Kayaking and Cliff Jumping

7/10/2009

I woke up this morning in time for a quick breakfast on the ship, and then headed outside at 8am to meet the group I was kayaking with.  It was supposed to be 14 of us, and Audrey, the girl that set it up, was not too happy when 8:05 rolled around and only 6 people were there.  Eventually, 10 showed up, and then I ran inside to wake up one Jon, who had shown interest in going, so we had a group of 11.  It was quite the fiasco trying to catch the bus and get to our destination, as the bus the kayak company told us to take only ran once every hour or so, and we had missed it by about 15 minutes.  We ended up being around 45 minutes late when we finally showed up to the beach!  As we were walking through the pier, and trying to figure out the bus schedule, the videographer from the ship was following us and filming for the different promotional videos they make.  Who knows, I could end up in an advertisement.  Once we made it to the beach, which was a little past Old Town, we apologized for being late and started getting ready.  Our guide was named Marco, and he was very friendly.  He spoke English, but would make funny mistakes in the different tenses and sentence order and such.  At one point instead of asking if I wanted him to loan me water, he asked if he could borrow me some water.  He also remembered our names by associating them with celebrities, so I immediately got dubbed Whitney Houston.  After getting all of us into water skirts and water shoes, giving us dry bags to hold our belongings, and teaching us how to hold a paddle, we grabbed kayaks and headed to the water.  We paddled along the shore to the old city, and then crossed to Lokrum Island, where we paddled the shoreline for a while and then stopped at a little inlet to get out of our kayaks and explore.  It was about a 2 hour paddle to get to the inlet, but we had some pretty slow paddlers in our group.  When we got on the island, Marco pointed out the dead sea, which apparently connects to the ocean somehow, but looked a lot more like a saltwater lake.  There was a rope swing, a cave going into the rock, and a cliff to jump off of, but first, our group continued to lunch.
There were no cars on the island at all, I think the restaurant where we ate was one of the only buildings, and there were peacocks running around everywhere.  They were huge too!  They put the one at the Oregon Zoo to shame.  After lunch, I went for a swim in the dead sea, and watched as some of our group shimmied up the rock cliff and jumped off.  I opted out, as I don’t think I could have even climbed up without falling.  When our guide showed up to gather us all up, he first decided to show up all of the other jumpers.  He climbed up the rock face like it was nothing, and then did a perfect swan dive from about 40 feet up.  Then, it was time to go.  We got back in our kayaks and paddled around the island to go back instead of just going back the way we had come.  On the way, we passed a nudist beach!  Not something I was prepared for.  I had been paddling along looking at the pretty cliffs and trees that lined the island, and all of a sudden I was staring at a bunch of naked people, most of whom were old men.  It was disturbing.  It quickly looked away, trying to forget what I had just seen.  Yuck!  We paddled back across to where we started, and the water was much rougher than it had been on the crossing to the island, but still lots of fun.  We made it back to the beach around 2pm, giving us 4 hours until on ship time.  I decided it was the perfect opportunity to walk back, and get a little extra time to take in everything.  Three others agreed and joined me.  It is so pretty all long the coast in Croatia, that it was a really enjoyable walk.
Halfway through our walk back, we decided to stop at the swimming spot that I found the first day, and after climbing down all of the stairs, we realized that it was really crowded.  When I first found it, there was no one else there.  This time around, there were a whole bunch of SAS kids down there, and even a few locals.  We got in the water and swam for a while, and watched some of the other people jump off the platform.  We decided it looked fun, so we climbed out and went up to jump too.  I love the adrenaline rush of jumping, but only when I know it will be a happy ending.  We each jumped in a few times, and got some pictures, and then got out to dry off.  Once we deemed ourselves dry enough to continue walking, we started the long climb back up the stairs.  We stopped at a few of the little shops along the way for some last minute gifts and souvenirs, and then it was back onto the ship for a shower and dinner.  I was so salty from all of the sea water that it was starting to crystallize on my skin.  After dinner, I did a picture exchange with my different travel companions.  All in all it was one of my favorite days on this trip so far.