Croatia

Bog from Croatia!

Another country down and only one more to go! Everybody is a strange combination of excited to go home and sad to be leaving all these fun adventures behind. People are in the best mopey mood possible. So what happened in Croatia…?

When we arrived in Dubrovnik it was freezing cold and rainy. It kind of felt like home. Croatia is a beautiful touristy country for about 10 months out of the year…and November is just not one of those months. All the exciting things to do were closed for the season or open and ridiculously expensive…there was nothing to do. For most SASsers, this meant getting completely trashed in the middle of the afternoon and taking over the old walled city. For my friends and myself, this meant finding an internet café and tourist agencies to plan out the rest of our trip in Croatia. Even the tourist agencies told us that there was literally nothing to do – a lot of help they were! So we decided to go to Split, and found a sweet looking hostel that boasted free internet for $20/night/person. We slept on the ship the first night and got up to take a 6 30 AM bus to Split. That was kind of exciting because we got to pass through Bosnia! Check off one more country I can say I’ve been to…and then 4 ½ hours later we arrived.

Once in Split we had to first find our hostel because we were carrying all of our bags. For me this means stuff was heavy because I’d brought my computer and schoolwork. The hostel was amazingly close to the bus station, and it was bigger and cleaner and more perfect than I could have imagined! Western toilets, a kitchen, 2 TVs with DVD players, 3 computers, extra towels….it was wonderful. After dropping our stuff off, we wandered the streets and looked for another travel agency. We finally found one in Diocletian’s Palace and we were like, “just tell us what’s open, we don’t care what we do we just want to do SOMETHING!!!” and he was like, “well, you could go rafting but most people don’t do that in November.” “Is it open?” “Yeah…” “Ok, we’ll do it.”

Oh yeah, my group: I was with Mary, Allie, and Lisa (who is my new favorite person on this trip and I really wish we would have become friends in the first couple weeks instead of the last!!), and a slew of other people that formed our large blob of a group.

With rafting set up, we searched for food. We found a restaurant called the Black Cat that had been recommended to us. We ran into a group of about 8 SAS guys and they told us the restaurant was great and we told them we just signed up for rafting. This is the first country we’ve been in with NO water/health warnings…so we all ate SALADS!! And it was great. And we didn’t have to take pepto beforehand or anything! After dinner we decided to have a quiet girls’ night at the hostel. With free internet, I skyped and uploaded pictures and caught up with lots of people and also watched a movie with everybody. We then went to bed pretty early to get rested for our exciting day ahead.

The next morning we were up early and met our raft guides at 9 30 AM. The boys came rafting with us, and they were a fun, though extremely hung over, group. The car ride up to the river was about an hour, and I was in a car with Mary and Brett and our driver, Iban. Iban used to be a national rugby team player and had lots of funny stories to tell us. Finally we arrived at the river site. They loaded us up with wetsuits, wet socks, wet shoes, a jacket, a life jacket, and a helmet. There was a funny moment when Tristan put his wet suit on backwards and looked like a goof. Finally we were all bundled up and actually not too cold with all that stuff on. I was in a raft with Mary, Allie, Tristan, Zubin, and Peter (who I’d never met before that day) and Iban was our guide. The rafting experience was sooo cool!! The river wasn’t that difficult and part of the fun was just being so freaking cold. But it felt good to paddle and get a little exercise and Iban’s stories were hilarious and the boys were pretty amusing as well. We had to get out at this one part where people die a lot and walk around it. During that break, they fed us candy bars and bananas and then we got to watch our super star raft guides bring our rafts single handedly down this hard part of the river!!! They were awesome. Then we got back in and did the slightly more advanced part of the river (it wasn’t as hard or scary as I thought it would be). We practiced doing swirlies down the river and also rammed one of the other boats just for fun. Like bumper boats. Tristan and I were in the front for this portion of the river, and at this one part everybody was supposed to get splashed and just Tristan and I did…we got soaked!!! It was Cold. Iban was really good with giving us directions so that we felt like we knew what we were doing. Pretty soon we got to this miniature cliff and he asked if anybody wanted to jump off of it. Our whole plan for Croatia was to be extreme, so we were like…we have to. Most of the boys wussed out, Allie wanted to jump but needed some coaxing, and I definitely needed to be talked into it. Which is when Mary just stood up and was like, “I’m going.” And we were like, “What?!? Now we have to go.” So we climbed up this rock, it was probably only 10 feet high, maybe higher, I don’t know. Mary went first and jumped off like it was no big deal. Then a couple of the boys went and the guides did some neat jumpy tricks. Long story short, I JUMPED!!! It was sooo scary and being in the air was really exhilarating. I couldn’t believe I’d just cliff jumped in Croatia in November….Crazy. When I hit the water, for a split second I didn’t feel anything…and then it hit me. SO COLD!!!!!! I could hardly speak or move when I came up for air. I doggie paddled with all my gear on to the raft and the guys helped me over the side of a the raft…I felt like a dead fish being pulled up. Anyway, that was quite the exciting thing to do. When we got back to land it was a major production getting people back into dry clothes. Finally we were ready to go and headed back into Split, where we defaulted to the Black Cat again and got dinner. We made a grocery store stop on the way back to the hostel and once there watched movies and played card games and hung low until we decided to go out. We wandered the town at night for a while and ran into some other SASsers. It was really fun just being out and about with everybody and walking around the city even though it was freezing cold. Eventually we went to bed, ending a great day.

