Once we made it back to mainland Croatia, the drive south along E65 was easily as beautiful as Highway 1 in California. The perfectly paved 2 lane road hugged the coastline as jagged karsk mountains jutted up above us to the east and rocky islands dotted the aqua blue water of the Adriatic Sea to the west. It only took us a couple hours to make it to Stari Grad Paklenica, and I would have been happy with it taking 10 hours. Also, you know you are on a beautiful and scenic road when you pass multiple packs of motorcyclists and every other restaurant advertises “Biker Discounts – 10% off”!

The rain started when we were about 20 minutes away from our next apartment, and continued off and on for the next three days. We made the most of it by staying inside and catching up on rest, hiking through Paklenica National Park (best hike ever), and running from overhang to overhang in the downtown area of Zadar. Then on the third day, the North Wind came and pushed the bad weather out and brought in perfectly still days with sunshine and blue skies from dawn until dusk for our final 2 days. We went on another hike in the park, and continued to relax on our seaside balcony. The small town of Stari Grad was a great home base for exploring the Paklenica/Zadar area and gave us some much needed time away from a city.

Useful Links:

Paklenica National Park

Nik’s Blog: Starigrad, Zadar, Paklenica National Park, Croatia

On the third leg of our road trip, we drove along the remaining coast of the Istrian Peninsula and over a bridge onto Krk Island. Along the way, we stopped in the tiny coastal town of Mošćenice for lunch at Tu Tamo. I found the restaurant via a travel app, and it was one of my favorite meals of the trip so far. Nik ordered the wild boar stew, and I hoped to have the beef stew, but it had not been made that day. Instead, the owner recommended I try the Crni Rižot (Black risotto) which is a traditional Croatian dish made with squid, cuttlefish, risotto, and squid ink that makes it black. It was the best mixed seafood dish I have ever had. Also, to make the stop even better, we sat on the terrace with a view of the restaurant garden and the Adriatic Sea with Krk & Cres Islands and the city of Rijeka in the distance. If I ever own a house, this is the view I want. City on one side. Nature on the other.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the Istrian coast is littered with large and small campgrounds. After seeing them on our drive to Rovinj, I decided to do some research to see if we could find one to stay at as well. The trick was to find a place where we had all of the comforts of an apartment (private bath, regular bed, kitchen) but the setting of a campground. Luckily, campgrounds often rent out mobile homes equipped with all of these amenities. However, most looked worn out and best suited for my grandparents. Then I found Camp Bunculuka. Their mobile homes here are new, nicely furnished, and not set up in a grid where each home is on top of the next one. They even had “romantic” options specifically designed for couples where the windows and patios look directly out towards the sea. The was only one catch. It is a naturist camp meaning that when you are on the beach, clothing is not allowed. Elsewhere, clothing is optional. We went back and forth about whether we would be comfortable, and ultimately decided that this is a trip for new experiences and we wouldn’t see anything we haven’t seen walking down the streets of San Francisco. So why not?

When we arrived, the weather was turning cold and rainy, and the place was empty. Of the possible 1,200 visitors the campground can accommodate, I estimate only 100 were there, and no one was outside. Nik and I had blog posts to catch up on, so we bunkered down in our 250sf home for about 36 hours and let the winds shake our walls and rains drench the beach. Once it let up, we went to the beach for about 30 minutes before the rain started again and made sun bathing impossible. Instead, we went out on foot to hike through sheep pastures to a secluded bay on the eastern side of the island. There was still enough rain to keep everything cool and be annoying, but not enough to deter us. On our return trip, we climbed down a steep, rocky canyon and then past several secluded swimming holes. If only it had been 20˚ warmer.

On our final afternoon at camp, the clouds lifted, the sun came out, and the few visitors crawled out of their tiny homes. We sat at the beachside bar for a drink and daydreamed about what this place would be like in a month. It would be overrun with multi-generational families on holiday. The mini-golf course would have lines at each hole. The supermarket would be open. The picnic tables would be full. The hiking trails would be crowded. In warmer, dryer weather, the camp will be a vacationer’s paradise.

