The Headland Of Peljesac
Bouncing down an iffy coast road on the cape of Peljesac, I glance at the lustrous Adriatic and catch sight of the island of Mljet.
Many Croatian place names look like typographical inaccuracies : Losinj, Krk, Pag, Unije, Hvar. Call for a new proofreader!
Such names, with their emphatic, belligerent consonants, are one of the charms of overseas travel. Strange languages, weird peoples, missing vowels and missing teeth, also , if this pot-holed, rubble-strewn road continues much longer.
The crickets aren’t just singing, they’re screaming. Sunshine beats down and a bleating goat suddenly breaks cover from the bushes.
Below us, at the end of this steep trail which looks hardly wide enough for a pregnant goat glistens a small inlet where we are hoping to find a bar and a miniscule pebble beach.
Gripping the steering wheel, I develop a critical thirst for a cold pivo (lager) and a chaser of one of those pelinkovac fire waters.
Another Croatian day, another adventure . This Dalmatian coast feels like Spain in the Seventies ; many towns unsignposted and little more than a couple of farmhouses.
I enjoy the roughness, the otherness of Croatia. There’s romance in its gnarled old farmers, in its tumbled outhouses, in the simplicity of its amenities. Paradoxically, its misery might be a incredible asset for the tourism trade.
We have had three of our past four summer vacations in Croatia, doing battle with our Serbo-Croat phrasebook (Bok! We cry in greeting to neighbors, frequently to be met with faintly suspicious stares) and negotiating the enchantments of cevapcici sausages and peceno odojce (suckling pig).
Two of our vacations were in the Croatian north-west, in Istria, across the water from Venice.
Istria might have been Shakespeare’s Illyria. Wandering its coastal towns at dusk, you can imagine yourself running love errands for Duke Orsino in 12th Night. Istria is Italianate, but does not have the Latins’ swagger, which means it is less noisy.
Last August, we tried the south of Croatia, flying cheapo to Dubrovnik, then hiring a auto from a chaotic outfit at the airfield (tip : avoid the guys of Kompas automobile rentals) before driving two hours north to Peljesac.
Once we turned left on to the cape, the drive became enchanting : empty mountain views, a plateau full of vineyards and then our fishing town, Trstenik. First sight of pretty Trstenik was from the high road its harbor wall, ruined roof tiles and compact setting under the wooded hillside.
This really brought cries of ‘Wow!’ from the mutinous teens in the back. Once we reached the town we found it was regarded as having a dozy, dusty charm, dogs walking the street and knackered waiters sitting by their all-day cafes.
Peljesac makes Istria look thrusting. Croatia charms because it isn’t like busy, over-populated, globalised Europe. It does not gush modernity.
It doesn’t primp itself or sashay down the promenade, showing off its energy. We found no disco in Trstenik, thank heavens.
The kids (only fourteen and 13) did not mind. They spent their time jumping off the harbor wall into the blue water and eating pizzas as gigantic as Mercedes hubcaps. We took a rough little ship out one day and they all laughed when I made a rubbish of the navigation.
Though it was high season, the place wasn’t packed. Croatia walks along, the service slow, the costs lower than England. The superstore in Trstenik wasn’t much of a place, but we could buy cheese from a traditional farmer under the town tree.
The adults’ faces here have a lean quality scared, private. There is a lot of contemporary history in Croatia. Perhaps it’s my imagination, but I look at the middle aged men and wonder what theydid in Croatia’s ‘Homeland War’ in the early Nineties, when the Croats fought to free themselves from Serbian-controlled Yugoslavia.
If there’s gravity in these Peljesac men, who can blame them? Miro owns the Villa Silencia we have hired (and true to its name it’s pretty silent, save when the student cruise boats moor on two nights).
He is a previous engineer who lost his job in the business mess after the war. Each morning, tar-throated Miro silently contemplates the seafront, watching the lobster pots being emptied. He unobtrusively brings our daughter a big cake on her 13th birthday, then melts into the shadows.
With one or two light, retreating words he supplies us with grapes from his vine and the juiciest figs I’ve ever eaten. His child takes us out in his speedboat. Miro lives upstairs, sitting in his eyrie and watching the little Mljet ferries chug in and out of Trstenik.
We do the two hour journey to Mljet one day in an oily 12-seater which we christen HMS Sickbucket.
It is captained by a Tom Conti lookalike who fought in the war and talks up the better halves. Mljet is surprisingly quiet. Odysseus holed up here for a bit. You envisage to meet him round each pine tree.
Dalmatia is virtually virgin coast for scores of miles. A lot of the housing seems Napoleonic, though foul houses have sprouted in Orebic, half-an-hour north, where you catch an auto ferry to Korcula.
When most of continental Europe’s coastline has been wrecked by moneymen, it looks a miracle the bulldozers and multinational hoteliers have not grabbed this lovely place and ripped out its courage.
Croatia has been saved by its political inheritance of red isolation in the Tito years and then the violent struggle against the Serbs. Might that shortly change? Having won their independence, the Croats might be about to surrender it again, this time to Brussels.
Dependent on a ballot, Croatia could join the EU in 2013. Croatia’s currency is the kuna, but the Euro Buck is accepted by some small companies (our boat-hire man quoted his price in Euro Bucks, but took kunas).
Even without the EU Dollar, Croatia’s face is changing. Since 2009, all EU voters have managed to buy property in Croatia on the same basis as Croats. Before then, foreign buyers had to get permission from the Ministry of Justice a process that took anywhere from a couple of months to one or two years.
As foreign purchasers move in, architectural styles are altering. The place is being tarted up, dollified, its particular identity blunted. The same is occurring agriculturally. With wine production now subsidised by the Croatian state in an EU-related policy, small-holdings are disappearing and the farmyard goats are yielding to something more effective, less sundry.
Black new roads are being built, as well , smashing through the countryside. We must experience the rubble-strewn tracks while we are able to, writes tagza.com.
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