Croatia!

In search of some actual summer weather Sam, Kat, Jamie, Soph and I borrowed some sea kayaks and headed south, 8 hours in the car on the autobahn, we arrived in Croatia with the idea that we could paddle around some it’s islands for a while.

Within 20min of entering Croatia we came across multiple diving boards towering out into the water.  These diving boards were present in almost every bay we drove past on our way down the coast. I like Croatia already!

20min into Croatia. Jamie on top. These diving boards are everywhere!

Quick ferry out to Rab.

Our plan was to circumnavigate (slowly) the island of Rab and a couple of the surrounding islands. Rab is located in the upper half of the Croatian coast, about 120kms south of Rijeka.
We caught the ferry out to Rab, picked up one more sea kayak from Jogi at sea kayak croatia (absolute legend), and set on our way.

Soph setting out on Rab harbour, Rab town central in the back ground.

Lunch day 1.

Rab itself is a very popular tourist location and even though we were there in high season, we were still able to find beaches and spots for ourselves. Every couple of days we'd go and find a village to stock up on food. The food is cheap and good.
The Mediterranean sea at this time of the year is stunningly warm and crystal clear. Every day the temperature is hot (35 degrees) and the sky is cloudless. The only weird thing is most of the time you need to wear shoes when you swim, as there are heaps and heaps of sea urchins everywhere on sea floor.


I will let the photos and their captions tell the rest of the story... 

The Mediterranean is so salty and bouyant you don't even need to try and float, it just happens. Jamie on his lilo.

A late morning swim on day 2. Still in awe of the warm clear water. What were we even doing in Norway???

The Sheep on Goli Otok (Otok is island) have life pretty tough, no green pastures, just rocks. I'd say they have pretty tough feet too as the rocks are razor sharp to walk on.

On our way to the top of Goli Otok to catch the sunset.

Family photo at the top of Goli, looks like we all have a tan, but its just the golden light of the setting sun.

I paddled round a corner and happened to see this Eagle Owl perched about 3m away from me. With a bit of fumbling with my peli-case I was too slow for a close up. They're pretty big, wing span up to 2m. Glad it didn't try to eat me. I heard if they're hungry they'll even go for a small deer.

Jamie, Kat and Sam enjoying their freshly caught and cooked muscles for lunch.

Master chef Sam Sutton.

Rise and shine, another hot day in the sun.

Doing the breakfast dishes never had such a good view.

From Goli island we came back to civilisation for supplies and this is what we found. Glad we weren't on holiday here.

Don't you just wanna hop in that water?

Birds eye view of day 6 camp. Yep that's a naked person. And yes his name is Jamie.

Stunning weather every day. Beautiful Scenery. Soph loving it.

We were loving the sun for the first few days, but by the end of the week we were feeling the effects of too much sun. As soon as we got to a beach our first move would setting up shelter from the sun.

The standard Sommer paddle bivi setup so we can escape the sun. We got pretty good at it by about day 5 when we couldn't handle the sun anymore.

Very funky rocks.

After 7 days around Rab we headed back to the mainland and continued the simple life of sun, swimming and doing heaps of choice as jumps, playing cards, drinking Radler, eating mozarella and tomato in the small village on Stinica, on the mainland coast directly adjacent to Rab.

Our play ground on the mainland for a couple days at the end of the trip.

I had my go pro with me for the trip, but I only ever remembered to break it out when we were diving and jumping. The important stuff I guess. Here's a quick vid of our super warm time jumping into the Mediterranean...

Swimming and choice as bombs in croatia but no ice creams from brendan bayly on Vimeo.