Italia 2023 (and Croatia). Day 20 - Brac Island

I was afraid that I was going to go through Croatia without getting a chance to visit one of its islands, so I was delighted when my host here in Split assured me that it was very easy to take the ferry to Brac Island, the big island south of Split, and take a bus ride from its northern main town (Supetar) to its southern most famous tourist resort cluster (Bol). So I left home early, and braving a strong and very cold wind took the bus to the port, hoping that the wind would abate somehow so the ferry would not be shut down due to inclement weather. It was not, and with a lively swell we departed on the one hour trip across the intervening strait. It is a big ferry, so the rocking of the boat was not bad, but from time to time a thunderous clap told about a rogue wave that had crashed against the hull.

Supetar is a nice looking town, but the wind was keeping people indoors and after walking a few streets in solitude I turned around and retreated into the shelter of the bus to Bol. The island, as I had surmised, is a pile of tightly folded limestones (or calcareous schists) and clayey marls (or calcareous slates) that form a prominent ridge that rises precipitously  above the surrounding sea. The steep slopes are dotted with sheep and goats, and lots and lots of piles of broken limestone; these puzzled me for a long while and I eventually concluded that they were the remains of ancient pens and shepherds' huts that over the centuries have degraded into indistinct piles of rubble. The labor that most have gone into building those pens, with stone walls that were at least a meter wide, must have been monumental! Once the bus reached the top of the island the land use changed to the keeping of olive trees, and to quarries where slabs of the calcareous schist were sawed for use as dimension stone, and slabs of calcareous slate were made ready for use as roof shingles.

After plunging down to the south coast of the island we reached the town of Bol, which in the spring and summer must be the mecca of tourism in the Adriatic. Lots and lots of beautiful and expensive looking villas (all boarded for the winter), hotels and restaurants (all closed for the winter), and the promise of boat trips, quad rentals, and infinite tons of fun (but not during the winter). All in all I once again had the feeling that I was last man standing in a world that had been wiped out by the freezing wind. But then again, I had all that coastal forest and shingle beaches all for myself.

And that is it for the day. I came back the same way, stopped at the supermarket to buy dinner for tonight, and in the warmth of my cozy apartment will get ready for tomorrow's trip to Zadar.