On Wednesday morning we departed Stari Grad earlier than planned and headed to Hvar Town, our second stop on the island of Hvar. Hvar town was originally supposed to be an overnight stop, but due to the upcoming weather, the ship departed Stari Grad immediately after breakfast. We had a tour from a local guide, explored a bit on our own, and we were back on the ship in time for lunch. We then headed for the island of Korčula. We stayed overnight at Korčula town.
The winds that were coming soon are from the south and is known as the Jugo (pronounced You-go).
In Korčula town, we toured the city with a local guide. We then explored more and were on our own for dinner. After a solid week of three big meals a day, I was ready for a change, and simply had a bowl of fish soup for dinner (with two glasses of the local wine, of course).
The next morning, we set sail while we were all in bed. The boat motors kicked on at 3:30am. The Jugo winds were expected to pick up at daybreak on Thursday morning, so the captain’s goal was to get us to our next port by then. Things did not seem too bad while I was horizontal. However, I got up out of bed while the boat was moving, and I could not stand up. So, I went back to bed. We arrived at the harbor in the city of Slano at 7:30am. This stop was not in our plans but was the safest place on the mainland for us to stop. That was the last time we would be sailing for the trip. The rest of the time we simply used the boat as a hotel and restaurant. After exploring the town for a short while, we had lunch on the boat, disembarked and boarded a bus and went to Ston.
Ston is another ancient city (sound familiar?) that has been harvesting salt for more than 400 years. We had a tour of the large land area where they let water in from the sea, at about 2.5 feet deep, then let the water evaporate leaving salt. Trading in salt was a huge source of income for this area for centuries. This town also had large walls around the city and up the mountains—the second largest such defensive walls in the world after the Great Wall of China. I walked part of the wall and was rewarded with both fantastic views and extremely high winds!
We then visited a local family run winery, where their wine is only sold in the immediate surrounding area. The wine was excellent. Before the wine tastings, we sampled small tastes of four different kinds of rakija (Croation equivalent of grappa). The fig rakija was my favorite.
Our bus then headed to the port in Dubrovnik. Our captain and crew departed from Slano after we boarded the bus and sailed to Dubrovnik without the participants. We were told it was extremely rough sailing for them, but they made it. Once we arrived back at the boat on Thursday evening, the boat would not move for the rest of “the ship” part of our journey.
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