Our elegant 100-foot yacht, Romanca, docked beam-end in the medieval harbor-town of Starigrad on Hvar.

Photos and story by Alison Gardner, Editor of Travel with a Challenge

Among Croatia’s 1186 islands bobbing in the Adriatic Sea, there are 66 inhabited islands that dot the turquoise and royal blue waters along the Dalmatian Coast. Looking at photos of these islands, particularly aerial views, one cannot help but wonder if the images have been enhanced. Surely, the colors of the water, the brightly white sand-fringed beaches, and the whimsically-crenellated shorelines with uncountable coves and bays could exist only in imagination. However, Croatia’s islands are indeed picture postcard perfect. No touch-up required!

I journeyed to Croatia’s islands to experience the timeless qualities of this slim north-south alcove of the eastern Mediterranean where centuries-old olive orchards and vineyards fan out from stone-built villages sited in times past in order to hide from sea-faring pirates; where well-preserved medieval fortress towns lure visitors through narrow, often staircased cobbled streets; and where fishermen still set out each day to harvest the abundant fruits of the Adriatic Sea as their ancestors have done for two thousand years. Even such a short distance seaward from the towering mountainous shields that fall one to two thousand feet to the mainland shore, the islands seem to belong to a different time and culture with each one having a distinctive story and personality.

Accessible by Jadrolinija ferry or private yacht, Korcula’s red clay roofs are only a stone’s throw from Croatia’s fortress-like mainland mountains.

 

With travel experience in the region spanning 30 years, U.S.-based ROW Adventures has been running small-scale yacht trips on Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast longer than any North American adventure travel company. Our cruise stitched together a string of the largest and most historically-diverse islands – Korcula, Hvar, Vis, and Brac – where we tied up our floating hotel alongside the defensive walls of medieval towns or anchored in protected coves that seemed to close off the outside world both literally and figuratively. By day, we stepped ashore to follow stony pathways through fragrant pine forests, or to stroll among ancient vineyards and olive orchards that speak to hundreds, even thousands of years of settlement in a perpetually sun-washed landscape. Here is a sea-moderated climate where palm trees are abundant and flowers bloom in abundance most months of the year.

A ninth century Romanesque church is an unexpected treat during an evening stroll through a tiny backstreet square in Starigrad on Hvar.

 

In July and August, the picturesque medieval harbor town of Hvar is a favorite playground of Europe’s nobility and Hollywood celebrities. In other months, it become a tranquil, rewarding treat with few visitors.

 
There was something quite magical about navigating into an ancient harbor while standing astride the top deck of a traditional vessel like the Romanca. Great skill seemed to be required to jostle for narrow dock space to tie up and let down the gang plank for immediate access to medieval streets. Sometimes the space available was so narrow, we had to back in with only the beam secured to the mooring bollards. Or sometimes the size of a harbor precluded gaining any direct land connection at all because too many other vessels had beat us to port for the night. Then the captain and crew would expertly lash our motorsailer in parallel tandem to other vessels of similar size.

In Hvar town’s miniature harbor, we had no choice but to link ourselves securely to the fifth vessel away from the actual dock. Disembarking guests wishing for a bit of shore leave had to be fairly swift and agile to cross from one bobbing deck to another while acknowledging total strangers as we passed through their public areas to make our way ashore. This procedure seemed strange to us landlubbers, but the nautically informed thought nothing of it!

Back aboard Romanca, our classic motor sailer elegantly appointed with stained hardwood and highly-polished brass, we sampled the gourmet harvest of both sea and land. That certainly included some of the finest Croatian wines, well acknowledged in many European countries, but an unexpected treat for guests from North America.

Our cruise manager, Vlado, was first off the ship to visit his favorite local produce markets, bakeries, butchers and fishing boats on every island. His credo was “everything fresh today” on what could easily have been billed as a gourmet dining cruise. Handing over his purchases to our 6-foot, 5-inch Croatian chef, barely able to stand upright in his tiny, shiny galley kitchen, the results were culinary magic all the way from Split to Dubrovnik.

Romanca Cruise Manager, Vlado, triumphantly returns to the ship with fresh fish for dinner.

 
Christened Issa by 4th century BC Greek settlers, the townsite and well-protected harbor of Vis first enter our written history as the most powerful Greek colony in the Adriatic Sea, a city state with its own rulers and currency. The Romans, Croats, Byzantines, Venetians, a few pirate colonies who menaced merchant shipping from this outer island of Dalmatia, and even the British during WWII spent time on Vis. The Romans predictably left a legacy of baths, an amphitheatre, fortifications and their own archaeology-rich cemetery, while the Venetians and other European interlopers left beautiful public buildings, villas and narrow cobbled streets that today encourage plenty of walking and photography around a perfectly-structured harbor and its picturesque back streets.

Our group of 12 active seniors didn’t want to miss Marshall Tito’s famous cave hideout on Vis’s highest mountainside, so we piled into two vans and literally circled the island. We were often 1,000 feet above the electric blue Adriatic, sometimes on one lane roads. Most roads fell sharply away with few guardrails to obscure the view! Vis is not large by Adriatic island standards, tenth in size out of 1,186 Croatian islands and islets, but it is dramatically mountainous with plenty of limestone caves used for shelter and defense from the Iron Age to World War II.

