My kayaking trip to Croatia in 2005 got off to a rough start. During the first day, crossing swell on the Adriatic made for seas so steep and confused that seasickness slowed me to a crawl, and that night a storm brought lightning ground strikes and winds of 40 knots, flattening my guide’s tent and forcing us to retreat from the open ground where we’d camped to find shelter. It made for a good story, the kind I was used to writing about: facing challenges. The trip ended well, and in a way that I grew to appreciate the more I traveled in small boats: chance meetings with remarkable strangers. Radovan and I arrived at Kozarica on the morning of our last day of a kayak tour of the Elafiti Islands near Dubrovnik and Mjlet Island. We stopped in Kozarica to stretch our legs.
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Thanks for the glimpse into seaside village life in Croatia at that time.
I can’t help but think of all the other stories latent in that little vignette of the bay that morning. What is the economic basis for life in that village? How important is the lobster fishery to the locals – does it go beyond food for immediate consumption for the villagers or is there a market? The implication of the apparent lobster abundance in the bay is that the water is clean and that there must be effective sewage treatment or at least the outfall is offshore. Is the art and craft of trap making being passed on to the younger generation? What is the history of the boat type built by Brko’s brother?
I think you’ll have to return there and come back to tell us what you discovered.
Chris,
It’s a muggy Sunday morning here and Tina and I have just been transported to a calm, lovely place. The magic of Brko’s snug stone harbor was a delightful departure from squalls, swells, and seasick ‘yakking.
The photos from your visit – man with a yellow hat, one-eyed cat, wicker lobster traps, stout wooden boats, stone and stucco, sweet little girl, placid waters – as well as the vivid telling of a stranger’s gentle kindness reminded us that a lot of little connections out there are what brings us all together. It also put me in mind to re-read the story of your visit with the Hubbards that you shared in SBM in March, 2017.
Your sweet, colored memory of getting off the water pulled up one for me. We were boat-hiking down the Rio Napo on summer break from teaching in Quito and had found a new ride to take us across the border into Peru. Waiting for the boatman to cast off the dugout, my friend Paul spotted an older native woman washing clothes at the river’s edge. His hands moved to his waist to extract a small, travel camera from the Velcroed pouch. The swoosh of Velcro teeth separating brought up the woman’s head and she turned her back to us as she walked away. No photo but an enduring memory of a woman’s heightened threat awareness. We never reached the Amazon (house arrest in Peru) but those 50 years ago memories are easily refreshed. Thanks, Chris.