Visas Here We Come!

It’s a new day and Ulises and I are up early, although we don’t feel that bright given the all night travel planning we have been doing. That said, we head over to the internet café, print out all of our paperwork, and head out to the Chinese Consulate again, with the sunshine at our backs, and no navigational issues with the taxi driver (well none now that we know where we are going). We arrived at the Consulate at 10:30, slightly groggy, but quite sure that we would be successful. The gentleman behind the counter began going through our paperwork page by page…

“Oh, where is your bank statement? Oh, here it is, and where is your hotel information? Oh, here it is…and where is your internal transportation information…?”

WHAT! Internal transportation information? We are supposed to take trains, busses, taxis, rickshaw, donkeys and large fireworks if needed – we’ve got no clue how to get around inside the country.

So as the look of shock and sadness on our faces must have registered with him, because he was kind enough to say – “just write down how you will get around”

So after scribbling down “we will travel by train” and handing over lots of personal information, we submitted our visa applications for rush one day processing.

We were in good spirits as we headed back to Cape Town, but despite having a great morning and window shopping for a couple of hours, the 5 hours of sleep caught up with us and it was time for a nap…

We went out for a late dinner and explored a new section of Cape Town, stumbling across an art gallery showing the picture below. We have encountered many people around the world who are excited and hopeful about the thought of Obama – and little things like this serve to give us a little ray of light from home.

We closed out the day by eating a huge platter of fried and fresh seafood from Cape Town, and it was amazing – muscles as big as you fist (well not really, but close) – doesn’t Ulises look like he could eat another one?

Culture is Complicated

Today we woke up again around 7:30 AM and were ready to take Sam’s Cultural Tour with our guide Njombo from the Xhosa tribe (this is the tribe with the clicks in the language, and is nearly unfathomable to understand how anyone can speak with such speed, going back and forth between the clicks and your everyday average vowel). The itinerary for the day was as follows:

1- Drive through Section 6
2- Visit to the Langa Township
a. Langa Baptist Church
b. Sheeban
c. Migrant Worker Homes
d. Traditional Healer
3- The Coloured Township
4- The Guguletu township and Amy Biehl memorial
5- Robben Island Tour

There were a total of 7 folks on the tour including us, one guy from Seattle, a couple from Germany and a couple of girls from Sweden. I don’t know what everyone’s expectations were from the day, but when we started out everyone said that they wanted to see the truth. Like all things, the truth is seldom seen on a 6-hour tour, it tends to be a fluid thing, particularly here in South Africa.

A little history on Apartheid before we begin (you simply must forgive me if I mush up several elements, but the gist should be about the same). Way back in the day – well not that far back, as recently as 20 years ago – South Africa existed under a system similar to our old segregation system, but it was far more complex. Human beings were classified as Bantu speaking (Black/Native), Coloured (a mixture of white, black, Malay slaves, and whatever else got put in the pot), Indian (think Dutch East Indian Company), and good old protestant white (Most likely Afrikaners of Dutch descent). Despite the fact that South Africa is below the equator, and many of the things we take for granted (for example the way the moon is oriented in the sky, what side of the road people drive on, or how water goes down a drain) are backwards here – it still holds true that the darker you are, the worse off you were. All racial groups were segregated to their own sections of the city, and could only work at jobs for which they had permits, and definitely could not intermix with the other groups.

This obviously caused a myriad of issues, people who tried to “pass” straightening their hair, bleaching their skin, etc. to live in a better section of town, get a better job, and live an easier life. Njombo told us that once you “passed” you could never come back, severing ties with your tribe, family and heritage. All of this continued until Apartheid met its end in the 1990’s.

Well, back to Section 6 – Cape Town is a lovely city, but surrounded by water on 2 sides and mountains on the other 2 – so land is at a premium. In the early 1800s Section 6 was the Black section of town, until the white section needed the land that is. So beginning in the early 1800s forcible removals began, clearing the area for whites and shipping the blacks further outside of the city. The removals were preceded by burning, knocking down, or otherwise destroying all worship places in the Section, as these were the heart of the community, and once they were gone, and your home was wreaked – well moving to the sticks doesn’t look so unappealing now does it. These removals continued all the way until 1970.