We had to check out by 10 AM, so we were up pretty early. We ate breakfast (at the Black Cat of course) and then did all of our little touristy shopping. I really wanted to buy a jacket but I couldn’t find any that fit me perfectly so I didn’t want to spend the money on one. Plus I still get complimented on a regular basis every time I wear the jacket Jon got me. So we wandered the town down by the water for a while and decided to go get things pierced. It ended up being way more expensive than necessary, so I didn’t get anything pierced but Allie got her eyebrow pierced. She wins the Extreme award. Her parents are not going to be happy! Hahaha. We took an afternoon bus back into Dubrovnik and got back at about 7 30 – which was too bad cuz that means we just missed free dinner on the ship. We napped and lazed around until about 10 and then Mary, Allie, Jesse and I got 10 PM snack (Pizza and/or burgers). After that we were all exhausted, and crashed.

The last day we took a quick bus ride from the ship to the Old Walled City and started off our day with a really good lunch. Then we did the Walled City tour (self-guided) and spent hours walking around on the walls. Every single view from the wall was gorgeous, so we walked really slowly and took lots of pictures and went all the way around and that was our main activity of the day. After the walls, and even though we were cold, we got ice cream and did some last minute shopping before heading back to the ship.

Being back on the ship on the last day of port is hard, because everybody is getting back and sending last minute postcards and excited about their trip, but then in the back of your head you’re like, “I have so much homework to do it’s not even funny. Do I go work or talk with all these excited people?!” Oh, also people were freaking out because we only have one more port left…which is weird.

So anyway, I spent the next 4 days on ship furiously trying to catch up on reading, writing my psych paper, dealing with leadership and actually going to global studies (which is more than most people can say). We had an auction the other night and people spend RIDICULOUS amounts of money on something that they would not even pay for if it wasn’t in the auction. I’m talking like $750 for a bubble bath on ship. $2000 for dinner for 2 on the 7^th deck. WHAT?!?!? It was crazy. So that was weird. Oh also one of my professor’s step daughters is on the ship visiting from England. Her name is Sophie and she’s been hanging out with Mary and Jesse and I a lot so that’s really fun. The last pre-port meetings before Spain were kind of sad L We’re all into crunch-bonding-time now, so I’ve been having lots of good, fun conversations with lots of good people here. I really like a lot of the kids here and I think I will actually miss them. The next couple of weeks will be especially bittersweet. Also on the last day before Spain Lauren sat me down and made me watch Crash, which was an amazing movie! And other than that…not too much was happening on the ship. Everybody’s a weird combination of excited and mopey; so that’s a little bit strange to feel but completely expected.

More after Spain’s over.

Love,

Hilary