If I hadn’t made bookings in Korcula beforehand, I
would have definitely extended my stay in Mljet. I loved the island and its
people. However sometimes the travel plans don’t work out like originally
planned, but that’s not always a bad thing. Let me tell you next how I found
myself spending the afternoon in the town of Ston…
Island hopping in Croatia during low season can be
challenging. Only most popular ferry connections are running through the year
and some of the ferry routes are running only during the high season. The
connection between Mljet and Korcula is one of those. And as I wasn’t
travelling during the high season (it was midsummer week), I needed to find out
another way to get from Mljet to Korcula. I had earlier called to one travel
agency in Korcula to find out are there any daytrips organized from Korcula to
Mljet when I was there. And if there was, could I join the speedboat in a return
trip. As the weather was bit unstable, they didn’t know it yet the day before
and when I called to the office in the morning I heard that there wasn’t any trips organized
during the day I needed. So that meant that unfortunately I didn’t have time to
explore the Mljet National Park anymore during that day, and I needed to find
out another way to get to Korcula. So I headed to the breakfast in the village and
checked the bus schedule to Sobra, the main port of the island which is having
regular connection to mainland, to harbor of Prapatno. No such a luck. The only
bus during that day had gone through Polace hours ago. I hadn’t seen any taxis
in the island, so I wandered back to my apartment and asked from my host where
I could find a taxi. And as a reply my host insisted that she will drop me to
the ferry, whenever I needed and she didn’t even accept any money from the
ride. Croatian service culture is something special…
So one hour later I had my own private transportation
to Sobra. The drive from Polace was 25 kilometers and it lasted about 30 minutes.
During the drive I had time to discuss with my lovely host and she was telling me
about the life in the island. There are around 1.000 people living in the
island and everybody knew each other. There is only primary school in the island,
and for secondary school local kids needed to move to the Dubrovnik. The local
people are living from the agriculture and tourist industry and she told me that
everybody in the island hates the rain, because that’s bad for the business.
During our drive we spotted some mongooses and then I remembered that I had
read about those earlier. When I was doing some background research from
Croatian islands while deciding where to go, I noticed that in some islands
there are lot of snakes. And as I like to do outdoors, but I’m not fan of
snakes, I skipped those islands from my itinerary. The snakes were big problem also
in Mljet earlier, but they brought the mongooses there and they have solved the
problem.
I told my host that I was planning to take the bus to
Korcula from the mainland and I needed to wait the bus for a few hours after
the ferry would arrive to the mainland. When she heard that she recommended
that I would go to visit nearby town of Ston. Dubrovnik-Korcula buses would go
through there, so I could spend my time by exploring the town while waiting.
She even organized me the ride to Ston, when she spotted some of her neighbors
in the harbor. So I had 1 hour more to chat with friendly locals during the
ferry trip and ride to Ston. So even though I unfortunately didn’t have as much
time to explore the beautiful island as I would have wanted, the travel day
provided me nice discussions with friendly locals.
So that was how I found myself in Ston, in a town
which I hadn’t heard anything before that day. I learned that Ston was known by
its salt, its oysters, mussels and its walls. And I explored all of them during
my short time in the town. I started from the walls. Ston is the home of the world’s
second biggest defense walls – the biggest one is Great Wall of China. The whole wall
is not in that shape that you could walk on it, but there is few kilometers
long part which you can walk through. The walk is quite heavy as there are lot
of stairs in it and deep uphill, but it is worth of the views! After the walk I
explored another local specialities while enjoying lunch in the local
restaurant before it was the time to board on the bus. I strongly recommend the
stopping by in this small town for a meal. The food was delicious and it was
decently priced. When bus from Dubrovnik arrived to Ston, it was already full
of people, so me and few other travelers needed to use our negotiation skills,
so that driver was willing to take us in the bus, as there were no free seats
available in the bus anymore. But after all we managed to do it and I was
finally on my way to Korcula after interesting travel day…
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View from
the walls of Ston
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Walls of
Ston are continuing to the next village, to Mali Ston
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