Europe Part 5: Dubrovnik and the Dalmatian Coast
Links to previous posts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
From Mostar we hopped a bus to Dubrovnik, in theory just a few hours south along Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast. I’m not going to describe that journey in detail here, but it was definitely the most unpleasant travel experience of the trip, and possibly our lives. (Our bout of food poisoning in Italy a few years back, which involved copious vomiting first on a train and then in an elderly Italian woman’s bathroom, didn’t last as long and it wasn’t 100 degrees…)
After crossing the border from Bosnia into Croatia (a crossing that was, thankfully, almost deserted thanks to the opening of the Pelješac Bridge just a few days earlier), the travel gods finally took mercy on us and we arrived in Dubrovnik. We took a taxi to our apartment, and I quickly realized Dubrovnik was another place I was thankful to not be driving. The roads weren’t quite as anarchic as in Sarajevo, but there were a lot of very steep and narrow one way streets, tons of people, and almost non-existent parking. The view from our apartment was gorgeous and expansive due to its location a few hundred feet uphill from the coast. We could see a wide swath of the Adriatic Sea, several islands, and the historic walled old town of Dubrovnik spread out below us. The disadvantage of this location was that getting anywhere involved descending (and later ascending) a series of long, steep staircases in near 100 degree heat + humidity.
Dubrovnik was pretty much the epitome of what comes to mind when you think of a historic European city: narrow stone streets, lots of churches, lots of tourists, all surrounded by imposing city walls and fortifications. Dubrovnik is extra picturesque in that the whole affair is perched on a rocky peninsula that juts out into the Adriatic Sea. Old town Dubrovnik actually used to be two towns divided by a canal. Eventually the canal was filled in to connect the two towns, forming what is now the wide main boulevard known as the Stradun. (We were told that the loose material used to fill in the canal is likely to collapse in the next major earthquake.) The old town is pedestrian only, and boy were there a lot of pedestrians! Overall though, Dubrovnik was not as busy as we feared. A few years ago, there were often eight or nine cruise ships docked here each day, leading to massive and unsustainable crowds. Through some combination of COVID and limitations imposed by the city, cruise ship traffic has been greatly reduced and there was only one ship docked each of our three days in town. Dubrovnik was the only stop on our entire trip where there seemed to be a lot of other American tourists, roughly 50% of whom seemed to be on a Game of Thrones tour or in a Game of Thrones gift shop at any given moment. (Apparently large portions of GoT were filmed here, though we haven’t seen it so that significance was lost on us…)
Dubrovnik, long a major trading center along the Adriatic coast, is well-fortified with a ring of tall, thick stone walls completely encircling the old town. A highlight of our visit was a late evening stroll around the top of the walls, with amazing views down into the city on one side, and out into the sea on the other. From above, you can see different colored tile roofs representing buildings of different ages. Most of the city was rebuilt after a big earthquake in 1600, and parts were bombed during Croatia’s war for independence in the 1990s.
As amazing as the city was, it was so hot and humid that we wanted to be in the water the whole time. There were a few small pebbly beaches a short walk from the old town, but these were packed to the point that it was hard to find anywhere to spread out a towel. We found a more relaxing scene by taking a 10-minute ferry ride to an island just offshore: Otok Lokrum. This island is a nature preserve with no permanent population, so there was plenty of room to spread out. There were lots of hiking trails, botanical gardens, some old ruins, a fort, rocky beaches…and cicadas. Lots and lots of very loud cicadas. The cicadas are the ubiquitous soundtrack of the Adriatic coast. Eventually you sort of tune them out, but when you pause to think about them, it is unbelievable how loud they are! We enjoyed swimming and relaxing on a pair of rocky beaches, though we did have to fend off several of the island’s resident peacocks, and avoid the abundant sharp black sea urchins when getting in and out of the water. The following day we kayaked around Otok Lokrum, going into a pair of beautiful sea caves, and getting a seaside view of the imposing Dubrovnik city walls.
After several days in Dubrovnik (and over a week of being in larger cities), we were ready for a change of pace. Just off the coast of Croatia lies an archipelago of long, narrow islands that are collectively the main tourist destination in Croatia. We settled on a trip to Mljet, one of the larger but least populated islands, of which the western third is protected as one of Croatia’s eight national parks. We arrived on Mljet after an uneventful 1.5 hour ride on a high-speed catamaran from Dubrovnik (less exciting than it sounds…actually quite cheap, with airplane-like seating inside. But comfortable and air conditioned!)
