Croatia? I Hardly Know Ya

Kent and Kari kept trying to do romantic things together, but we always found a way to be a part of them.

Apologies for the late entry but this post was delayed due to unforeseen and unavoidable laziness. So without further ado, Croatia! We last left our handsome heroes in Kotor, Montenegro and the next stop was Dubrovnik, a mere 55 miles north along the Adriatic Sea. We decided to bus, thinking it would only take about an hour and we could see the countryside. What we didn't consider was the border crossing. Since we were entering another country, we had to go through Customs for leaving Montenegro and another Customs 3 miles later for entering Croatia. The hour long bus ride actually took over 4 hours and that was with the bus driver smoking cigarettes the whole time. Ugh. Plus I, of course, somehow lost my bus ticket WHILE ON THE BUS so I had to buy another one because I'm a moron that can't keep their shit organized. For the record, Kent had it. Subtle Canadian sabotage.

Every sunset is beautiful on the Adriatic. Almost as pretty as this Balkan babe I picked up. 

While we're discussing travel lets briefly dive into our flights. Most of our Balkan country hopping was done via propeller planes in 45 to 90 minute flights. Now personally I am terrified of propeller planes. Why are we still using these? THEY'RE OLD TECHNOLOGY. Are these airlines unaware that jet airplanes have been around since THE 1940s? Do we need some kind of giant rubber band to start the propellers? Probably. Is there some giant man that just heaves us into the air and then we cross our fingers we can float to our destination? You know it. Hate em. I'd rather walk thank you. Unfortunately Google claims it would take "90 hours" to walk from Bucharest to Sofia so I was outvoted by my travelling companions who all clearly have a deathwish.

The last known photograph of the reckless travelers before stepping onto the doomed aircraft.
 Rob is in the back, probably smoking his last cigarette.

After preparing my will and notifying my next of kin (Luna), I stepped onto one of these murdermobiles and set course for a new country. You know how the flight attendants on Delta give you attitude when you have the nerve to ask for the actual can of Coke instead of just the dixie cup? "Oh I'm sorry, sir, are you implying this syringe of Sprite won't be enough?" Well these flights hooked. us. up. They were short flights so the attendant barely had time to walk the entire plane before we descended but they managed to quickly hand out treats to everyone. At first I was delighted but then quickly realized that this great food was clearly my last meal before this floating iron lung sputtered into a mountain. Cookies, chocolate bars, pastries, muffins, ENTIRE SANDWICHES. Not to mention all the beer you can drink on a 45 minute flight (challenge accepted). Jesus, we took a 7 hour flight to Iceland once and all they gave us was peanuts. I was pleasantly surprised when we landed still alive and without the loss of any limbs, so despite effectively being death machines, I'm alright with these prop planes. As long as they keep feeding me.

After a traumatic experience like that, you learn new things about yourself.

Anyway. Back to Croatia. Dubrovnik's main attraction is its Old Town, which is prominently featured in Game of Thrones as it's used for the shooting location for King's Landing. This meant that droves of people flock here and try to match up pictures to stand where Cersei murdered some dude or Tyrion fell over drunk. The Old Town was full of restaurants and shops, all of which were severely overpriced and overrun with people. No thanks, Colin Hanks. We spent only a few hours here before deciding to leave the city and go on a speedboat booze cruise of surrounding islands. This was probably my favorite part of the entire trip as it was just the five of us on a private tour.

Kent was voted to be the prettiest of the five of us so he was our figurehead. 

Our driver (captain? head boatman?) spoke approximately zero english, only enough to tell us when he thought we should take a drink and when to get out of the boat. For example, we were pulling up to a new island when he suddenly stopped about 200 yards from the beach, dropped anchor, and told us to swim. Using his keen Canadian deduction skills, Kent figured out that there was no dock and we just had to swim into the beach. Now I thought I was a good swimmer because I dominated my Grandma's pool when I was 12. Turns out that I am in fact, a great swimmer...for about 90 seconds (or two lengths of Grandma's pool) and after that I go downhill pretty quick. It makes matters worse that Katie is a phenomenal swimmer and would be effortlessly gliding in front of me. Luckily the Adriatic is super salty so for the most part your body just floats without treading, but I still found ways to almost drown myself. Sometimes Kari would seemingly purposefully swim behind me just to laugh at me thrash through the water. Such good friends. But in my defense I was pretty loaded on rakija and I forgot that if we swam 200 yards from the boat we eventually had to swim back.

Pictured here we have a 30 year old man, hopelessly under the spell of rakija.
 Little did he know, not five minutes later he would swallow a ton of seawater.

Katie briefly mentioned rakija in her last post but it deserves a bigger shoutout as it was a part of almost every meal. Rakija is the Balkan's go-to drink. There are many different versions of it and every country has their own twist but it basically boils down to fruit brandy, and that fruit could be plums, blueberries, pears, grapes, or even honey. One of their traditions is to do a shot before you eat as it "helps with digestion". Yeah okay. I'm going to start using that excuse for drinking Fireball before noon. Daydrinking aside, it's customary to have a shot before, during or after the meal. One of our servers told us that there was a Serbian phrase that roughly translates to: "When is a good time for Rakija? Now is a good time for Rakija." I'm not going to argue the semantics with you, just pour me another.

Rakija made it very difficult to read clocks like this. It was 3:53pm.  

After Dubrovnik we took a catamaran to Split, and when we weren't lounging on beaches or drinking brandy in the morning, we were exploring the country and my favorite expedition was to Krka National Park. To enter the park we used a ferry, which took us through a large canyon surrounded by large beautiful mountains and trees but felt eerily similar to the boat ride Sam Neill takes in Jurassic Park 3 when he's tricked into looking for that stupid kid. Dinosaur parasailing? Nice parenting, Stepdad. We had no Spinosaurus attacks although I might have preferred that to the siege of mosquitos that followed us everywhere. Krka was positively gorgeous but the trails were skinny and apparently August is peak tourist season so like Dubrovnik, it was also overrun, but it was big enough that we could still find open areas to explore. It was basically a park full of waterfalls, the perfect way to end our tour of Croatia.

Two natural beauties

Of all the countries we visited, we spent the most time in Croatia, visiting four cities and exploring five islands. We chilled on beaches, swam naked in the Adriatic, picnicked in a national park, and gambled with five different currencies on a ship. Croatia brought Katie's country total to 31 and mine to 29, which is simply unacceptable. Expect a quick trip to Greenland to round my total up to a more respectable number 30.

We also learned that we're super strong and don't need a 6th person to make a dope pyramid. 

CM