After our drive through Section 6, we continued on our way to the Langa Township. This Township is a black township made up of shanties, tenements and 3 bedroom homes straight out of Southern California (called the Beverly Hills of Langa). We started by going to the first 40 minutes of the Langa Baptist Church service – it was very interesting to know some of the songs, but be completely unable to follow along since they were sung in a mixture of English and Xhosa. I captured a little clip of the service, you can check it out below.

We then headed to a local Sheeban – a Sheeban is an unauthorized bar or pub. There are several in any given township, and each tends to have its regulars like any local bar. We joined the gentlemen for some local beer, which is frothy and warm and tastes like corn, and sat around in a shanty with a fire in the middle for both warmth and light. At this particular Sheeban, the rules were strict – you must be 33 years old (not sure why they let little old me in ☺), men only, and you pay if you can. The beers are dished out in a communal cup, that is really more of a bucket – but you be the judge of that one.


We then were led by one of the locals who frequents the sheeban to the old tenement buildings, which used to house migrant workers. Back in the days of Apartheid, blacks were only allowed to come to Cape Town to work under permits, when they would come to work, they were provided with lodging while they worked, which consisted of 8 men sharing 4 rooms, access to running water, and a fuse box. After Apartheid, the migrant workers brought their wives to the migrant worker homes, and in turn their children – meaning that some of these rooms could house up to 16 people in two beds paying about 30 Rand per month (which is somewhere around $5).

We next stopped by the traditional healers offices, to pay a visit. I don’t think that the healer has had anyone dust in a while, nor have the ladies from “How Clean is Your House” ever tacked a project quite like this one. Skeletons of all shapes and sizes were suspended from the ceiling, along with plants, powders, and other oddities. We wandered throughout the shop, waiting for the healer to appear and give us some information about what he does. Turns out that he works in much the way a pharmacist would work, prescribing medication for any given illness, the healer tries to calm your symptoms, through blends and infusions of plants, minerals, and animal materials – drawing on his lineage and shared memory to help his patients. It was cool, but I can’t say I wasn’t ready to leave when we did.

We continued on the tour, driving through the coloured township (separated by a highway from the black township) and finished up the visit to the townships with a visit to the Guguletu township where Amy Biehl, an American college student was murdered for driving into the township at the height of the Apartheid movement.

We continued on towards Robben Island and the last destination on the tour. Robben Island has been a prison island for over 400 years but now it is a museum/memorial to those who were imprisoned there. The island is about 12KM away from Cape Town and as the name implies, completely surrounded by water (as well as by thousands of Jackass Penguins – that’s right, there are penguins in Africa, and that is their name). The island was once used as a leper colony, and ultimately became the home for thousands of political prisoners over the years, the most famous of which being Nelson Mandela.

The tour began with a ferry ride over to the island, and upon entry you are greeted by wall sized photos of prisoners as they were unloaded from the prison boats and marched towards the cellblock. You then walk to a bus, where a tour guide introduces himself or herself and begins the tour of the island. Robben Island is relatively large, and was inhabited prior to Dutch settlers arrival in South Africa. As the years progressed it became used as a criminal prison, political prison, leper colony, mental health ward, and a place of exile.

The tour took us to the solitary room jail cell in which Robert Sobukwe spent; I believe it was 9 years of his life without the company of any other prisoners or the guards. Back in the days of Apartheid, black workers had to carry passes which allowed them to travel outside of their township for the purposes of going to work, but that is it. If you were caught outside of the appropriate area, you would be arrested. Sobukwe organized a protest for everyone to show up at the police station (which was well outside of their allowed travel radius) and turn themselves in.

