The Adriatic - Peljesac Peninsula, Korcula & Split

Back in Croatia we headed out along the Peljesac (pronounced Pel-yeh-shats) Peninsula with the idea of catching the car ferry to the island of Korcula (Kor-chu-la) for a couple of nights. The Peljesac Peninsula and Korcula are locally famous for their vineyards and there are certainly a lot of them! We even got to try some – a white from Peljesac and a red from the town of Smokvica (Smok-veet-sa) on Korcula. The red was very nice but the white was a bit too sweet. Can’t remember the grape varieties but neither were ones we’d heard before! We first got on to the peninsula at the little walled town of Ston. The town was heavily fortified some time in the past to protect the salt mines when salt was worth more than gold or silver. The peninsula was a lot more mountainous than we’d thought so it was a slow, windy but pleasant drive through to Orebic (O-re-beech) then onto the ferry.

The town of Ston.

Leaving Orebic on the ferry.

We spent a night near Korcula town near the southern end of the island, then the second night near Vela Luka at the far northern end. That first night we headed in from thee camping ground to the old town (Stari Grad means old town) and had dinner and beer overlooking the water. Korcula is a quaint little town that was on a little island and is similar to Dubrovnik except it was built on a hill with a church at the top and all the streets are designed wonky and off-set to cut out the windy sea breezes that they get a lot of.

Korcula shore front at sunset.

The next full day was spent taking our time getting to Vela Luka. We spent a good 3 or 4 hours at a gorgeous beach on the south-western side of the island called Pupnatska Luka (Poop-nat-ska Loo-ka) just swimming, eating lunch and generally sitting on the beach reading.

Pupnatska Luka.

We had a bit of trouble trying to get to the campground in Vela Luka as they were doing road works and the roads we needed to go on were closed. They’re not good at all with signposts or helpful detours or anything like that over here – if you don’t already know where you are going, then tough! We did get there in the end though (it took us about 40 mins and the next morning going back once we knew where we were going only took 5-10 mins!) and the man who ran the campground was very kind. He had heard of all the earthquakes in Christchurch would you believe. Now’s the time to mention the ants – there were at least 5 species at that campground. This country is overrun with ants! I (Kate) think I’m getting use to them now but I’ve never been keen on ants at all – rather scared of them actually! I have to say though the really big black ones are quite cool – they cut up bits of straw and grass and put them in a pile for seemingly no real reason :) The locals seem to really like the ants – at least the man at our campground sounded very fond of them! “nature’s great filters” he said – he’s totally right but I’m not sure that makes them any more loveable!

We caught the ferry at 6.15 am the next morning for a 2.5 hour trip through to Split, passing close to the coast of the island of Hvar. We then spent a couple of hours exploring the Diocletians Palace on the waterfront before heading north again to Krka National Park.

The underground cellers of the palace.

Dave in front of the cathedral at the centre of the palace.