UNPLANNED VISIT TO THE TOWN OF STON

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…

View from the walls of Ston

Walls of Ston are continuing to the next village, to Mali Ston