Arrive in Pula from Budapest, dazed and confused from a long bus journey complete with so so a/c and a massive tire blowout. We found a hostel campsite and pitched our tent. turns out this was a nice campsite with a small noise problem, namely young irish and brit kids (20 year old!). It kept us up, so much we decided we deserved a second night for free. The next day we got a ride with some nice Slovenian folks to a nearby national park. Well we got our signals crossed and wanted to go in the opposite direction to a natural park, notice the difference. So we did what many Europeans do, we hitched a ride with a nice guy named Vladimir back to Pula. We went back to the bus station to wait for the bus to the park. And waited, and waited only to see the bus come late to the station and speed through the station as we waved. Infamous bus #26! This was only a sign of things to come with the Croatian bus system. We never made it to the park instead came back to discover our Serbian campmates had been charged with beating a Croatian youth, passports confiscated and had to wait until Monday for court. It all seemed very shady, no witnesses or evidence so we expressed sympathy and waited. Turns out this was not the first example of continued tensions between differences of countries from the former Yugosolvyia.
From Pula we caught a ferry to Zadar hoping to go to an island to camp. We missed the ferry and instead camped outside of Zadar where the only memorable things were a bad nights sleep (disco) and our stolen sarongs. The next day we caught a bus to the Krka National Park with dreams of camping at the park. We met some Germans who were also camping on the bus to the park but it was too far from the park entrance so we again hitched a ride with some Danish folks. We walked a bit out of the park entrance towards a camping sign only to discover it was down a dirt road about 150meters and in an abandoned lot surrounded by nothing but high desert. We hide our packs and went into the park, got back at sunset and began to get a little spooked after deciding earlier to just pitch the tent. No sooner then we started to walk down the road we hear tires coming down the dirt towards us. We hid, sort of and then three little campers turned in the lot filled with three french couples. They were told by some guy they could park in the lot for the night. We felt better and decided to stay. We really bonded with one couple named Martina and Jean-Marc, they invited us for dinner and drinks. We shared tuna, sardines, bread, chocolate and tea. They were truly wonderful and shared warm water to wash and light for our meal. We have a picture of us on the blog. We enjoyed an evening of conversation about the world underneath a large blanket of stars. Also in Zadar Jess and I braved the Croatian health care system as she developed an eye infection. Not bad for us and only cost about $30 total for visit and prescription. More to come on that.
The next day we caught the early bus back to Zadar for Split so we could catch a ferry to the island of Vis. The story continues on the next page...
