I Am A Polar Bear

The other week, I had a bit of a whistlestop trip to Croatia, a country that’s been on my to-do list for a few years and which I finally ticked off because Bristol Airport had direct flights. It turns out Bristol isn’t quite as close as I always imagine it is and the flights weren’t great timing-wise – I went out Friday on the 5.30pm flight, getting to my apartment at Dubrovnik’s new port at 11pm and I was on the 10.45am flight on Wednesday, which required me to leave said apartment just after 6.30am. But the one thing I had booked and ready to go during my four days was a sea kayaking tour of three of the Elafiti Islands and it was worth going all the way to Croatia on relatively unsociable flights just to get to do that.

There are a few companies that run similar trips but they all want a minimum of at least four people and that means I, a solo traveller, am entirely dependent on other people booking it on the day I want to go. I think I sent my first email to the first company back in about March – they never got back to me but Adriatic Kayak Tours did, on the Tuesday before I flew out. Someone else had booked, so could I do Saturday? It wasn’t ideal, given that I’d arrived at 11pm and would need to get breakfast, something for lunch and figure out my bearings all before 9.30am but given the choice between that and not kayaking at all, that’s what I did. Luckily there was a mini supermarket a three-minute 72-step-climb (Gruž is very vertical!) from my apartment so I got up at 8am so I could have breakfast – an essential before a long day of kayaking – and then it was 101 steps down to the port. I didn’t find my guide because the meeting place was hidden away in a corner of the website where you just wouldn’t see it but I’d looked up what ferry I needed to take and I waited next to it until I saw two young men with paddles. Mission accomplished, I was on board!

To be honest, even the ferry ride out to Lopud was worth the price of admission. The sea was an incredible colour, turquoise in the shallows, teal further out and navy where it was really deep, with the Croatian coastline rising out of it as a series of jagged mountains, some kind of limestone but with the texture of basalt columns. The Elafiti Islands are the same, tree-covered limestone mini-mountains, usually with long narrow bays at their north-west and south-east ends. We arrived on Lopud, walked along the shore to our base in the garden of a church (was it a graveyard once? Is it still??) and got prepared for going out on the water. That is, we carried kayaks out to the sliver of beach, we packed our essentials into drybags and our non-essentials into a storage box, put on spraydecks and buoyancy aids and matched up paddles. Then we adjusted the footpegs (the rear seat of a tandem kayak simply does not adjust for a fully-grown adult male without his feet being in his son’s kidneys) and set out.

Oh, it was beautiful! I’d admired the sea from the ferry but now I was on it. Now I could trail my hands in the water, now I could bob over it, now I could look down into its depths. We were paddling from the north end of Lopud to the south end of Šipan, the next island up, and that meant dodging passengers boats and pleasure craft alike. The passenger ones were fine, you knew where they were going, but the pleasure craft could and did just turn randomly and cut across in front of you. In theory, I was taught when I did my RYA Level 1, non-powered craft take priority over powered but in practice kayaks are bottom of the food chain and they have to get out of everyone’s way. Plus, because this is effectively open to the Adriatic, there’s a bit of a chop between the two islands. Nothing dramatic but I know that only three years ago, this would have panicked me. Maybe I might even have capsized. Not now – now it’s fun to bounce over waves but I’m acutely aware of how far I’ve come in a relatively short time.

What wasn’t fun was that I had pins and needles in my legs. I often get them while kayaking but because I was wearing sandals rather than neoprene socks, it was hard to tell with reduced sensation what was the sole of my sandal and what was my footpeg. And you can’t take sandals off when you’re confined with a spraydeck. All I could do was kick and fidget and luckily, I could do enough of that to be able to feel my feet somewhat by the time we reached our first stop.

It was a great big arch on the side of the island. Once it had been the entrance to a cave but the cave itself had collapsed, leaving this arch. Our guide assured us it wouldn’t collapse (for various reasons, I wasn’t 1000% trusting him on that) and that it made good shade after a long paddle open to the sun (he was correct here). I would have liked a bit longer but it was time to head for our second stop, a sea cave around the corner on the coast of Šipan facing Lopud.

