July 17, 2012
This island life: Stari Grad - Vrboska
THE NATURIST campground is advertised from the moment you leave the ferry port. Not someone's conventional advertisement, either, but an official traffic sign. That surprised me. So did further blue signs along the way.
Most of the morning was taken by the ferry. Hvar looks only a short distance on the map but it takes three hours to get there, picking through shipping and then the narrow gap between two other islands.
The ferry shuttles back and forth, docking long enough to disembark those coming one way and replacing them with those going to the mainland. A brief halt at the ferry terminal for lunch in the shade of trees and picturesquely in sight of the dustbins brings two things. The first is a greeting from a Belgian couple touring with their young son, about nine, and then the observation that whereas Americans fly their flag at home, they rarely advertise their nationality abroad. Canadians are the opposite. You see the Maple Leaf less in Canada than you do attached to rucksacks of travellers.
We set off along the road that runs the spine of the island, the only road, then spot another way on our map. It means turning back into the town of Stari Grad, which means Old Town, and riding out again on what is little more than a broad path. The incongruity is that it is signposted to the airport no less. And that, long before it gets to what is no more than a long grass field with a control building of the sort that sells vegetables by the roadside, it has turned into a stony track.
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We bump slowly along it, curiously delighted, and in time it returns our enthusiasm by reacquiring its covering. We wish it farewell when it crosses a road barely any wider and turn down into the creekside village of Vrboska.
It is a gem, with a street or path on both sides of the water, boats moored everywhere. Ducks and gulls swim to no great purpose around a tiny island which has what looks from a distance like a war memorial.
We buy groceries and follow still more signs to our camp for the night. The gates are wide open to the street, the land running down to a dark blue sea lined with rocks. White moptops sit on the waves.
We are surrounded by Dutch, Germans, French, a Lithuanian or two and a great many Slovenians. It is crowded but we feel at home.
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