Veli Losinj to Zadar

Solar town
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In the morning I went and found some fruit and yoghurt at the local store, had a couple of pastries aswell, and got underway to Mali Losinj. It wasn´t far and my plan was to find someone to take me across to Pag about 20 nautical miles away. I was thinking "someone will be going there, I should be able to hop a ride with someone". It seems noone goes from Mali or Veli Losinj to Pag. So I found myself a room (up about a million stairs) and tried to work out what to do next.

The only place I could get to was Zadar which meant I missed out on a lot of the islands I was planning on riding (also the flattest ones too). So I did the only thing I could do. I went and had a really nice dinner on the water.

Nice place to swim
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I spent the next day riding around trying to find someone who could take me to Pag but it was hopeless. I gave up and bought myself a ticket to Zadar and got waited aroud the port. Ate some pizza, did some sudoku, I hate waiting.

I thought the last ferry was big. This was huge. I guess they get bigger too but these were the first ferries I´d seen that did more than go from one side of the harbour and carry people. It really is something watching truck after truck go rolling into the gaping maw of one of these ferries.

Dinner on the water
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Ferry rides are kind of boring. I was lucky on this one to meet a nice english couple who were camping around the place. Cath and Mariss. They had some great stories about camping. it seems when you go inland you have to ba bit more careful ad there are land mines and bears and you´re not allowed to swim in the limestone lakes in the middle.

We got to Zadar fairly late and what we didn´t know is that the ferry lands you in the middle of this industrial zone with nothing. Zip. No lights, no buses, no cars, nobody, no nothin´. There was a very pushy lady though. Lucky for us. We were a bit unsure but she was really pushing for us to come stay at her place. noew usually when peolpe are pushy it means bad news an I was thinking this but I was also thinking it´s late, middle of nowhere, oh @#?*! So we said ok.

Detail?
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She said the place ws 6km away so They took off in her car with my bags and I tried to keep up. They did go slow but not that slow. At one stage I lost them and I had all kinds of Hostel (Tarrantino) thoughts going through my head. Chainsaws and murder camps and I was the lucky one not in the car. Caught up a gain and we were driving through all kinds of building sites and I was thinking this is going to be pretty dismal.

Then we got there. This place was lovely. Big rooms, nice bathroom, lovely garden, she was giving us wine and schnapps and chatting and introducing us to other guests. Really nice homey place to stay. We stayed up and chatted about our gardens which was nice and crashed out. Perfect.

Big Ferry
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Next morning she gave us a huge breakfast and we were on our way. I left Cath and Mariss at a bus stop and I started looking at heading towards split. I decided I better at least have a look around town so I headed for the centre. Well worth it. It´s quite big so you can actually ride though without much trouble. It has a huge park in the middle with a view out over the whole town.

It´s also got some weird stuff too. Along the coast they have a kind of beach (it´s concrete) where they´ve turned it into a wave instrument. As the water washes up and down it pushes air through pipes and makes music. A bit eerie but nice. The other thing is a giant solar panal that you can walk (ride)over. I´m not sure what it powers but I´m guessing the lights.