Our tour guide then went on to take us past some old shipwrecks on the island, the rock quarries which the prisoners would work in every day, and finally to the cell block, which the prisoners built themselves. There we met our guide, unfortunately for the life of me I cannot recall his name, who he himself was a former prisoner on Robben Island, spending 6 years in prison for ANC bombing activities. He was a very soft spoken man, and he did a wonderful job of walking us through the entry process for new prisoners, how the days would be sent, and the unfortunate things that happened to those both inside and outside of the prison walls. Our guide spoke of how after his arrest, he spent 6 years in Robben Island, got his degree behind its walls, slept on its floors, ate its unequally divided food (note how portion sizes for different races varied), and how every six months he awaited a visitor – any visitor. In a letter received complete with censored blocks of text blacked out by the guards, he received news that his father was going to come for a visit on the next visiting day. He was overjoyed, until the day of the visit when he found out that his father had been shot 8 times in his home, after a visit from the secret police – as each visitor to Robben Island warranted their own background check, and many met with violence simply for having a loved one there. His father lived, but never walked again.

I have never had the privilege to listen to someone tell their personal story with such emotion and with such dignity, and I count myself truly blessed to have taken the tour with him.

We ended the tour at the garden planted by Nelson Mandela (and from which notes hidden in tennis balls were lobbed back and forth across the prison wall to other cell blocks), and finally in his cell. Below is a photo of his cell, and it is hard to capture how small it really is – but to put it into perspective, it was smaller than the guard dog cages on the prison grounds.

I highly recommend making the trip out to Robben Island if you are in Cape Town; it is unique and difficult, but very rewarding.

After thanking our guide profusely, we hopped back on a very quiet ferry ride back to Cape Town, and went to eat a dinner of Ostrich burgers, checked into the Daddy Long Legs Apartments, did tons of laundry -and sat up until 3AM planning our China trip – booking hotels, flights, and setting the timing – tomorrow we have to try for our visas again.

Official Cheese Taster

Today we are up early and ready by 9am to be picked up for our all day wine tour…that’s right, an all day wine tour, the African Story Wine Tour to be exact. Our guide Este, was charged with driving a carload full of people, two ladies from Sweden, two ladies from Germany, two ladies from Brazil, the only other guy from South Africa (but living in Ireland) an Irish lady, one girl from Holland and Ulises and I. We hopped into a cargo van and drove through the picturesque Hottentot mountains towards the wine route vineyards. We started at Villeria winery, taking a brief tour through their vat rooms, stemming and crushing rooms, and finally arriving in the tasting room. There is something ridiculously decadent about sampling wines at 10AM on an empty stomach. We started off tasting rose champagne (called Cap Cassis), regular champagne, merlot, cabernet, and finally a really yummy dessert wine. We then hopped back into the van and made our way to the second vineyard.

We arrived at Beyerskloof where we had our lunch stop and another tasting of 5 new wines, the wine that this vineyard is known for is called Pinotage (apparently a blend of pinot noir and some other grape variety only found here in S. Africa ), and is a super dark sharp tasting dry wine. We ate as much yummy food and bread as we could as we still had a long day of drinking ahead of us…and it had started to rain, just the tiniest bit.

The wine route area was beautiful, green rolling hills surrounded with higher peaks on nearly all sides, lined with farmlands and vineyards stretching as far as the eye can see. It was odd to se the vines barren of fruit as it is winter here and all of the vineyards are in the down season, well past harvest – having just come from Europe I’ve got to get used to the fact that it is winter here. I will say that this area is the antithesis of what your average American probably thinks of when thinking of the African continent.

We arrived at our next vineyard, Backsberg, to continue the tasting fun and round it all up with a bit of brandy and Belgium chocolate tasting. We lucked out by having Darwin as our Brandy tasting instructor. He began by getting all of us to agree that our dignity would be left at the door and we must not drink the Brandy until he told us it was okay.

