Dolphins, Caves and the Odd Mishap

Since we had missed the Blue Grotto in Italy we decided to spring for a boat trip today to see the Blue Cave, Green Cave and a few other interesting things around the island of Vis.  We booked the trip with Barbie and yes, she was definitely a Barbie!  It started at 9 am downtown so the alarms were set (anything before 11 am needs an alarm these days!) and we packed lunch, bathing suits and were ready to go.  Showed up and Barbie was a little late but once she graced us with her presence we were good to go.  She was really a lovely girl who helped us a lot but I’m pretty sure she had the dimensions of Barbie.

The boat was all warmed up and ready to go so forget the complicated, lengthy safety briefing, we were off.   I’m actually not positive they even had life jackets but I sure hope they did, they were just stored somewhere even though we weren’t given that information.  Luckily they weren’t needed on this trip but they almost were.  I think pretty much anyone with an idea can start a business here, some are just more organized than others!

The seas were really quite nice and flat for the trip over and we even managed to spot a pod of dolphins.  We slowed down and circled a few times but they really weren’t interested in us much.  I’m pretty sure they were fishing and chasing fish into a fisherman’s net that was just 50 meters from us.  They were slapping their tails and zigzagging back and forth, ignoring our pesky intrusion.

Blue cave but that's probably pretty obvious.

Given what we paid for the trip, I thought the trip to Vis would be half an hour, we’ll I was way off on that one.  The trip to the island of Bisevo was close to two hours long and later I was told we travelled almost 100 miles round trip!  We pulled in to this dock with a bunch of other boats around and were told to get off.  Not sure exactly what to do as neither Barbie nor our captain had given us any information about the Blue Cave but it turns out is kind of like a National Park where you have to take one of their boats to enter the cave.  So for an addition 150 HRK we got to visit the Blue Cave.  It was well worth it as it was one of the highlights of the trip.  With tickets in hand we all lined up and waited for our boat to appear.

This part of the trip was pretty organized as we lined up and they piled up to 14 people in each boat.  The boats just cycled through and after 20 minutes we got our boat.  Over to the cave and our new captain told us we needed to duck!  He wasn’t kidding so with all on board ducking into the middle we entered the Blue Cave.  Our boat was the first in so it was a cool experience as our captain pulled us around the cave by hand.  The colour is truly magnificent and pretty obvious where it got its name from.  So as we moved around the cave another boat came in behind us.  Behind that other and so on until they had five boats in the cave with a sixth trying to get into the tiny opening while we were trying to get out.  Well they figured that one out before there was any boat collisions and we made it out into the open.  We headed back to the original boat and on with the tour.

Old fishing village.

 Next stop was the little fishing village of Komiza for a break and walk about the town.  We got a quick gelato and we were off to the Green Cave after a quick stop at a location they filmed some of Game of Thrones (some beach scene with cliffs on both sides and a beach in the back).  The docking of the boat at the fishing village was a bit surprising as we crunched the dock... the only problem was the dock was concrete so dock 1 boat 0.  The Green Cave was more of a gong show than the Blue Cave as a number of boats were in the cave, people we swimming all over and there really wasn’t any order what-so-ever.  We anchored just outside and swam in although I had to grab Alyssa to get her out of the way once as another boat decided he was coming in to join the chaos.  On our way over to the Green Cave the captain decided we should pass a big yacht that was throwing up a pretty big wake.  Luckily he pulled back the throttle just as we dove over the first wave and hit the next.  As the boat dove sideways, we all got a bit of a shower on our side but there wasn’t any major damage except for some confidence as he didn’t try that again and we followed the yacht to the next stop.

Green cave.  There are actually 4 boats that you can't see.

Our final docking of the day was in Stoncica where we had two hours and a number of people had lunch at a restaurant there.  It was a pretty cool place with an actual sand beach and the restaurant cooked everything in wood

Military tunnels all over the island.

ovens right in front of you (bit on the hot side if you were too close).  There was another pretty interesting manoeuvre docking but I couldn’t stand and watch the boat take another one so I offered some help with another concrete dock.  The crew got the boat better situated by throwing the anchor out off the back and tying the front to the dock far enough away that it wouldn’t hit.  By the time we were ready to leave a number of other boats had come in and all dropped their anchors where ever.  As we fired up our boat one other boat moved and we started backing up.  For some unknown reason another boat thought he should pull his anchor rope a bit as we were leaving and got it caught in our propeller!  So here we sit with both the captain and crew mate off the boat, trying to remove the rope in the prop (inboard too so this was diving under the boat)!  Finally, the captain came up and said we had to cut the rope.  I asked if they needed a hand so he passed me the mask and said go for it. After a few dives we managed to remove the rope to a round of fist bumps all around and we got out of there!

The final cruise went by these old military boat tunnels that were constructed for the allied forces in WW2 where they could hide their boats from aerial detection.  Turns out Vis was the only island in the Adriatic that withstood Hitler’s onslaught and proved to be an asset for Churchill and the allied forces to retake much of Yugoslavia.  There is a huge tunnel network throughout the island which is where the Yugoslavian communist leader hid out and joined forces with Churchill to fight Germany in the Second World War.  The island has a history that goes way beyond WW2 as it has been an important location in every conflict dating back before the sixth century BC!  We managed to circumnavigate the whole island and finally turn back towards home at Bol.

My reward after our rope in the prop encounter. The boat hiding tunnels which there are a number on the island.

On the way home we managed another dolphin encounter but this time they wanted to play.  We had one come right out of the water above the height of us on the boat to take a look and a number of others chase the bow of the boat.  We were going a little too fast so they lost interest before the crew slowed to boat down but it was a pretty cool experience.  One more awkward landing at the gas dock in Bol and we were back on solid ground.  It was a great trip with a good, young crew and good people and definitely worth the day of exploring.  We headed home to shower, eat and pack for tomorrow’s trip to Zagreb and then off to Istanbul.