Croatia: Ferry ride and a unicorn sighting

I wake up at 5:30 in the morning no matter what I do. I go to bed early, too, so that’s why, but even if I stay up later (like 11 p.m. – wow, that’s SO. LATE.), I wake up at 5:30. It’s hard to force myself to go back to sleep. This was true throughout our trip as well. I woke up in Korčula, tiptoed around making coffee, and then sat out on our balcony watching the dawn rise, the sun come up. I watched Korčula transform. It almost brought tears to my eyes. If you turned away for one second, you missed some essential part of the transformation. It was riveting.

So it went from this …

… to THIS. Goooooood morning Korčula!

This day was super busy: we had to take three ferries, so I imagine it was slightly stressful for Ante. If you miss a ferry, you have hours to wait for the next one. We were headed to Hvar Island, an enormous island (bigger than Manhattan, which is my only perspective), and we had to take a ferry to the mainland, drive a bit, hop on another ferry, drive a bit more, and then get on our final ferry to Hvar Island. I am going to try to piece together the place-names. We line up to get on the first ferry. I remember my time on Block Island back in 2010. The life of the island is tuned in to the times of the ferry. It’s a specific mindset. You live your life, you go about your day, but you know – in your heartbeat there’s a clock with the ferry times – when the ferry is coming, bringing mail, friends, supplies – and so you know when to drive down to the harbor to wait. It was yet another gorgeous day, and we approached the mainland again, its wall of green and stony cliffs.

We then drove a little bit to the sleepy port of Trpanj to wait for our next ferry. It was, again, a quiet beautiful place, with a pebbly little beach, protected from the open sea by a jetty, jutting out into the water, with a statue and a lighthouse and a walkway. There was a dude out in the water attempting to windsurf. He stayed in the same spot though. Rachel and I kept looking out at him, checking on his progress. “Still there. Hasn’t really gone very far, has he.” “Hope he’s okay.” We walked out onto the jetty, and then back. I put my feet in the water, sat under a tree. Rachel walked around. It’s a little fishing village, quiet and peaceful. Boats everywhere.

We met up with Ante at a little cafe (randomly: we were walking by and he called out to us), and we had two cups of amazing coffee that we kept talking about for the rest of the trip and referencing every time we had another cup of coffee. “It was good, but it wasn’t as good as that coffee in Trpanj.” “I wonder if they make coffee here like the one we had in Trpanj?” and etc. and so forth. As we sat there, a woman with a unicorn floatie around her waist strolled by. We kept seeing her – or the unicorn – as she browsed in a little open-air market. We kept getting glimpses of her, the unicorn head bobbing in the distance. I suppose you “had to be there” but every time we caught a glimpse of her, we started laughing. It was like she had forgotten she was basically wearing a gigantic inflated unicorn.

Here’s a view of the harbor from the ferry. The color of the water … we couldn’t get over it.