When I emerged from the tent the next morning fellow campers we throwing me strange looks, as if I was bringing down their lovely housing estate with my old dilapidated house. Gives a shit. It was morning, the sun was shining and I was off to have a good time. After the three S’s I jumped on the bike and headed for the cyber cafe in town. I arranged my evening via Facebook, did a little sight seeing (the girlfriend wanted loads of pics), then off for the busiest beach in town, Bacevice.
The town
Bacevice beach
(Photo above of people playing picigin)
Despite having all day to do want you want to do, it’s surprising how little time you actually have. No sooner had I got to the beach, had a couple of swims and checked out the local talent than it is was time to leave. I hopped back on the bike in search of food, then cruised to the campsite. After a 40 minute nap it was time to prepare for the evening ahead. Riding into town that evening was awesome. Jeans and shirt with my music blaring in my helmet (many people in Croatia don’t bother with helmets, too cumbersome), fortunately my hair was easy to stick up again once at my destination.
I met the guys at the Cro Paradise hostel in the centre of town, tursnout they’d struck lucky with their room and were sharing with a number of girls. A couple of drinks in the hostel and we were all ready to hit the town. After wondering around for a while and popping into a few bars, we headed to Bacevice where there was a large complex of bars and nightclubs. Arriving at the beach was amazing, people were still swimming, playing football and volleyball and just having a good time. We went to the bar/club and partied till about 4am – There were a bunch of crazy Spanish guys, who it turned out were on my campsite, an American we found who stared at the podium dancer’s ass for three hours, and a drunk Croatian guy who sat next to us, fell asleep and was sick on himself. I heard a girl speaking German girl at the bar and so struck up a conversation. After about 40 minutes of my broken German it turns out she was Scottish.
As I’d clearly had a few beers I preferred not to ride, instead I crashed in the lobby of the hostel, setting my alarm so that I could be out by 7am and no one would ever know.
The next day was pretty much the same stuff. Apart from chilling on the beach, I went and bought some Croatian porn – which is a bit more involving than in the UK (this dates back to a 2001 Inter-rail trip where the guy I was travelling with had to buy to porn in every country we visited). They have these little newspaper stands selling magazines, chocolate and the like. I really had to dig through all sorts of papers to get the magazine I wanted, the little old lady working there was very helpful though. I also managed to book my ferry from France to UK and book my ticket for the ferry from Split to Ancona for the next day.
That evening I rode up to the hostel as usual. It turns out the guys had been moved to a different room, I’m not sure what went on, but that place was like a big game of musical rooms and people were constantly moved. Their new room was a 5 minute walk into a residential area, it was just a single bedroom in an apartment block with shared shower facilities. Looking around the room, we found a large bounty of alcohol. Sangria, wine, gin, whiskey, vodka, you name it. We did what anyone would do in that situation and invite the Croatian girls who worked at the hostel to join us for a party.
When I arrived at the main hostel building that evening a bunch of people were rushing around cooking and getting ready. They’d been to one of the Islands on a day trip and had only recently got back. I decided to go out for a burger while they watched a pan of water not boil an egg (they forgot to turn the hob on).
Croatia isn’t particularly cheap, but the food there is excellent value and good quality. While ordering my burger, a woman in her 20s came up to me, stopped her telephone conversation and said “oh my god, you are so beautiful” I smiled and turned back to the burger stand, “plenty of onions please”. A slightly older woman at the burger stand took my order. While it was being cooked, she too started to tell me she liked me. She then asked for my birthday and carried one of those girly magazine tests to see if we would be compatible – what the hell. I took my burger and left.
Back at the hostel very little progress had been made. Someone had the bright idea of putting on Cable Guy, which meant everyone sat there staring at the TV. Eventually things started to progress, we went back to the apartment to count up the alcohol – just enough. There was a knock at the door, our party had arrived. Then we realised we weren’t going to be able to fit twelve people in the room, so we thought we’d take the party outside.
We decided to go to an off licence, stock up on beer, in addition to what we already had, and then drink on the beach. There were five of the crowd we were with last night, a couple of new guys and girls and then the girls who worked at the hostel. I’d met one of them before, Ivana, a 5’8 brunette, who when I first saw her, was shouting at one of the hostel residents for plugging in a new a fridge. She didn’t make a good impression then, but she looked more relaxed and playful now. Of the other two girls who worked there, one of them was very quiet and kept to herself, as a result I don’t have much to say about her, the other one I hadn’t met before, but looking at her I was going to.
She was short, about 5’4 wearing tight jeans, with a great ass and long brown hair.
