. Yes, terrible crimes were committed by both sides.
At the rental office they wanted to hold Diana and Laurie's passports as security and that was not acceptable so they went to another car hire company. They first drove me out to Lumbarda where I had difficulty explaining to the matriarch at the Pansion that I wanted a room. I found that German worked better than Italian. Anyway I'm booked in for 3 nights.
Lumbarda is at the south-eastern tip of the island. We drove west along the southern coastal road and reached a vantage point where we could see Lastovo island, and in the distance, Mljet island.
At the western end we found a nice restaurant in the postcard scenery town of Vela Luka. (Luka means port in Croatian and similar languages, so it's common in place names.)
On the way back, we wanted to take the northern coastal road, and succeeded, after a few false starts. Unfortunately the road petered out after Babina and we had to retrace our way to the backbone road. The maps we had were too optimistic.
Back in Korčula Town, we enjoyed an afternoon break of coffee and cake at a cafe. These cute kittens were playfully tussling on a nearby window ledge. We enquired at a travel agency about excursions to Mljet. Yes, they did run on Wednesdays, such as the day after tomorrow, but the agent could not sell us tickets until Tuesday.
The view from my Pansion is so clear and the air is so fresh that I can understand why German tourists want to come all the way here.
Dusk slowly descended on the town and tranquility ruled.
After dinner at a nearby family restaurant, I settled to reread Jan Morris' Fifty Years of Europe. I enjoyed her delightful observation about European eating habits: The Italians eat most sensibly. The British eat most unhealthily. The Spaniards eat most abstemiously. The Scandinavians eat most fastidiously. The Greeks eat most monotonously. The Belgians eat most indigestibly. The French eat most pretentiously. The Germans eat most.
