Travel with Indigo

Much of my time in Croatia, I spent in and around the city of Split with visits to nearby islands, including Hvar, said to be the epicenter of Dalmatian tourism, and Brac. Croatia’s second largest city is a remarkable town for the reason that the Roman emperor Diocletian chose to build his retirement home there, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Completed in 305 AD and much of it still standing, it is built of lustrous white stone quarried from nearby Brac and includes marble from Italy and Greece and columns and sphinxes from Egypt. Far from being a museum, within its walled area of just 7.5 acres are enclosed 220 buildings of widely varying vintage, including homes for 3,000 people and shops, cafes, bars and restaurants. Along its waterfront is a promenade crowded every night with strolling tourists and locals enjoying the breezes wafting in from the sea. It is one of the most fascinating Roman ruins in existence.

During my stay there, I had three dental implants done by a talented local dentist, Marina Jezina. By searching the net, I found that she had done a year of postgraduate work in dental implants at UCLA and worked for five years in San Francisco. From all I could tell, she did a superb job and had all of the most modern technology available both in her office and in the dental lab she used. The cost was about half that of the U.S.

Also during my stay, a massive concert was held on Split’s waterfront promenade at which a world-renowned (so I am told) DJ named Carl Cox performed. I just had to go there. Mister Cox, I learned, has been a major name in the DJ concert world of Europe for at least twenty years and specializes in a genre of noise that from my nearly five year voyage I can attest now torments nearly the whole planet. It is called techno, a variation of which, called drums ‘n bass, is Mister Cox’s specialty.

For the concert, the city closed the entire waterfront promenade to non-payers, and at one end, the artist’s crew erected the stage set. This consisted of eight enormous video screens forty feet high and fifteen feet wide, spaced ten feet apart, in front of which was a keyboard of buttons, slides and knobs at which he sat to “play” the evening’s entertainment. Through colossal speakers, throbbing bass beats stirred the natives to a frenzy of exaltation, aided I am told by the popular drug ecstasy, while on the video screens psychedelic patterns bobbed and danced in rhythm. Throughout the hour and a half I was there, there was not a single word of lyrics sung. It was all electronically induced, digital cacophony “played” at the controls of an equalizer entirely in the bass register. The sound was so reminiscent of jungle drums that at one point in the evening’s performance, I thought the crowd might begin searching for a missionary to cook.

I was the only person attending over the age of about 30. Noting this obvious fact, a reporter for a local radio station approached me for a brief live interview. I told her I had never heard of Mister Cox but enjoyed the raw energy and joyous celebratory air that permeated the waterfront that night. I later discovered that admitting in public, never mind over a public broadcast, that I had never heard of Carl Cox is on the same plane of cultural obliviousness as admitting to an ignorance of Elvis.

During the summer season, the Split promenade, called the Riva, filled each night with all manner of street performers and kiosks offering specialty food items, local wines, beers and much else. Outdoor concerts nearly every night offered something for most any taste, though some required a fluency in Croatian to grasp fully what was happening on stage. For its Riva, summer music festivals, and the grand old palace ruins, Split ranks among my favorite places, even with the summer crowds.

While on Indigo, the crew and I spent three nights docked on the town quay in the old town of Hvar on the island of the same name. It ranks as my favorite, and judging from the crowds everyone else’s favorite, island on the Dalmatian coast. Offering many fine restaurants and hotels and an exuberant nightlife, it is about all you could want in a fun place to visit.

Just next to the town harbor is a large, densely treed national park with a nicely shaded pedestrian path skirting along its seaward edge. About a half mile along this path, I came to a tiki bar perched among the rocks along the shore, memorably called Bubba Gump’s Hula Hula Bar. The moment I arrived there the heavy wake of a passing ferry had just come ashore, which, as it struck the rocks, splashed chilly seawater onto the customers and into their refreshments to the raucous delight of all. This, I quickly concluded, was a fine place to waste lots of time. It didn’t hurt that bikini tops seemed to be in short supply.

Farther north along the coast from Split, I visited the towns of Trogrir, Rogoznica,  Sibenik, Primosten, Zadar and numerous others, all similar in that they are waterfront and built around old towns now become shopping and entertainment destinations. In a protected bay at Sibenik, is the opening into a deep limestone chasm that leads through a winding course to the village of Skradin. We boarded a van there and traveled farther upstream to the Krka National Park, whose distinguishing feature is a series of waterfalls uniquely formed from the calcium carbonate-laden river.

Still farther north, I passed through the port city of Rijeka to the small resort town of Opatija, one of many such towns on the Kvarner Riviera, once the favored diversion of notables from Vienna during the days of the Hapsburg Empire. Its shore, still lined with handsome villas and vintage hotels, is now also home to up market shops and swish restaurants.

It was here that I first encountered another surprise concerning Croatia’s beaches. At places along the shore where Nature has inadequately provided for humans wishing to sunbathe, great sheets of concrete encapsulating the rocks cause the shore very much to resemble a side of a swimming pool. Upon this unforgiving surface, vacationers were sprawled in large number without benefit of padding even for their heads. I still find it astounding that people are willing to lie supine on bare concrete for hours at a time without even a pad for their head and, even more astoundingly, do so while sober.

One night I attended a piano concert given by a professor of music from a nearby university and held in a room in one of the old villas. He was a talented performer and played a wide selection of genres, from American jazz and pop tunes to Mozart and Croatian classical. Always a soft touch for such things, I bought his CD, which I used to accompany me on the next day’s drive through the Istrian peninsula.