According to our instructor, here are the steps:
1-Cup the brandy in your hand, stem through your middle fingers, and resting against the outside edge of your thumb to warm it
2- Wet your thumb with a bit of the brandy and sniff it
3 – To sniff, wave your head/nose above the glass of brandy and breathe in short wafting motion
4 – Sip a bit and chew it in your mouth and swallow
5 – Then bring air into your mouth like you are kissing a fish

We all looked like jerks, but it definitely broke down the walls (well that and the 14 or so samples of wine we’d had). We rushed off to get our sampling of Belgian Dark and Milk chocolates and then piled into the van to go to our last stop and our cheese tasting…that’s right! Cheese….

We stopped at our last winery, Fairview, and got to enjoy our last 6 samples of South African wine, with such awesome names as Goats do Roam and Bored Doe, and some of the most wonderful goat and cow cheese that I have had so far on this trip (or maybe I was just experiencing a serious queso deficiency). We ate cheese until the winery closed down and then headed outside to see some the goats for the farm – check out the photos.

We rounded up the day by eating all you can eat Mexican buffet food (edible, but not good) and I got this wonderful photo of Ulises in one of the plentiful sombreros lying around….it is totally his look don’t you think?

Tomorrow we are off to a very different tour, the cultural tour.

Comedy of Errors

Today is the day to get serious and get our visas…so we get up even earlier, and catch a cab to the consulate – we have the address, and tell our cabbie, and proceed to get lost, get the cabbie lost, stop 6 times to ask for directions, stop for gas twice, use the cabbies phone to call the consulate, and after an hour and a half, finally find the consulate only to arrive just as it starts to rain. All of this should have been a sign that today was going to be something of a disappointment, that perhaps the stars were not in alignment for going to get the visa today.

The consulate office is in a temporary portable set to the side of the consulate, which is currently under construction. It is managed by a man and woman who are behind the typical bulletproof glass with the little pass through slots of your usual ticket office. We stood in line listening to each person’s conversation, successful application or frustrated disappointment. We finally got up to the window all bright smiles and positive thinking only to be told, you must have your entry flight, exit flight, internal transportation information, hotel bookings, and other such ridiculous details in order to successfully apply for a Chinese Visa. Thanks for coming, but no deal. The conundrum for us, as it is Friday, and the Consulate is closed until Monday, and if we do not get our visa here in Cape Town, we may not be able to go to China, as we will be isolated on the Karongwe reserve for the next month.

So we dejectedly shuffled out of the consulate, hopped back in our cab with our highly frustrated cabbie, and got back to Cape Town, hungry and a little more than frustrated. We decide that for proper planning of our next steps we need food and coffee in our bellies, and some distance from the disappointment of our morning.

So with full bellies we headed over to the Daddy Long Legs travel agency to check out what we can do with our time, and squeeze the most out of the next couple of days. So we booked two tours through the best tour organizer ever – Wayne rocks! and now have plans for both Saturday and Sunday, and left the travel office with our pockets lighter and our spirits up, and with more plans to plan out the whole of the China trip so we can get that Visa!

Walking Long Street

Today we got up early with the plan to head out to the Chinese Consulate to go and get our Chinese Visas for our visit in August. We had the applications completed, and went out to catch a cab, but we were too late, as the office is only open until noon, and according to our calculations, close to an hour out of town.

We decided to waste some time and head out towards the port of Cape Town, which in the bright light of day is much easier to find than after you have jet lag and it’s getting dark. We got to the port and found a ridiculously busy place, with a huge mall, hundreds of restaurants and tourist shops, and boat operators shilling to get you out for a whale or shark watching expedition (but not trying too hard, as it is the low season and they’d much rather stand around soaking in the sun).

We headed back to the hotel around 7pm, just in time to catch the art opening that was happening in the lobby. The reassuring thing about art shows, is that they are nearly all the same, with a gregarious nervous artist who is bubbling over to tell you about their artwork and process and hoping to sell enough pieces to pay for his rent. The artist specialized in oil charcoal (but not oil pastels) and had a series of canvas sketches all outlining the variety of power lines and landscapes found just outside of Cape Town.