From the hardly-visible trailhead, we began our climb to Tito’s cave, where his Partisans, together with allied British and American forces totaling 60,000, successfully repelled enemy assaults by air from 1943 to the end of the war. Two hundred steps had been mentioned, but several keeners in our group did their own counts closer to three hundred by the time we reached the gun platforms and the cave entrance. Initially reflecting dismay at the small size of this famous cave, we nevertheless found our guide’s stories about Tito’s “office” fascinating, a place where much of the communications and planning went on.

The steep trail to Tito’s WWII cave headquarters. How many steps did we just climb?

 
In 1943 when the allied armies arrived, all non-fighting people were removed with most women, children and the elderly directed to British-run tent camps in the Egyptian desert. Many Vis people died there from the heat as well as shortages of food and water but local people were allowed to return home in 1946. Until 1989, Vis remained a military island largely off limits to visitors.

Vis’s strollable historic waterfront has a deep protected harbor recognized as among the finest in the Adriatic Sea by Greeks, Romans, pirates, Venetians and more.

 
Each day of the cruise there was time to relax and watch the Adriatic world go by and time to be as active as any senior could wish .. swimming in a turquoise-watered cove, exploring medieval streets, museums, and churches or taking a half-day hike in the countryside.

Korcula is an exquisite fortified town where Marco Polo is said to have been born, though documentation is slim. However, it is clearly documented that in middle age he was a commander in the Venetian navy, defeated just offshore in the epic Battle of Korcula by the Genoese navy. During his subsequent brief imprisonment on the island, he had time to write his famous China travel accounts while locked up from 1298 to 1299.

 

I particularly appreciate unlikely stories, so if I were to pick one “Taste of Croatia” that will remain most vivid in my memory, it would have to be the hike to the Hermitage of Blaca. Yes, here is an entirely improbable monastery founded in 1552 by a small community of priests weary of constant harassment from Ottoman Turks swarming the Dalmatian coast during that period. In selecting their deep valley mountainside on which to build, they clearly wished to be invisible to both Turks and marauding medieval pirates while still being able to eek out a living from what appeared to be very harsh surroundings.

We anchored in a tiny bay and zodiacked ashore to a virtually invisible trailhead, then set out on a one-hour walk up hill through fragrant pine forests filled with bird song. The terrain opened into ill-kept remnants of olive orchards and vineyards along a narrow path of loose limestone rock absolutely devoid of soil. Winded and hot, we soon witnessed for ourselves the well-preserved evidence of this monastery’s genius over nearly 500 years.

Today the Hermitage of Blaca is state-managed as a wonderfully inaccessible tourism site where we saw all the tools of a fine commercial venture, making wine, honey and other agricultural products for trade and export. Never a large operation, generations of monks and priests clearly put their growing wealth into learning, classical music and eclectic collecting on a grand scale. So well connected to the outside world was this community that, clinging to the near vertical landscape, they built an impressive, well-thumbed library covering many subjects, had their own printing office, hired virtually all the neighboring villagers and operated the only classrooms for children to go on to higher education. Most astonishing, Blaca was a world-renowned astronomical observatory with the latest telescopes and an expertise that was recruited by scientists around the world during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The trail from the cove to Brac’s hermitage is trod by few international visitors, a real gem for active seniors who love unlikely stories in their travels!

 
However, my favorite mental snapshot of this monastery visit was the full-length shiny black grand piano in a small sitting room reached by a narrow stone staircase. Clearly determination had topped common sense as I learned that a musical monk and a host of villagers had successfully carried this heavy, awkward load from our tiny cove to the monastery. I had just navigated the very same narrow, rock-strewn trail with nothing more cumbersome than a light daypack and a hiking stick.

Romanca lies at anchor in a tiny Brac island cove where a well-camouflaged hiking trail leads to a 16th century hermitage.

 

A typical stepped street in Korcula’s fortified old town, all cleverly curved to reduce wind tunnelling.

ROW Adventures, www.rowadventures.com, offers its “Taste of Croatia” 9-day island-hopping tour of Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast with several departures between June and October. Anchoring the beginning and end of this cruise, Split as the starting point and Dubrovnik as the end point are both worthy of extra days to absorb the atmosphere of each of these jewels that reinforce the Croatian National Tourist Board slogan, “The Mediterranean as it once was”.
Croatian National Tourist Board, www.croatia.hr. Croatia’s islands are hot and dry in summer, mild and humid in winter. Shoulder seasons are best to experience comfortable temperatures, and to avoid crowds and summer prices. Lonely Planet named Croatia as its pick for top 2005 tourism destination in the world – just ten years after the devastating Yugoslav war ended. Such worthy acknowledgement must have seemed like a fairy tale at the time, as unlikely as winning an Oscar for Best Picture!
Recommended guidebook: The Rough Guide to Croatia by Jonathan Bousfield (2022) available in paperback or ebook. There are also regional and city ebooks for many of Croatia’s most important areas. In addition, you are invited to read our web magazine’s feature article about what to do and see in the ancient and very memorable city of Split, including its fabulous local wines and Croatian dishes, palaces, off-road tours and Game of Thrones film sets.

Alison Gardner is a travel journalist, magazine editor, guidebook author, and consultant. She specializes in researching vacations throughout the world, suitable for people over 50 and for women of all ages. She is also the publisher and editor of Travel with a Challenge Web magazine, www.travelwithachallenge.com. Email: alison@travelwithachallenge.com.