Mljet national park, Croatia

The second port that we arrived at, on our Croatian boat trip was the
island of Mljet.  It is a national park, about 50km long with very few inhabitants or towns.  

Our boat moored up along about four other boats.

And we were told "We're here!"  Then that was about it.  None of us
knew what this national park was all about, so we blathered through
the other boats, onto shore and tried to assess the situation.

I saw a guy who was renting scooters, so I made a b-line for him.  I
was expecting all sorts of insurance complications, credit card holds,
drivers license photocopies etc, and I was also expecting it to be
cost prohibitive.  But instead the guy said, "10 euros (or the
equivalent thereof) for two hours."  With no need for (or ability to
purchase) insurance, and he didn't even ask for a deposit or a credit
card imprint.  All that I had to do was show him that I had a valid
drivers license for somewhere in the world.  While he had never heard
of Ontario, Canada it's legal documents were good enough for him.  So
we put on our helmets and zipped off to explore the island.


We went inland through a couple of little towns that seemed to survive
by catching fish and pandering to tourists.  In one of these towns,
somebody build a large castle inconveniently in the path of the road
that they wanted to build, so they simply directed the road right
through it!


With the two of us on our little 50cc scooter, we taxed the engine a
fair bit trying to climb up the mountain roads.  We could maintain
about 25km/h on the way up, but go between 60 and 80km/h on the way
down.  Good thing there was almost no traffic.  But once on top of the
mountains, we saw some great views of the little bays and inlets all
around the island.


On the way back to our boat, we did a little scooter off-roading and
headed down a path to a couple of fresh water lakes in the middle of
the island.  Here we met up with a bunch of our boat-mates who had
hiked there.  Between the two lakes was a little swift moving stream
about 2 feet deep that just screamed out, "float in me!"  So I obeyed
and drifted down the stream, while the German tourists looked at me
disapprovingly.

It was surprisingly fast moving!

Then we headed back to the little town where the boat was moored and
sat at a cafe for a little while before going for a little walk to see
the local sights.  It's a very quite and beautiful place.


We just sat down for dinner with about 16 of our boat-mates at a
little restaurant when the sun began to set rather spectacularly.


Dinner consisted of an enormous tray of seafood spaghetti that Laura,
our friend Archie, and I shared.  It was so large, that one of the
South African passengers boldly said "If you guys can eat all of that,
I'll jump naked into the lobster pit over there."

We of course took this as a challenge and proceeded to stuff ourselves
silly.  We also enlisted the help of three hungry local cats who were
discretely willing to help our cause.


He was rather taken aback that we were able to eat all of the pasta

With much coaxing and negotiating with his other Southy friends, he
was convinced to jump into the tank (he was allowed to where his
shorts).  The waitress, twice assured us that it would be ok for him
to jump in.  In fact, the second time we asked, she impatiently  said
"Yes, go!  Jump in!"

You have to imagine this tank.  It was about 5 feet by 5 feet and had
concrete walls about three feet above ground level.  But the bottom of
it went about 6 feet below ground level, with about three feet of
water in it.  *All* of the walls and the bottom had lobsters crawling
all around.  None of the pincher's were tied with elastic bands.  So
as he hung onto the wall for dear life, trying to find a clear way
into the pit, his "friends" pried his fingers off of the wall and he
fell into the middle of the pit.

He did a good job of landing straight in the middle and didn't get
pinched (at least not on entry).  After floundering around for a
little while, we realized that he was going to have to get out
somehow, and the walls were not climbable, and I'm sure the lobsters
wouldn't take kindly to being used as rungs of a ladder.  But thinking
on this problem wasn't an option as the large Croatian cook came
running out front yelling something in Croatian at us.  My Croatian is
bad, but my interpretation at the time was "Get the hot heck out of my
fish tank you fat and stupid tourists!"  Myself and another guy pulled
him out seemingly unscathed.

Afterwards, someone went to the back to apologies to the cook and
smooth things over.  With a little help from the waitress who acted as
translator, he said that he didn't care if he jumped into the tank.
He figured the lobsters could take care of themselves, but the
Stonefish, with
their venomous spikes on their backs would have put a damper on the
evening if they had brushed against him while he was floundering away.

But on the upside, he wasn't stung, and he got a good story out of it,
and we had some great photo-ops.

The whole thing was pretty funny afterwards.


Then we all stumbled back through the darkness to the relative safety
and comfort of the boat.
Here are all the pictures