This is a staged pic of her (on the right) and her mates – got no idea why they’re dressed up messing about.
We went to Bacevice beach again that night, skilfully dodging security, who don’t like you drinking on the beach. We found a suitable place to chill on some rocks and began drinking. It was the usual chit chat that you get when a bunch of stranger meet on holiday, not necessarily boring, but not overly exciting either. Realising we had a mammoth amount of alcohol to get through before we could hit the club I decided to get everyone involved in a drinking game. The rules were simple. There were 10 of us drinking, during our normal conversation someone would shout the number 1. someone else then had to shout 2, and so on until the final person says 10. Whoever said the last number had to drink 4 fingers worth of all the alcohol mixed together. The loser then starts off the next round. Should two or more people say the same number, they both drink.
An hour and a half later and we all drunk and on much more friendly terms with each other. We messed about in the sea, took photos dressed up in each others hats and accessories and generally monkeyed around.
On the way to the beach I had struck up conversation with Goga (Gorana), the short brunette and when we found our drinking spot, positioned myself across from her and Ivana. Once we’d finished the last of the alcohol and thrown away our mixers, we hit the club. Ivana had told me that Goga was trouble and she didn’t disappoint. In the club she dragged me to the dance floor were she proceeded to back-up into me, get low and generally act like a bad girl. After a while I noticed that our numbers had swelled. A couple of British guys and an Irish guy who stayed at the same hostel as us in Zagreb, had now made it down to Split and caught up with us in the club. We chatted for a while and had a wonder around the club. Now I’m not sure what it is with Croatian girls, but on my walk around I got stopped by two different sets of girls. “oh my god, you’re so gorgeous”, or ‘my friend here loves you, talk to her”.
I later joined the rest of the group and after dancing with Ivana for a while, Goge and I wandered off. This apparently caused problems as some guy called Seb from the hostel was into her, when I returned he gave me evil looks, sulked for a while then went home. The rest of us had a great night, dancing, drinking, bouncing around, the usual stuff. The girls left around 4am, after saying goodbye, I went to the bathroom. When I re-appeared it seemed everyone I knew had disappeared. “Great” I thought, “how the hell I’m going to get in the hostel now”. There was a small food stand at the exit of the complex and I’d spotted on of the guys I know getting pizza. When it got to my order they were out of stock so he kindly offered to split it. We took a walk back to the hostel through the market, the traders we setting up for the busy day ahead, we continued passed the harbour where we came across three police cars. Three guys were standing there, hands on the bonnet of the car in the middle and surrounded by police. On closer inspection I realised that it was the two British guys and the Irish guy from earlier. I walked over to see what was going on but was told by them to “walk away now!”, so I did just that.
I slept at the hostel until 7am and left just early enough to avoid Goge on the morning shift. Despite being so early in the morning, it was already hot, sticky and uncomfortable. When I got back to the camp-site though, I crashed out on my mattress and enjoyed and amazing four hours sleep.
My ferry that day wasn’t until 18:30, so I had plenty of time to kill. I rode to the hostel about three, and hung out for a while. The guys who were in trouble with the police had returned and told their story. It turns out some drunk Croatian guy had starting shouting obscenities about foreigners and was getting in their face. They refused to do anything and told him there was no point in fighting since there were three of them and one of him. He continued to mouth off and they pushed him out of the way, in doing so he tripped on the kerb and the police were alerted. Apparently they were made to stand there with their hands on the bonnet of the police car, while the engine was running for over an hour.
Goge had just finished her shift so I agreed to hang out and go for coffee with one of her friends. It was a little awkward at first on two accounts. I’d been a good boy the night before so there was no problem there, but I’d learned that she had only recently turned 18. Secondly her friend didn’t speak much English so conversation was difficult. Ivana turned up a little later and chatted about the night before. Time was flying by and I still had to pack my tent, reluctantly I had to leave, so we exchanged facebook addresses and said our goodbyes. I then hopped on to my trusty GPZ and set off for the campsite.
I was now skilled in packing up my equipment and loading the bike. In no time at all I was ready leave. I took one final look around at the scenery and set off back into town to get the ferry. Waiting at the ferry port, I was sad be leaving Croatia, not just because I’d had a great time there, or because I’d met some fun people and made new friends, but because that now signalled the end of my tour. From Ancona, it would be more of an endurance test, 1000 plus miles in less than two days to get back to Norwich before a) my money runs out, b) my girlfriend decides not to let me into our new flat. Thinking about all this I grabbed a quick bite to eat, parked the bike up next to the ferry and went to sleep on the back of it while waiting for boarding to commence.
*** TRIP ENDS ***
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