The ferry deposited us in the tiny town of Pomena: a few dozen houses, one hotel, a small market, and a handful of restaurants. The main attraction of Mljet National Park is a pair of lakes: one big, one small. These lakes are connected to the sea (and each other) via a pair of narrow channels, so while they look like lakes and are quite calm, they are actually salty. The small lake (Malo Jezero), was only a 10 minute walk from our rented apartment. We purchased some sandwich ingredients from the small market and headed to the lake for a picnic dinner and a sunset swim in the wonderfully warm water.
The following day we rented bikes to explore the island. A mostly level and paved bike/pedestrian path encircles the large lake, Veliko Jezero, which makes getting around very enjoyable and peaceful…save for the aforementioned cicadas. Along the way, we stopped to read many of the well-done interpretive signs explaining the natural and cultural history of the park. We ended up biking to the village of Soline, which is on the channel that connects Veliko Jezero to the sea. We enjoyed swimming and snorkeling in the channel, where the water was very shallow and had a mix of vivid blue and green hues. It wasn’t exactly the Virgin Islands from a snorkeling standpoint, but we did see lots of colorful fish, huge sea cucumbers, and various sponges. Thanks to some internet intelligence, we also found the largest coral reef in the Mediterranean. Given that there isn’t much coral at all in the Mediterranean, this also isn’t quite as exciting as it sounds. The coral was a muted brown color, and deep enough that it was hard to get a clear look. More exciting was the fact that I spotted several jellyfish a few seconds after getting into the water, and quickly realized they were ALL over the place. This freaked us out for a moment until we looked them up (because there is cell service everywhere in Europe, even in relatively remote national parks!) and realized that this species was harmless to humans.
On day 2, we got up early to hike up to Montokuc, the highest point in the national park, before it got too hot. Our bikes got us halfway there before we had to actually start walking, so the hike itself was pretty short. The summit is only about 250 meters (a little over 800 feet for the metrically challenged) above sea level, but there is a fire lookout tower at the top with spectacular views. We could see the whole western end of Mljet, the large and small lakes, the channel connecting them to the sea, and several other islands along the Dalmatian Coast. We only saw a few other hikers the whole time…probably the fewest people we had been around since the trip began!
The warm water and air temperature made Mljet feel borderline tropical, though it was clear from the vegetation that it is actually a pretty dry place. Wildfire is a major concern on the island in summer, and there was quite a bit of smoke in the air during our visit, wafting in from fires on other islands and the mainland. Overall, Mljet was a much needed change of pace and probably the most relaxing stop on our month-long trip. While we were far from alone, it was certainly less crowded and more peaceful than most nearby destinations. We would have loved to stay for another day…or week!
From Mljet we hopped back on the ferry to Dubrovnik, and then headed south to Montenegro and Albania!
From Washington to Zion
Between work, weather, and the ongoing pandemic, my camera has seen relatively little use the last few months. Here in central Washington, it is inversion season. Atmospheric inversions occur when relatively warm air passing over the Cascade Range traps colder air below in the valleys of the Columbia River Basin. These pools of cold air can persist for weeks, bringing cold temperatures, freezing fog, and poor air quality. Fun, fun, fun! Here’s what things have looked like in recent days:
Stuck inside, I’ve been working on a project to organize and categorize over a decade’s worth of photos. It’s been fun to come across long forgotten gems and months and months of photos that I never even got around to editing in the first place. I plan to post some of the highlights as I come across them.
While I post only a tiny fraction of the photos that I take here, looking back through the archives, I’ve noticed one especially glaring omission over the past few years: Zion National Park. Zion is one of my favorite landscapes on Earth, and for a little over three years we lived just 20 minutes from the north end of the park. I was surprised to discover that I haven’t shared any images from Zion since I started this website and blog almost a decade ago. In order to rectify that, here’s a look back at some of my favorite photos from Zion National Park:
Backpacking the Olympic Coast
A tidepool filled with giant green anemones (Anthopleura xanthogrammica) along the coast of Washington in Olympic National Park.
Living in the desert of central Washington, it can be easy to forget that we live in a state with over 3,000 miles of coastline. While the high volcanic peaks of the Cascades are visible from our backyard (and thus remind us of their presence daily), the damp shores of the Pacific remain out of sight and out of mind most of the time.
Our most recent summer trip took us all the way to Washington’s western edge for a short backpacking trip along the coast in Olympic National Park. Coastal backpacking comes with a few unique challenges. For starters, predicting the weather along the coast is notoriously difficult, in part due to the relative lack of surface weather observations over the eastern Pacific and Gulf of Alaska, where most of our storm systems approach from. This fact ended up rearing its head on the final night of our trip.
