Immersion in the Adriatic and Aegean

Arriving in Croatia in late August changed everything. I felt better after my bout with COVID-19, I was happier, and the following week was by far the best of our trip.

From our limited experience, Croatians are fantastically direct. They are not into degrading themselves in the name of service, and they are not rude or paranoid or morose. They are clear, concise, and you always know where you stand. We found this incredibly refreshing. “Could you remove the onions from this dish?” “Sorry we can’t do that.” Full stop. No long explanation, just the facts, not hostile but friendly.

The honesty sometimes goes to the point of revealing the traditional, conservative nature of many of the Croatian people. One person confided in us that he was not happy about having two daughters, but when a friend had a son with Downs Syndrome, he realised “he was okay with having two girls….”

An art gallery in Split where the artist makes you climb through this tangled web to see the rest of the exhibition to give you a sense of her life inside her home. Or maybe “world’s worst harp”?

We had a day in Split, where we learned that there was a Croatian-born Roman Emperor; Diocletian is unpopular with Christians because he killed a lot of them. But he did attempt both power sharing of the empire with an equal, and attempted to orchestrate a peaceful transfer of power via a succession plan to chosen, capable governors, but his equal betrayed him. Thus Rome returned to the usual might-by-violence that appears more and more popular in US red states. (Oh yes he did!)

We had a phenomenal day in Plitvice Lakes National Park, and at the end, a day in Dubrovnik, but the gem of the week was three days on a Sailboat with our Captain Brane and his wife and chef/cruise director/host Iva.

Asea? At sea? Asail? Assailed?

We swam 1–2km in the water twice a day for three days. Despite the fact that the hot air at night did not let me sleep, my body sang out with glee. My mind and emotions drank in our peaceful voyage, the small island towns, the perfectly cool and clear water, and Iva’s fantastic cooking.

Kim hiking around Plitvice National Park in Croatia. The cleanliness and the colour of the water doesn’t look real. Who is applying a filter to my optic nerve?

Our final night of our sailing trip, we met a friend of Brane and Iva’s, who was an itinerant professor of philosophy across several German universities. Alongside the sea, we shared a few drinks and joyfully debated the existence of free will: whether even if biology predetermines our fate, or if just the possibility of other futures is enough to see that as free well. Personally, I don’t believe in free will, but to have this conversation with a beer in my hand in English in a small seaside village in Croatia with someone who teaches philosophy in German is a special thing. But of course, I had no choice in the matter… 🤔

Oh Captain My Captain! Brane and Iva politely declined our request to just keep sailing until we hit the coast of Northern NSW.

In the back of my mind, ever since catching COVID, I had worried about being in good enough shape to complete the 5k a day that I would need to do for SwimTrek, in Milos, Greece, just the week after our time in Croatia. Just the feeling of being able to swim 2k, albeit quite slow, made me so happy that I wasn’t going to ruin SwimTrek for Kim.

A lake on an island in the Adriatic. We hiked up, swam, hiked back. This is a very difficult life we are living.

I cannot remember of a body of water more beautiful than the Adriatic. While it was a little warmer than ideal for swimming, it didn’t slow us down. Brane (boat captain) said at the end, “We get a lot of people saying they want to swim a lot. You are the first two who really meant it!”

We finished up with a night in Dubrovnik. If you love the water, there’s no need to spend much time in the cities in Croatia. I recommend Croatia highly for anyone who loves the sea.

Several parts of the tv series, “Welcome Back, Kotter” were filmed in Dubrovnik, where they used the castles for the inner-city classrooms of the Bronx. Oh, wait, no it was “Game of Thrones.”

SwimTrek Rookies

SwimTrek is a fascinating tour company, offering swimming adventures all around the world. Kim’s colleague at work loved his SwimTrek adventure, and the company offered a SwimTrek in Milos, an island about three hours from Athens by ferry. So, we signed up.

Don’t swim into the light! Noooooooooooooo………

It would be a day of orientation, five days of swimming 5k in the ocean, and then we would leave. Most coaching programs will tell you to only increase your total mileage each week by 10–20%. So going from 0 km to 6 km to 25 km meant that I would not have the use of my neck, shoulders, or arms the following week. As they say, “If you wake up and don’t feel any pain. you must be either under 50 or dead.”

The survivors of the Milos SwimTrek Oct 1–7, 2024. Everyone smile and say, “I won’t have to spend tomorrow on a boat in my swimming costume next to any of these people!”

The first two days of SwimTrek, I struggled with blood sugar and a swimming cossie that was simply too tight. The combination was not great for my digestive system or my attitude. Day three I metamorphosed from a morose lump into a happy swimmer.

The water was great. I could focus on pushing myself in the morning, pushing myself, and then enjoy the exploration of the 2k afternoon swim. A mid-week massage released my neck and thinner pillows made swimming pain free for the last two days. I must be dead?

The social aspect of spending a week with the same 12 people was more challenging than the swimming, despite almost all of the people being incredibly friendly. Kim even noticed how different I was with this new set of people — that it was active work for me to interact with them at times.

Some of the caves were not for the faint of heart. Kim both showed her bravery and left a few layers of skin behind on some of the rocks.

Our guides were fantastic. I always seemed to be swimming off-course, and I’d hear the whistle and know that I was heading towards India instead of the shore.

One of the more elusive sea creatures of the Aegean, the BJR fish has a voracious appetite and can consume it’s own body weight in tofu in a single week. It has no sense of direction and does not mate in captivity unless highly compensated.

Our final day, I felt a twinge of sadness that the trip was over. I felt healthier than I had in a long time. My body had rebounded from travel potato to emerge as travel broccolini! The volume of my mental whinging had gone from an 8 to a 7.6!

Athens

We went to Athens. Then we left. (Actually we had a nice run around the city our last morning. Otherwise… #avoidathens)

This is a picture of something in Athens.

Tourism, They Can’t Live With or Without You

Croatia and Greece exposed us to two more case studies of the Catch-22 of tourism — the benefit to the economy that tourism can produce, the dependency it can create, and the elimination of industries that actually produce anything. Croatia’s economy has blossomed because of tourism, but it makes it all the more fragile in the future. Athens is overrun by tourists and people selling tours.

To what end, then, oh travel? Why depart from one’s abode if thy footprint striketh in ways we shants not dareth to trodeth shouldst we knoweth the shitshoweth of one’s impact?

“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.” — Walt Whitman, Specimen Days.