FROM RAB TO PAG
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| Pag's party beach |
The Tourist Office provided us with a detailed map of the island marked with walking trails. Those have been established in the 1930s by Ante Premužić, a forest expert, who was found of outdoor. The trails were named after him because he was the driving force in their construction. He also contributed to open some trails in the Velebit mountain range and a few more Croatian islands.
Lopar is a fairly small town. It is located between two ranges of hills in a short corridor that opens from both sides onto the sea, on the ferry harbour and the camping beach. The town is surrounded by fields and gardens. Yet, it is large enough to have a brand new looking Konzum supermarket, unmistakable sign of modern development, whose logo in fat red capital letters can be spotted a few kilometers around, including from the St Rochus chapel that was built in the honor of Saint Rochus in 1855 after an episode of plague that killed 93 people. Saint Rochus, a Frenchman from the 14th century, had become famous for helping curing victims of the plague. After the 1855 epidemy, villagers organized a yearly pilgrimage to the chapel which takes place until today.
To join the Ante Premužić trail we followed a narrow path demarcated by low dry-stone walls disappearing under a thick foliage of reed. A roadman was driving very slowly towards us on a red mini-tractor dragging a trailer filled with stones. He stopped every time he saw a stone fallen from a wall to collect it. We went uphill along the north-eastern side of the island over a narrow trail that was in fact like a dry stone wall cast on the slope to allow people to walk along the steep slope easily. It must have been a formidable work to put together this trail across the island. While we progressed in our ascend, the Velebit range on the continent and the barren islets of Otok Sveti Grgur and Goli Otok (aptly named "naked island") were gaining shape.
Once on the plateau, we traversed a wood of ancient oaks growing amid large blocks of limestone that constituted most of the ground of the island. The sinuous shape of tree trunks were a good indication of the harshness of the island's climate. It created an eerie atmosphere which would have been a perfect setting for a magical world. In the center of the plateau, stones had been cleared from pastures and fields, which must have been another painstaking manual exercise, and piled up in walls. After that, the landscape changed, it became more mineral with stunted thorny bushes struggling to grow amidst sharp limestone rocks moulded by erosion. No doubt the Bora wind had something to do with it. We followed the trail leading to the summit of the island, the Kamenjak. This was by far the most impressive part of the journey. We had to walk on top of a cliff, a few hundred meters above the sea, along the outer wall of land enclosures. It felt like being back in the Alps for a few hours, glad to have our walking sticks to navigate through the stones of the narrow uneven trail and exhilarated by the majesty of the panorama of the Velebit channel.
We saw a group of sheep who quickly, though carefully, moved below us where the slope was dangerously steep. Finally the Kamenjak was in sight topped by a weather station. Ahead of us clouds were darkening the horizon in the direction of the island of Pag. They moved slowly over our heads and soon blocked the sun. The town of Rab appeared in front of us by the seaside on the other side of the island. Four bell-towers stood out of the hill on which the old town has been built with long parallel streets along the harbour. The lower cobbled streets at the feet of the fortress of Rab formed an area called Varoš in Croatian. It is where all shops were, and still are, concentrated. We had dinner by the waterside in a restaurant recommended by our landlady. "This is where Croatian people go, not too expensive, good seafood", she said. It is called Šanpjer (I had understood Jean Pierre, because it was pronounced the same way) and means John Dory fish. The food was alright, worth the price so to speak.
The next day the sky was dull, we had the whole day to ourselves until the 5 PM ferry that would take us to the island of Pag. We went to the top of the fortification wall from which one has a beautiful panorama over the old town. Dance music was filling the air, giving the grey of the clouds a less dramatic shade. It was party mood! A bit of rain made the cobbled streets shiny, but it dried quickly. A group of kids entered the cathedral, it was music practice day. They gathered around the altar and started to rehearse songs under the tender and forgiving watch of their mothers. Still a little bit of effort would have to be put into it! Outside on the stairs leading to the sea a black and white cat was facing a black one. One of them knew it would have to give way to the other, but they were not in a hurry to find out who it would be.
We passed through the garden of the monastery and exited the old town through a gate opening on the pier. This is where the party mood was coming from, precisely from the "Ground Zero, German Engineering" sound gazebo. It was in fact the day of the Rab Auto Custom Festival, where aficionados from the region came to showcase their customized cars fitted to be the loudest possible with their engines and their sound systems. "Life is too short to drive boring cars", was written on the fender of one of them.The backside of a car bonnet was decorated with a naked lady holding the head of a fully erect cobra snake, both of them in the middle of flames. Another one, a bit feminist, had replaced the man standing next to a lady in a toilet sign by a Honda logo with the legend "problem solved", so to speak your Honda is a more reliable partner than your boyfriend. A guy was walking around with a Dalmatian on a leash. Besides being a nice dog, it was also the dog wearing the name of the neighbouring province, although it seems that Dalmatian dogs do not actually originate from Dalmatia.
