Day 8 – Split/Hvar

Still travelling… The overnight train was full of french speaking backpackers. We felt left out on all the gossip but they made an effort and it was fine. The smallest room with 6 beds crammed into it was our bed for the night and it cramped my style, excuse the pun. It was like a can of sardines as the Croatians obviously don’t know how air conditioning works, or what human rights are, forcing us into this small space. Despite that, I’m glad we did it, it was a great experience and we are now able to share stories from it.

We arrived in Split at 7am, it was already +30 degrees and packed of locals setting up stalls, confused tourists inspecting their maps and the ‘lads’ with the beer flowing. Our plan was to find wifi to book a hostel for the night. Both were successful and we had also booked tickets to Hvar Island, some 2hours away on a ferry, all before 10am. We had no idea what this place was like as I had never heard of it, but we went for it anyway. Our hostel wouldn’t let us check in until 12 but our boat was at 10.30am so they just would have to wait until tonight to check us in.

Hvar was breathtakingly beautiful but I had other plans. As my girlfriend was doing what she does best, wasting time in the shower and bathroom doing her nails or something, I was doing my research in the hostel and noticed a lot of people rented boats here for only €50. Definitely doing that, but would she want to? The whole way there I taunted my girlfriend about her not making decisions, about food and where to go and hostels, how good boats are and the experience we could get etc… At the boat hiring place, she seemed to be more excited than me and was over the moon at the price saying how good it was. Told you… After getting some food and beer in the supermarket, we headed off to the marina to get a crash course in boats.

I bumped into my uni friends here, small world eh? But couldn’t talk for long as the boat person’s eyes were burning holes in my neck (my body was burnt enough from the sun so decided not to keep him waiting). Literally 2 minutes was enough to tell us what we needed and we were off. How ridiculously unsafe! It was the best day of the trip so far. We visited alcoves and beaches, sunbathed, went swimming, had a picnic, did my first skinny dip and had little problems. Except. When we were planning to go back to port, the anchor was lodged in some rocks and wasn’t budging despite my best efforts. As the man of the boat, I jumped in to swim down and dislodge it, however, as I couldn’t see under water, I couldn’t judge my breath and well I failed miserably. To add ‘saltwater’ to the wound, as I was climbing back on board, I had managed to trade places with my girlfriends phone, which went flying off the side. At first I didn’t realise, but the crystal clear Croatian water allowed me to see the problem perfectly. Disaster. At first, I was looking at the phone at the bottom of the sea thinking what a coincidence it was that someone had dropped a phone in this exact spot. Then it dawned on me.

The best day ever changed to the worst day ever in a matter of minutes. We waved over a speedboat and explained our problem(s) and the grey haired man, a retired ship captain, took off his top James Bond style and jumped into the water, not only did he release the anchor, he also rescued the iPhone 5, which had probably drowned by that stage. He jumped back on to his boat and sailed off as if nothing happened. The journey back to port, and onto the ferry back to split was full of sorry’s and apologies from me (although technically not all my fault) but as her phone is insured it was all well and good… We just lost pretty much all the good photos we had taken. To make up for that, we got the camera out and tried to take pictures of the boat, me driving and the sunset all in 5 minutes so that we had at least something.

We reached the hostel in time to take cover from the isolated thunderstorms, which were very loud and scary! I couldn’t even text my girlfriend to come comfort me, as she had no phone, obviously. We had only checked into the hostel at 11pm and were planning to leave in the morning very early. One could say it was a waste of money to even get a hostel here but it was well worth it, rather than spending the night out in the storm!