We hung around until 8:45ish and then headed out to watch the last Semi Final game and cheer Spain as they went on to beat Russia into the turf with a 3 to 0 win

Cape Town

After getting on the plane to Johannesburg, we proceed to get fed 3 times, stuff settle in to watch the movies which for some reason started in the middle (still There Will Be Blood and I Am Legend were good second time around), and fly 10 hours to Johannesburg. The time went quite quickly, and we arrived with 50 minutes to make it through customs, passport control, pick up our luggage, and get to the Kulala Airlines just in time for Ulises to get teased by the gate agent and for us to get our boarding passes. All in all, we did this with 35 minutes to spare….can you believe it?

We hopped on our 3rd flight in 24 hours ad arrived in Cape Town at 3PM… Welcome to South Africa!

We had booked a room at a cool budget conscious art hotel on Long Street called Daddy Long Legs, we lucked out and got checked into room 501, which was decorated and inspired by all things denim (501 Jeans) and Americana, this was our window shade - a little slice of kitschy home.

All the rooms at Daddy Long Legs were decorated and designed by an artist, so they have such rooms as the Photo Booth Room, You Are Here, Palimpset, Emergency Room, and the Fresh Air Room. The idea being that during your stay you would move around and try out different rooms and get a little taste of each of the artists.

We headed out to take a quick walk around, walking down Long Street which is a busy, fun, and eclectic street made up of 20 something’s, professionals, and innumerable parking attendants in yellow vests who guide you as you back up into your space and keep an eye on your car while you go about your business. We tried to make our way down to the port but got turned around, and decided to head back towards the hotel, stopping along the way to have a coffee and some hummus, and a bad margarita in the first of 8 Latin inspired restaurants that we would visit.

Back at the hotel we sat down and had our welcome drink (one of the nice perks at Daddy Long Legs) and then headed back out to eat some dinner at Mojitos (#2) and go to Irish Pub to watch Turkey get beaten by Germany in the Semi Finals of the Euro Cup. Sorry Turkey, you played admirably.

Today’s Word is Productive

Today we woke up, packed, and ate a perfectly huge breakfast (this place had a full meat buffet, fruit buffet, breads and pastries, and mimosas…good grief). We then headed out to drop off the rental car, and one-way streets and a lack of gas stations provided, somehow we got gas and got the rental car back before being charged for another day. We took the tram back to my favorite overseas book store Algorithm, and purchased our guide book for China, and then headed back to the hotel to take full advantage of their business center, monopolizing it for a good two hours as we booked our flights from Johannesburg to Cape Town, a hotel in Cape town, and printed out the documents needed to complete our Chinese Visa.

We took full advantage of the late check out and left the hotel with enough time to walk to the bus station and hop on the bus to the Zagreb airport, where we hopped onto our flight to Frankfurt at 6pm.

We arrive in Frankfurt on time – even a little early – which is great, as we have to find our connecting flight to South Africa – and it leaves in 1 hour.

We book it across the international terminals, and finally arrive at gate B26 only to find that the flight is cancelled!???

What?

We decide not to freak out and wait in line to speak to one of the service ladies, who says, as of now the flight is cancelled, but in one hour they will have more information, so please don’t go too far.

Where are we going to go? This timing of course causes a cascade of “what ifs” as our flight out of Johannesburg is non-refundable, and if we miss that flight it’s hundreds of dollars lost, and if we miss our hotel, it is no refundable – but so much for worrying. At 8:30, the time our flight is supposed to leave, they inform us that a mechanical problem must be fixed, but that as of now it looks fixable, and the flight would only be delayed – as a gesture of their concern, here are some free sodas and magazines (oh, sorry they’re in German).

At 9:30PM, the group of irate passengers has now had 3 cokes each and is in full caffeine rage when the spokesperson says, it looks like we will depart ad midnight, we are so sorry for this delay, please here is a voucher for a free meal – now please don’t trample each other to get your 20Euro.