A crowd of youngsters and less young ones was going back and forth to spy on and admire each other's cars. It was fun to watch their style aiming at highlighting the value their pet cars: piercing, tattoos, haircut and colour, make-up and matching clothes and shoes, everything contributed to it.
I went to a local hairdresser, a lady in her forties who was working swiftly. Five millimeters, I told her to describe how long I wanted to have my hair cut. Her other customers were essentially teenagers coming together as friends, but a good catch because they came in numbers.
Towards the end of the afternoon, the jury was measuring the sound emitted by all the cars to find out which one deserved to be awarded the loudest with the best style. Meanwhile huts selling snacks and drinks were doing quite well. This is where we left it at when the Jadrolinja ferry came to unload and load passengers.
Off we were to Novalja that we reached under the last sunbeams of a tormented sky, making the town of white terracotta-roofed houses shine on the backdrop of the Velebit mountains like properly lit diamonds in the window of a jewellery shop aiming at catching a woman's eye.
Novalja is dubbed a party town because of its proximity with Zrce beach which hosts 24/7 music festivals over the summer. We read in hotel reviews that one of them had double-rooms with single beds positioned in column to discourage promiscuous behaviour in the rooms. The summer was clearly over in October and so was the season for the red semi-submarine parked on a trolley in front of a closed supermarket. The sea and the air were too cold for beach parties and potential customers had long deserted the island. The town that has fifty thousand inhabitants in summer downsizes to four thousand in winter.
Novalja is dubbed a party town because of its proximity with Zrce beach which hosts 24/7 music festivals over the summer. We read in hotel reviews that one of them had double-rooms with single beds positioned in column to discourage promiscuous behaviour in the rooms. The summer was clearly over in October and so was the season for the red semi-submarine parked on a trolley in front of a closed supermarket. The sea and the air were too cold for beach parties and potential customers had long deserted the island. The town that has fifty thousand inhabitants in summer downsizes to four thousand in winter.
The lady at the tourist information office told us, go to Boškinac, it is expensive but you won't regret ANY kuna you have spent there. Boškinac is a boutique hotel right outside of Novalja that is famous for its cuisine centered on local products including the wines and olive products made at their own farm. We followed the advice of the tourist office lady after having realized that I had booked an apartment for the wrong night. I had actually made a reservation for the following night! Fortunately our host was present and the apartment was available. The man was charming and even drove us to the restaurant to make sure we wouldn't get lost on the way. At Boškinac, we were not the only guests, there was a party of Italians staying at the hotel to shoot a movie or a documentary on Zrce. The film director was famous, as per what our host had told us. The dinner was delicious, in particular the lamb cooked in two different ways and the oxtail with celery, carrot and savoy cabbage. Their wines were quite alright but not as refined as the food. We went back to our place happy that everything had worked out so well in the end.
The weather improved over the night, the wind chased the clouds from some parts of the sky staging a progressive comeback of the sun. We went to say goodbye and thank you for the good advice to the lady of the Tourist Office. We exited the town along the main road that was still featuring billboards about the parties of the previous summer. We then branched left and entered a pine forest to go down towards Zrce. We were now in the nature, walking peacefully on a carpet of soft grass wet from the night before. After a final curve we saw the cove of Caška at the end of which Zrce beach is nested, planted with palm trees at regular intervals, a bit like street poles. The large parking lot was empty. The whole place seemed to be convalescing, trying to recover from the sequels of the past summer. The lake-like surface of the sea was hardly moving the pebbles on the beach as if tired of all the human fun accumulated over the summer in the various beach clubs open 24/7 for a couple of month with bathing suits only as the tenue de rigueur. Not surprisingly for such place, a prominent piercing and tattoo atelier was right in the middle of the beach just in case a last minute upgrade to one's look was required. The Noa club advertised on its store front "beach club since 1862" and was announcing a very decent line up of international DJs (in other words, I had heard about a few of the names). Other clubs included Papaya, Aquarius and Euphoria. Pools were obviously empty. The whole place was now looking like a storage place for movie sets.
Only the artificial palm trees were still proudly standing, much fatter than their real peers.