Useful Info:
Tu Tamo Konoba
Camp Buculuka

Nik’s Blog: Mostly Rainy in BaÅ¡ka, Krk Island, Croatia

On Sunday afternoon, we drove from Plitvice Lakes through the lush and rolling countryside of the Lika-Karlovac and Kvarner regions into the Italian influenced Istrian peninsula to the far western coastal town of Rovinj, Croatia. As the official navigator, I used the National Tourist Board’s fantastic map as my guide to scenic routes and as a result, our drive took nearly 8 hours. But that was a good thing because we saw the most beautiful scenery and had a very peaceful drive. The primary roads throughout the country have been exceptional. Most of them are 2-lane undivided low-speed highways that climb up mountains and descend into river valleys. At the larger cities, they often skirt around the edges to avoid traffic while they zig zag through the smaller towns. The roads are also very sparsely populated. This may be a factor of it being low tourist season, but I suspect not.

Our drive through the Lika-Karlovac region was quiet, misty, and beautiful. Farm houses dotted the lush landscape, but in between were concrete and terra-cotta brick buildings that were abandoned, half complete, or dilapidated. After reading through several Wikipedia articles about Croatia’s Homeland War, I understand that this region was contended shortly after Croatia became an independent nation in 1991, and contains several battle sites between the Croats and Serbs before the war ended in 1995.

This is the first time I have ever been in a country that did not exist when I was born much less an area that was a battlefield during my lifetime. I remember hearing Yugoslavia mentioned in the news, but I never understood what happened, and I honestly had never heard of Croatia until a couple years ago, more than 20 years after the country’s independence.

Understanding this deepens my perception of the people I have met and enhances the beauty I have seen. I appreciate that this area of the world has been prosperous and thriving for hundreds of years longer than my country, but the most recent scars are much fresher. People I am seeing every day lived through conflict that I cannot imagine. Their family members were likely involved in some way, and their neighbors and friends could have been displaced. Their country is a young nation with a rich history, and I’m grateful for the chance to see it as it reinvents itself.

The inland area of Istria (which was part of Italy until the 1940’s), is very similar to Tuscany. Subtle hills are topped with small hill-towns and the slopes are covered with vineyards and olive groves. The roads wind through the farmland and my jaw continued to drop at every bend. It also helped that as we drove west, the weather continued to get better and better.

The photos I have and the drive through these regions do not do them justice. There are many roads we did not drive and many villages we did not walk, so they are added to the growing list of places that we need to explore more.

As we reached the Adriatic Sea in Umag near the Slovenian border, the strangest thing happened. The beautiful and quaint countryside with lush rolling hills turned into a coastline that felt like a mid-level Southern (as in Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, etc.) state park with Caribbean all-inclusive resorts and Italian medieval towns scattered about the seaside of white pebble beaches and the clearest blue sea I have ever seen. Just inland of these, brightly painted Thai style concrete apartment buildings with view balconies were mixed with suburban shopping centers and Texas roadside Bar-b-Que restaurants including open wood fires with whole lambs on the spit. I guess I expected this coast to be more like Santorini or Cinque Terre. Surprisingly, I was glad that it wasn’t. Instead of elite, it was common. It is a place I can imagine my family being comfortable, and it is a place where families from all over Europe (mostly Germany) spend their summers. They reserve a campsite or condo from May 30th until September 1st, and it is their home away from home. I read somewhere that within family groups, the adult couples each take a week or so at camp while the kids stay all summer. Now that would be a great way to hang out with your cousins!

I didn’t really take many photos of this phenomenal coastline, but it was intriguing enough that Nik and I decided to stay at a campground as our next stop!

 

Once we made it to Rovinj, it was the quaint little Italian seaside village we expected. Our apartment was within the pedestrian-only protected old town on a small cobblestone seaside street, and we parked our car and didn’t use it for our entire 3 day stay. From our windows, we could hear the chatter from cafes, and couldn’t quite see the water so we often took the 2 minute walk from our front door to the rocky coast to watch the sunset or the just the sea. We were also within walking distance to Park Å¡uma Zlatni Rt (Forest Park Golden Cape), so we took a 10 mile walk along the seaside path that was dotted with beaches with varying degree of seclusion before picking a rocky spot to sunbath. On our final day there, we took a boat ride that circled a few of the smaller islands near the coast. It was worth the fee just to take photos of the town from the sea, but otherwise the boat ride was fairly uneventful.

For us, the three days we spent on the Istrian coast was plenty, and I can’t imagine spending much more than that unless I was camping with a large group. I can imagine spending a lot more time in inland Istria though.

For more info…
Croatia Tourist Board Brochures including the Road Map
Camping.hr
Favorite Rovinj Restaurant: Tipico
Our AirBnB Croatia Wishlist

Nik’s Blog: Three Days in Rovinj