I thought we were just going to visit the cave like we’d visited the arch. A look, a photo, paddle underneath it, off we go, but no, we were going to swim here. I knew swimming and snorkelling were on the agenda but I’d assumed we’d have a couple of free hours on Šipan to do that if we chose to. I wasn’t expecting our guide to tie us up on a rock and for us all to leap out into the sea and swim into the cave. Now, this little bay was very susceptible to violent waves from motorboats zooming past – as one did while we were trying to tie up and jump out – and I’m deeply dubious about sea caves. I was a caver when I was a student. I’m very inclined to see sea caves as unstable things that collapse unexpectedly and cave diving as the most dangerous sport in the world, so no way was I ducking under the little “sump” into the inside of the cave, no matter how pretty it is inside, especially not when the sump is inaccessible in rough water, such as when a motorboat goes by and sends up waves.

But I quite enjoyed my impromptu swim in the Med. I’m definitely an on the water kind of girl rather than in and I enjoyed the novelty of swimming in such gorgeous water, even if it was colder than I expected. I was still wearing my buoyancy aid when I half-jumped half-fell in and it’s probably a good thing I was because I’m prone to cold shock, which is why I usually get in slowly and gently. Plus, after paddling for a mile and a half or even two miles by now, under the blazing Mediterranean sun, it was a welcome opportunity to cool down.

Our third stop was lunch at Suđurađ, the little port on the south coast of Šipan. The rest of the group had voted to make a reservation at a tiny fish restaurant and although restaurants really don’t work for me, I went along mostly because I really wanted a cold drink. My own pineapple juice, strapped to my decklines, had turned into pineapple tea under that sun and a glass bottle of Fanta was hugely appreciated. The waiter brought bread and butter without even an odd look and my companions never said a word so that was wonderful, and then we had to get back in the kayaks for our last stop. We had to be back on Lopud for the 6.10pm ferry, the last one of the day, and it was 3.30 by now. We were going to paddle across to Ruda, an uninhabited cone-shaped islet opposite Suđurađ, and visit another cave and then we’d have to go straight to Lopud.

I was nervous about the time. We had about two and a half hours to get all that done, to say nothing of getting changed, packing up the kayaks and getting back to the jetty. Two and a half hours to paddle the best part of two and a half miles, in winds that have picked up a bit since the morning, when two of the five paddlers are kids under about twelve, was going to be a challenge. Plus, our guide had picked up an empty kayak from one of his colleagues. Said colleague was apparently intending to tow three empty kayaks behind him back to Lopud so ours took one of them for him. Where did his group go? Who knows! Never found out why that happened! Our guide had mentioned that if necessary, he could tow us back to Lopud but now we’d be sharing a towline with this empty kayak. I was determined not to be towed – when I did my sea kayak award training last year I thought I’d have to be towed back from Brownsea when we had a similar distance to paddle straight into a force 4 wind but when I didn’t – didn’t even think of it, didn’t break a sweat – I realised that I’m a better endurance paddler than I’d given myself credit for. In fact, if he’d had a spare towline, I might even have offered to tow one of the others myself if necessary.

We made it across to Ruda. It was a good sea cave, big enough for three kayaks to paddle into, with a huge hole in the roof and a steep but climbable slope up to it. Then it was time to paddle back. And yes, it was harder than going out had been. The waves were bigger and the bit of exposed open sea was longer and we were all more tired. I shifted my grip on my paddle so I had about four feet on the left and about an inch on the right – that meant I had a huge amount of power propelling me starboard but I could still use the left-right-left-right pattern. Paddling one-sided is sometimes necessary in strong currents or winds but it’s exhausting. Paddling both sides but with 95% of your power going one way is less exhausting but has pretty much the same effect. It’s something I’ll have to remember next time I’m caught in an annoying current on the way back from Old Harry.

We made it! It turned out later that our guide had towed one of the tandems but I never saw it. I knew they’d fallen behind but they’d not been on tow every time I checked over my shoulder. I’m not the leader. It’s not my job to worry about where the rest of the group is. But I’ve been a Guide leader and now a kayak leader for too long to be able to repress those instincts. Are we all together? Are we leaving anyone behind? Is everyone doing ok?

In fact, we made it in plenty of time. Once we’d hauled the kayaks back to the graveyard and got changed, we still had an hour to kill on this little paradise island. I used it to get another cold drink and to just sit on a bench overlooking Šipan and wait for the ferry. We’d made piles of paddles and spraydecks and buoyancy aids and done all the useful things we could do and now… cool down, let our hands and shoulders relax, enjoy the sea breeze and the thought of getting back to apartment before it got dark and gloating over the photos from the day. If you should find yourself in Dubrovnik and fancy a really beautiful day out on the water, I can’t recommend it enough. Just check with the company exactly where you’re supposed to meet your guide in advance.