Novalja in contrast was warning visitors with "we love your clothes" stickers frequently pasted on walls to remind everyone that bathing-suits-only were not welcome in town. Beer was, however, promoted with targeted stickers such as "Beer is all a man needs, except sex" or "Beer is helping ugly people have sex since 1862".
We left Zrce beach through a mud path leading back to the main road along a large enclosure with apartments for party goers to hang out and over. There was also an installation where people could fly over an air curtain. Safety signs reminded that goggles, flying suits and a few more items were mandatory before taking a flight. We crossed the road next to a petrol station which sat there like a UFO landed in the desert.
From there, we walked through the perfectly quiet and rural saline landscape near Gajac. Reed hedges grew along the gravel paths where dry-stone walls hadn't collapsed. Sheep were grazing peacefully in their respective enclosures, but were still very much alert and ready to run away together at once at the first sign of someone approaching.
We passed in front of an old isolated chapel before crossing the main road again towards the bay of Pag. A thrilling view appeared in front of us with the Velebit as a dark cloudy background and the barren hills on the other side of the bay, with a few villages on their slope. The light was amazing with areas of shadow and sun transforming the landscape into a giant moving patchwork.
The placid aspect of the water, the reed, the barren nature of the hills and the white box-shaped houses packed together against the slope, made one feel like being somewhere along the shore of the Nile in rural Egypt.
The Tourist Office lady had really praised this stretch of track going all the way to Pag town. She said that this was the path followed by the Assumption procession that she had joined a month ago. As hills, on our right, turned into cliffs, I discovered a brown armchair that had been disposed of behind a curtain of reed on a patch of grass waiting for someone to sit on it and enjoy this unexpected encounter of an outdoor living room. I couldn't resist it.
We were reminded of being in a tourism paradise as we got nearer to Pag with holiday housing getting more and more dense. Everywhere workers were busy repairing, upgrading or simply building anew to be ready for the next season. The old town of Pag was on the opposite side of the bay, after the bridge that separated it from the bay. Pag was also, in its own right a party candidate with two clubs located on the stretch of land that leads to the bridge. They occupied old warehouses, most probably used for salt in the past. Vortex was the name of the club right next to the bridge.
Lace is a specialty of Pag, as highlighted by the presence of a lace museum in a palace on the main square diagonally opposite the church. We bought some from an old women who worked at it from her doorsteps so that visitors knew she was selling some. She was stood in front of a narrow house tightly pressed against the neighbouring ones. She was enjoying the sun while she could in that tiny street.
"Bora has not yet come, but when it does, people stay indoors. There are report of cars turned upside down by the wind. In those days, usually after November, the bridge to Zadar and ferries stop working until the wind eases up", those were the words of our landlady adding that what we thought we had experienced as Bora was a mere "baby Bora".
We went for a swim in front of hotel Pagus. The water was chilly but a few foreign visitors (mostly Germans) fought the cold happily. The view on hills topped by large cauliflowerish clouds coloured in light orange pink was worth the effort.
At dinner there was grilled local lamb on offer in the konoba Barcarolla still open despite the low season. Baby Bora blew cold that night.
The next morning, before leaving for Zadar, we did a final round in town and stopped for coffee at a busy place on the outskirts of the old town where the market takes place. This was a local favourite, presumably because the coffee was cheaper than in town. A young cat playing in the grass by the water side opposite the market hall had brought us to have look at the cafe. That cat was visibly familiar with the bar because we saw him confidently enter the covered terrace. This caught the attention of a black and white mini bulldog that stood up and started barking and pulling frantically on its leash. The young cat considered hesitantly the threat and, seeing that the bulldog was stuck to its leash, settled to ignore it and lie on the floor as if it was its home.
The weather improved over the night, the wind chased the clouds from some parts of the sky staging a progressive comeback of the sun. We went to say goodbye and thank you for the good advice to the lady of the Tourist Office. We exited the town along the main road that was still featuring billboards about the parties of the previous summer. We then branched left and entered a pine forest to go down towards Zrce. We were now in the nature, walking peacefully on a carpet of soft grass wet from the night before. After a final curve we saw the cove of Caška at the end of which Zrce beach is nested, planted with palm trees at regular intervals, a bit like street poles. The large parking lot was empty. The whole place seemed to be convalescing, trying to recover from the sequels of the past summer. The lake-like surface of the sea was hardly moving the pebbles on the beach as if tired of all the human fun accumulated over the summer in the various beach clubs open 24/7 for a couple of month with bathing suits only as the tenue de rigueur. Not surprisingly for such place, a prominent piercing and tattoo atelier was right in the middle of the beach just in case a last minute upgrade to one's look was required. The Noa club advertised on its store front "beach club since 1862" and was announcing a very decent line up of international DJs (in other words, I had heard about a few of the names). Other clubs included Papaya, Aquarius and Euphoria. Pools were obviously empty. The whole place was now looking like a storage place for movie sets.
