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June 26, 2005: Korcula Island and Hvar Island The Austrian on the Honda found out the hard way that Korcula and Hvar Islands are not connected by car ferry at their nearest ends, Vela Luka to Hvar - only the passenger ferry runs that route. We met in the parking lot of Hvar town as I was leaving and he was arriving. I was dressing for the road, he was peeling his layers off - black leathers in this heat, yikes. "Intelligent," he remarked, though we decided that Croatian drivers, despite their reputation, are not worse than the Italians. Why do travelers make gross generalizations like that? Leaving Hvar town I found a winding road on the spine of the island, got tired, and turned down a small road hoping there was somewhere to stay, a beach, some rocks with water, not sand as there is here in Croatia more likely than not, and after three kilometers the road became more narrow and more gravelly, which is dangerous on a motorcycle, and then it took a steep dive and became grooved asphalt and then a dirt platform and I was walking down the driveway, sweating, my jacket and helmet off, to a guesthouse on a tiny inlet of that white-gray Croatian rock that is all sinclines and anticlines jutting up when the earth went "heave-ho" here, and the water, God, the water, clear blue, azure, pale, not tainted by sand, only hard white-gray rock and stark clarity to the bottom where more jags jut up toward the surface. I interrupted dinner, six dressed for dinner on the patio, but they had a room - only the six Austrians were there (they'd discovered this place 10 years ago) and the fish was grilling but I only wanted to be in the water so I walked along the rocks and dove in the clear salty Adriatic water to float and wash off the road dirt - here on Hvar the road dirt isn't bad - it smells of the lavendar that is growing everywhere, glowing in the evening air purple and dusky gray in every rocky niche and the afternoon sun having baked it, sending its scent into the air even stronger than in the South of France, I swear. After cooling off and getting dressed they fed me salad and potato soup and grilled fish and cold white wine, and we listened to music and the Austrians could speak some English and so could the Croation hosts and the family - the twenty-something daughter and son - and we laughed and drank and the guests swam some more in the dark. Finally now, after all these days I can see the stars, there are no cities nearby, only the Adriatic Sea and small towns on islands. The night is still and across on the mainland there are some lights from a ship but otherwise it's the rocks that glow white and the sea laps, rather, it gurgles and burbles in the complicated pattern of rocky shore. The big dipper dips more drastically here than at home, it's pouring, its contents onto Hvar Island. What does the big dipper dip? The black felt of night, the dark tongue that laps up the sun, licking the light from the earth for hours and hours while we sleep. |
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