After a big free meal everyone is less irate and at 11:35, we begin to board the plane.

Halleluiah!

Slap Means Waterfall in Croatian

We woke up early, downed my 100th Nescafe coffee for this trip, ate the last of our nutella, some day old bread, a peach and an apple, and headed out to the national park. Plicvize Lakes, is a national park made up of numerous tiered lakes which all empty into one another as the elevation changes over the course of some 10KM or more. The lakes themselves are terraces made in nearly discrete pools of water, due to the high calcium content of the water, the lakes have hard travertine like bottoms, and empty into one another over these travertine ridges, resulting in some quite beautiful and numerous waterfalls. Sounds great right?

So we get to the park quite early, and head over to the ticket office to buy our tickets, and figure out where to get the tram. The park is organized in a series of tours, which can be as strenuous (walking the entire day around all of the lakes – around 10-12 hours) to a day on a tram (literally taking a tram or ferry to each of the lakes). We weren’t sure what to expect, and the first ten minutes weren’t promising, as we hopped onto the Disney Tram and watched as we drove by nature for what seemed like miles.

We finally hopped off the tram, and started hiking, and we hiked for hours. Most of the paths are boardwalks, built right on top of the lakes, so you can walk near the edges of the lake and fell like you are walking on water. This allows for some dramatic views of the abundant fish, fowl, and dragonflies that inhabit the area. It also provides some beautiful glimpses of how the fallen trees and underwater vegetation slowly becomes covered in this white calcium rich water, giving everything a slightly ghostly and surreal look. It doesn’t take long to realize that the reason why this park and the lakes are so well preserved is due to the fact that there is no fishing, swimming, camping, or unregulated hiking that happens here. The habitat is untouched.

We hike from the highest lakes and make our way around the shore to the middle lakes, walking past waterfalls, butterflies (some of which became quite enamored with me for some reason – check out the photos), and past some of the largest schools of lake fish that I have ever seen – simply swimming in the sun and seeming to tease the ducks just above them. About 4 hours in we hopped on the Ferry to head over to the beginning of the trail for the great waterfall. The ferry takes you across one of the largest middle tiered lakes, and to the beginning of the lower lakes.

We stopped for a beer and Pomme Frites break, and mustered up some more energy for the walk to the last waterfall. We walk past wide expanses of lily pads, an aggressive duck who wants to eat my new favorite snack food (Thanks to Natasa for introducing these to me, Smokies – which are corn puffs with peanut butter on them – totally addictive), and more waterfalls than I can count.

We finally make it to the last lake, which culminates in a large waterfall surrounded by mossy green rocks and a dramatic drop off. This waterfall is to the right of the final waterfall, the Velik Slap (Large Waterfall) which is some 75M high, and unlike the other waterfalls in the park, is due to a river and not the lake waters. It was beautiful, and quite a wonderful way to end a long day.

We headed back to the car, trying to decide what to do for both dinner and lodging – as we had no plans for either - and we decided to head out, and see how close to Zagreb we could get before the daylight was gone.

We started to get tired, and a little anxious about a place to stay about 70KM outside of Zagreb, as we had stopped at 3 guesthouses, all of which said they were full. We then tried a roadside hotel, which was too expensive, then a traveler’s hotel, and another roadside hotel (which Ulises said was so bad that he was certain some Tarentino film had been made there). We keep driving, and sometime around 9PM arrive in Zagreb, with no hotel reservations, and no map. So after an hour of trying to find hotels referred to in the Lonely Planet Guide, but which weren’t on the map, we broke down and stayed at the only place that was nice to me when I got out to ask their availability – that’s right, the Best Western Zagreb. The super kind night manager checked us in, upgraded us to a suite, helped us figure out where to park the rental car, and made sure we had a late check out for the next day…nicest guy ever.

Tomorrow we are off to South Africa.