Only the artificial palm trees were still proudly standing, much fatter than their real peers.
Novalja in contrast was warning visitors with "we love your clothes" stickers frequently pasted on walls to remind everyone that bathing-suits-only were not welcome in town. Beer was, however, promoted with targeted stickers such as "Beer is all a man needs, except sex" or "Beer is helping ugly people have sex since 1862".
We left Zrce beach through a mud path leading back to the main road along a large enclosure with apartments for party goers to hang out and over. There was also an installation where people could fly over an air curtain. Safety signs reminded that goggles, flying suits and a few more items were mandatory before taking a flight. We crossed the road next to a petrol station which sat there like a UFO landed in the desert.
From there, we walked through the perfectly quiet and rural saline landscape near Gajac. Reed hedges grew along the gravel paths where dry-stone walls hadn't collapsed. Sheep were grazing peacefully in their respective enclosures, but were still very much alert and ready to run away together at once at the first sign of someone approaching.
We passed in front of an old isolated chapel before crossing the main road again towards the bay of Pag. A thrilling view appeared in front of us with the Velebit as a dark cloudy background and the barren hills on the other side of the bay, with a few villages on their slope. The light was amazing with areas of shadow and sun transforming the landscape into a giant moving patchwork.
The placid aspect of the water, the reed, the barren nature of the hills and the white box-shaped houses packed together against the slope, made one feel like being somewhere along the shore of the Nile in rural Egypt.
The Tourist Office lady had really praised this stretch of track going all the way to Pag town. She said that this was the path followed by the Assumption procession that she had joined a month ago. As hills, on our right, turned into cliffs, I discovered a brown armchair that had been disposed of behind a curtain of reed on a patch of grass waiting for someone to sit on it and enjoy this unexpected encounter of an outdoor living room. I couldn't resist it.
We were reminded of being in a tourism paradise as we got nearer to Pag with holiday housing getting more and more dense. Everywhere workers were busy repairing, upgrading or simply building anew to be ready for the next season. The old town of Pag was on the opposite side of the bay, after the bridge that separated it from the bay. Pag was also, in its own right a party candidate with two clubs located on the stretch of land that leads to the bridge. They occupied old warehouses, most probably used for salt in the past. Vortex was the name of the club right next to the bridge.
Lace is a specialty of Pag, as highlighted by the presence of a lace museum in a palace on the main square diagonally opposite the church. We bought some from an old women who worked at it from her doorsteps so that visitors knew she was selling some. She was stood in front of a narrow house tightly pressed against the neighbouring ones. She was enjoying the sun while she could in that tiny street.
"Bora has not yet come, but when it does, people stay indoors. There are report of cars turned upside down by the wind. In those days, usually after November, the bridge to Zadar and ferries stop working until the wind eases up", those were the words of our landlady adding that what we thought we had experienced as Bora was a mere "baby Bora".
We went for a swim in front of hotel Pagus. The water was chilly but a few foreign visitors (mostly Germans) fought the cold happily. The view on hills topped by large cauliflowerish clouds coloured in light orange pink was worth the effort.
At dinner there was grilled local lamb on offer in the konoba Barcarolla still open despite the low season. Baby Bora blew cold that night.
The next morning, before leaving for Zadar, we did a final round in town and stopped for coffee at a busy place on the outskirts of the old town where the market takes place. This was a local favourite, presumably because the coffee was cheaper than in town. A young cat playing in the grass by the water side opposite the market hall had brought us to have look at the cafe. That cat was visibly familiar with the bar because we saw him confidently enter the covered terrace. This caught the attention of a black and white mini bulldog that stood up and started barking and pulling frantically on its leash. The young cat considered hesitantly the threat and, seeing that the bulldog was stuck to its leash, settled to ignore it and lie on the floor as if it was its home.
Images:
1/ Pag beach
2/ Rab, near Kamenjak
3/ a Dalmatian in Rab Town
4/ Pag lamb
5/ Pag bay
3/ a Dalmatian in Rab Town
4/ Pag lamb
5/ Pag bay
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| Rab, near Kamenjak |
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| A Dalmatian Dalmatian |
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| Pag lambs: is someone watching? |
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| the bay of Pag |
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