Makarska, Croatia

We steamed into Makarska's port early in the day and got the coveted
first spot in the harbour.

So Laura and I headed into town and wandered down the tight little
streets and looked at the clothes and shoe shops.  One odd thing about
Croatia is the shear number of shoe shops.  It seems that they take
their shoes seriously.

Within about 20 minutes of going ashore, I was deep into conversation
with the local scooter rental dealership.  While it was slightly more
expensive than in Mljet, it was still a bargain.  This time, they
wanted a photocopy of my Ontario drivers license and payment upfront.

Laura held onto her skirt, and we scooted up the side of the mountain
amongst the groves of olive trees.


The little 50cc motor strained to carry the two of us up the hill, but
did better than our last scooter.  That is, until I felt a little blip
in the engine.  That is, a momentary loss of power that lasted only a
half second or so.  It got me a little worried, so I did a mental
calculation of how far we were from town.  By this point we were about
80% up the side of the mountain, or 5 - 6kms from town, so we were far
enough away that it would have been inconvenient if the scooter died.

At this point, of course, the scooter died.

I let off the throttle when we apexed the top of a plateau in the
road, and as soon as I let off, the engine stopped completely.  I
tried to start the engine back up again, but it appeared as though the
entire electrical system was fried and the start button didn't even
make a click.

So I pushed the scooter off to the side of the road and we continued
our climb on foot.  The view was great, as we reached the highest
point we could reach by road.


At the top was an old church and graveyard.


We still had the little problem of getting back to town with our
scooter.  Even if we coasted all the way to the bottom, there was
still a good trek back to the scooter rental place on the other side
of town.  We arrived back at the scooter, and I tried to start it up
again.  Once again the start button provided no joy.  But then I
noticed a kick starter hidden under the rear wheel well.  I spent
about 2 minutes trying to kick start it, and eventually, quite
miraculously, it started!  But no electricals were working (no lights,
speedometer, temperature gauge, etc.).

We pulled back into the rental place and figured we'd have to pay for
the damages given that there was no insurance option.  But the lady
simply waved us off dismissively as if to say "No worries."  So we
didn't worry and found a little place to drink cappuccinos by the
beach and waved at our boat mates as they wandered past.

Some of us from the boat found a nice place to watch the sunset.


Dinner was another seafood/pasta extravaganza.  And we chatted with
two Americans from Baltimore before heading to a little bar where one
of the crew members kept buying rounds of drinks for everyone.  It was
all fine and good until the boat had a sewage leak into the lower
cabins and they had to go back to clean it up.

The harbour wasn't very well protected, so the boat rocked a fair bit
that night, and the people sleeping below deck couldn't open their
port-holes without getting doused with sea water.

Thank goodness we paid the extra amount to get an above deck cabin.

Here are all the pictures