FIAT!

Today we woke up early, packed our stuff, took out the trash, and turned in the keys to our lovely apartment – thank you Dinka!

Our time in Dubrovnik was great, from good mussels bouzzara, to home made food, a walk through living history, and breathtaking views, the city was unique and a great place to visit.

Ulises rented a car for our journey to Plitvice Lakes National Park. We hopped in the FIAT, and drove, drove, and drove. Over mountains, along the coast, past lakes trapped by mountains on all sides, through Bosnia, back into Croatia, and skipping the multilane highway, for a trip through the scenic route.

It was a beautiful drive, made all the better by good weather and an ipod hookup for the car radio. We drove through several small towns with their own city centers and historical claims to fame. We stopped and had a “quick” lunch, which ended up being dinner for lunch, of two whole grilled trout with potatoes, fries and a salad, (and that was just my meal). We continued on the road for another few hours, finally arriving near Plitvice around 8PM, and after a few attempts, finding a room in one of the nearby private guest houses.

Most of the small towns in Croatia only have accommodations for tourists in private homes; you can spot the signs from the road, saying SOBE, ZIMMERS, CAMERA, ROOMS, and CHAMBRE. The signs will usually give some information, like the address and number of stars the room is (one star means private room with shared bath with the owner, two stars means private room with shared bath with other guests, three stars means private room with private bath, and four stars means you can probably afford to buy this place – so why don’t you and then all the rooms are yours).

We have typically arrived in each city with some accommodations worked out in advance, even if it was only a few hours in advance. This was our first attempt at using the “just showing up” method. With only one rejection we found a place at Jezere Guest House, and our host Malik was quite gracious. He had a severe limp, but insisted on climbing up the stairs at every opportunity to show us how to use the TV and the fridge, and how to navigate through the hundreds of satellite channels of hot Arab chicks to get to the Euro Cup game. He had a tendency to slip from English into Italian and then into Croatian, but somehow with a mix of bad English and Italian, we communicated.

Tomorrow we are heading to the park, so tonight is an early evening.

Lokrum

As this is our last day in Dubrovnik, and we have yet to go swimming, or enjoy any of the beaches in this beautiful coastal city, we decided it was time to set off for Lokrum. Lokrum is a small nature preserve island off the coast of Dubrovnik. For about 40 Kuna and 30 minutes, you can take a ferry ride to the shores of the island, and then explore to your heart’s content.

The island holds the remnants of a fort, a monastery, and botanical gardens. It also has an inordinate amount of peacocks strutting around and cawing at each other. It is a beautiful place.

We hiked up through the botanical gardens to the top of the old fortress – where the park ranger had a folding chair and umbrella set on the very top of the fort – presumably to give himself the best rangering vantage point. We wandered around for some time until the afternoon was finally so hot that we had to find a beach and jump into the water. And what beaches we found. The island does not have true sand beaches, but is made up of flat white and grey rocks, on which you can camp out and sunbathe and then run to the water and jump into the super salty water and just tread water – watching the fish swim just beneath your fingers and feet.

We decided to have lunch and picnicked beneath the olive trees in the old olive groves, eating pears, bread and a super stinky Gorgonzola cheese. It was heavenly.

I would recommend a visit to Lokrum to everyone that heads to Dubrovnik, it was well worth it, and I wish we had gone a couple of times during our stay – but maybe next time!

We caught the last ferry back to Dubrovnik mainland and headed home to eat some leftovers with enough time for us to go out and watch Croatia vs. Turkey in the last round of the quarter finals of the Euro Cup.

We watched the game from the second smokiest bar in the world (Don’s / William’s are still tied for 1st) Roxies, and watched with bated breath as the Croatia fans would raise their arms, sure that this was the one, the score, the goal – only to be disappointed. All in all, it was a good, and evenly matched game, coming down to the last shoot out kicks, but Croatia couldn’t pull it off…no fire extinguisher celebration tonight!