Komiza, Vis island, Croatia 9/18-9/19
Julie had some ideas about the islands we wanted to visit after reading the Lonely Planet. The plan was to cover a several islands and to end up in Dubrovnik. After talking to Josko at Split we started our island adventure at the Vis Island. Josko described it as a peaceful place with some beaches, some nature around to enjoy, and also promised that his friend who owns a tourist agency there would take good care of us.
When we got to Vis we had to take a bus to the 2nd town on the island, Komiza (“z” needs a tilde on top, and is pronounced “zh”.) We were to be greeted by the wife of the aforementioned owner of the tourist agency, who would taken us to the room that was supposed to be reserved for us. The wife was not there, neither was he, nor anyone else at the tourist agency. The sign said that the agency is closed till morning. That was a bit upsetting. I texted Josko asking him to connect me with his friend. After some SMS back and forth with the agent we realized a few things: 1. He had no plans to meet us that day. 2. He was going to send someone to give us the key to the room. 3. We did not want to deal with him anymore. When that somebody arrived, it was an elderly gentleman who did not speak a word of English. That was not convenient because the price the agent quoted us for the room was above what we wanted to pay, even though it could’ve been a great room. So first thing we did, we explained to this man with much difficulty how much we were willing to pay for the room. At first he explained it was not possible, but by then we’d found another agency about 15 meters away from the 1st one that was willing to let us another room for a smaller price. As we started walking to that agency, he called the agent, and they’ve decided to accept our price. Once we were in the room we were glad that they did. The room was awesome – it was small, but so are we, and it had a balcony with the full view of the beach and the sea. It also had (which was very important in 30C heat) an air conditioner. So after all this excitement we went to enjoy the beach.
Since we decided not to deal with that agent anymore, we had to figure out what to do ourselves. Luckily there was no scarcity of open travel agencies around despite the end of the season. We knew that one of the things Josko was very passionate about was the Blue Cave. So while walking around in the evening we found one agency that was offering a boat tour to the cave followed by some time on a sandy beach for less than others. As it was already late, and everything except the restaurants was closed, we decided to wake up early enough to walk to that agency, book the tour, and find out about our options to get to the other islands the following day.
The next day we did wake up pretty early, and made it to the agency on time. The good news was that the captain of the boat agreed to take on 2 extra passengers (what does he care – so what that his boat says he can only take 12, it’s extra money in his pocket.)
The not so good news was that our Lonely Planet was not current, and as it turned out there were no ferries from this island to any others. Our only way out was to go back to Split. We decided to take the earliest ferry out the following morning to allow us to catch a bus to Dubrovnik, and arrive there at a decent hour. That meant waking up at an ungodly hour of 5am. Oh well, we had some cave and beach time ahead of us.
The captain took pleasure in making sure our boat was thrown around a bit by the waves on the way to the island with the cave, and the beach. We did not feel sea-sick, but scared at times that he did not know what he was doing, and we’d capsize. Basically he was rolling his cigarettes most of the time, or talking on the phone, and touching the steering wheel lazily at times. But we made it to the island safely, and changed to a smaller boat to get into the cave. The cave was very blue indeed, as the name suggested. The reason for the color was very simple – the cave gets lit from the underwater passage that’s deep enough for light to get through. And because of the water color, which is extremely blue, the whole cave becomes blue. We spent all of 5 minutes looking at the cave, went back to the bigger boat, and were off to the beach.
As soon as we got to the beach we immediately loved it. It was in a small harbor, secluded, under-developed, and sandy. Very few beaches in Croatia are sandy (at least in our experience); most have stones on them (pebbles and such.) The water was warm enough even for Julie, so for the next few hours we swam, bathed in the sun, had a surprisingly good (albeit simple) meal of grilled fish and salad at a small beach café and, in my case, all while wearing my boxer trunks because I’d forgotten to pack my swimming trunks. Luckily nobody minded because there were very few people there, only those who came with our boat, and one other. All beached out we were back at our room by 6 or 7, had dinner while listening in on some obscene language conversations among some spoiled Russian kids who got to the island on their own sailing boat, and went to bed early for our 5am wake-up call the next day.
5:15 am – wake up call, 6:15 – bus to the other side of the island; 7am – Catamaran to Split; 9:30am – bus to Dubrovnik.
