Monday 11th - Split to Podgora

The Riva (Promenade) Split

Out with our bags down towards the bus depot, and stopped on the way for a coffee at a place with wi-fi so we could update the blog and check emails. Nothing desperate in. There’s been little in since our time in Malaysia where I was doing some work most days. Buses were frequent enough that we knew we could just turn up and there’d be one soon. In high season you need to book, but nothing is full now.

The bus was pleasant enough, and arrived into Podgora at 11am. Podgora was one of the main source points for late 1800s NZ-bound Croatians, and we had a contact here who had rooms, so it made sense to stay here. Braco picked us up, and took us down to his superior apartment looking over the sea and across to Hvar Island.

After lunching, we tried to sort our next week. It’s a bit of a mission travelling on ferries off-season, as they are far less frequent, and the timetables are hard to come by. Not only that, but we need to make all sorts of odd bus connections too. Forced down a G & T in order to get wireless to find timetables and so on, but it didn’t work anyway – the wireless that is, the G & T did the job fine. We discovered we had left my glasses and our little 1982-vintage European phrasebook on the bus. Damn! We are normally very good at keeping track of stuff, so felt quite annoyed, not to mention half-blind. Will try to source new glasses tomorrow, as we didn’t think there was any hope of retrieving them.

Podgora Waterfront

Braco (16 years in NZ) and his wife dropped in at 7pm and we talked about the local area for a while. An easy day, but not much seen or achieved, but Braco had arranged for his daughter’s boyfriend to get us a rental car, for what seemed an exorbitant 400KN (NZD100), but on checking other sources it turns out to be quite a good deal – they are really pricey in Croatia.