Perhaps even more importantly, safe coastal backpacking requires that you know how to read a tide chart. The Washington coast experiences a fairly large tidal range, up to 10-12 feet during certain parts of the month. That’s enough to make vast sandy beaches completely disappear. A successful trip requires acute awareness of the timing and magnitude of the twice-daily high and low tides. The coast features many headlands (rocky outcroppings that jut out into the sea, often without any sort of “beach” whatsoever) that can only be traversed when the tide is below a certain level. Getting the timing wrong can (at best) result in having to sit on the beach for hours waiting for the tide to go out or (at worst) getting trapped in a dangerous situation as the tide rises and cuts off your escape route.
As this would be our first coastal backpacking trip, we obtained a permit for a fairly short and straightforward route beginning at Rialto Beach, heading north past the famous Hole-in-the-Wall, and eventually camping for two nights on the beach near the Chilean Memorial, the site of a shipwreck that killed 18 sailors all the way back in 1920. The terrain along this section of the coast was quite variable, ranging from long stretches of soft, sandy beach, to the slightly more annoying cobble and pebble beaches, to large boulder fields and headlands that were somewhat difficult to navigate with a heavy backpack:
Picking our way along the rocky Olympic coast en route to our campsite at Chilean Memorial.
Tilted layers of sediment have been planed off by wave action near Hole-in-the-Wall, Olympic National Park, Washington.
Cape Johnson, Olympic National Park, Washington. With not much beach to speak of, this is a great example of a spot where being aware of the tide situation is essential!
After a little more than four miles of hiking, we arrived at the small, unnamed cove home to the Chilean Memorial and found a campsite just above the high-tide line among large pieces of driftwood. This sheltered cove made for a relatively quiet and peaceful camp, as the myriad rocks and sea stacks just offshore caught the brunt of the surf, limiting the amount of wave action reaching the beach. We enjoyed watching the landscape of the cove change over the next few days as the mist and tides repeatedly swallowed up and revealed the sea stacks and small rocky islands. We quickly discovered that the largest sea stack (pictured below) was connected to the mainland via a rocky isthmus at low tide, and ended up hiking out to it one evening to look back on our campsite.
View out into the Pacific Ocean at sunset from our campsite on the Chilean Memorial beach in Olympic National Park, Washington
Looking back toward the Chilean Memorial beach and Cape Johnson from the base of the large sea stack in the previous photo.
While we had our fair share of clouds and mist, it did clear up enough on one evening to reveal the night sky. The moon was just past full, so the Milky Way was only barely visible, but it was still fun to see the southern stars rise and set over the Pacific:
A faint hint of the Milky Way reveals itself despite the light cast by the rising moon (just behind the trees at left).
Enjoying a driftwood campfire on the beach.
Our trip came just a few days after the full moon, meaning that the low tides were some of the lowest of the month. These so-called “negative tides” are the best for exploring tide pools along the coast, as they reveal a greater variety of sea squishies:
Two giant green anemones in a tidepool in Olympic National Park, Washington.
A crowded tidepool containing multi-colored aggregating anemones (Anthopleura elegantissima) in Olympic National Park, Washington
A tidepool filled with giant green anemones along the coast of Washington in Olympic National Park.
In addition to the living tidepool organisms, we also observed large quantities of dead jellyfish (at least three different species) washed up on the beaches, including several massive (~2 foot wide) lion’s mane jellies:
A deceased (?) lion’s mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata) washed up on the beach in Olympic National Park, one of many, many such jellies we found on our trip.
For our third and final night, the original plan was to hike most of the way back to the car and camp along Rialto Beach near Hole-in-the-Wall. Prior to departure, the weather forecast for this night had called for a fairly robust storm coming in off the Pacific. With an ailing tent that has become somewhat more, shall we say, permeable than one would desire, we briefly debated whether to just call it quits to avoid the chance of getting soaked. Surprisingly, we were able to get enough cell service on the beach to check an updated weather forecast, which showed a drastically reduced chance of rain and little precipitation expected. Consequently, we decided to stick with the original plan and set up camp in the trees at the north end of Rialto Beach. Our decision to stay was quickly validated as we observed a number of whales spouting and breaching throughout the afternoon just offshore.
Our final campsite along Rialto Beach. From this vantage point, we saw a number of whales (likely humpbacks) spouting and breaching off-shore throughout the afternoon and evening.
12 hours later, at 3 AM, when I was emerging from the tent for the third time to re-secure our tarp and shelter in the face of driving rain, wind, and large, deafening waves crashing up against the bluff just a few feet from our tent, I wasn’t so sure. A great example of the fickle coastal weather I suppose, and a good character building experience as Calvin’s dad would say.
While intense, the storm was brief, and by morning the skies were clearing, making for a pleasant stroll down Rialto Beach back to the car. All in all, the trip was a refreshing change of scenery from our predominantly mountain-based adventures the rest of the summer!
Benign clouds greeted us in the wake of the storm for our short hike out to the car on the final morning.
Zach Schierl Photography 