Lošinj: The Big and the Small

Well, tomorrow will be my last day on Otok Lošinj. It has been nothing less than magical. Every person who met me on this island asked, "But why are you here? It is such a long journey to come here. Why Lošinj? 

Croatia has been on a bucket list of mine for quite some time. But I had always thought my first experience with Croatia would be Dubrovnik or Split or even to one of the National Parks that is more mainstream. During Covid I realized my neighbor was Croatian and his family was from Veli Lošinj and he, his wife and I got to talking about areas of Croatia they love. As an Enneagram 5, I love researching things and I couldn't begin to tell you how many hours I probably spent over a couple weekends just reading about these little coastal areas in Croatia. A few more years went by before I decided to just do it and go. 

Veli Lošinj

 

Mali Lošinj

Otok (Island) Lošinj is broken up into two main areas: Mali (small) Lošinj and Veli (large) Lošinj. Back in the early days Veli was the area more inhabited but as the years have gone by Mali has actually become bigger. To me, Veli is charming, without trying. Mali feels like they are trying to cater to all the huge yachts and boats docking in the marinas.

My first day in Veli I was walking on a trail by the sea and I heard a motorcycle come up behind me so I moved over to let him by and to my surprise, it was a priest! He jumped off his motorcycle, smoothed out his vestment and went along his way. 

The church bells go off every hour and I love listening to it.

There's a little bakery that I went to often (ok, every day except for one). And I'd get these tomato and olive focaccia bread things that I will probably have to try to recreate because I think I have an addiction. 

And the swimming...I'll admit, I was a little skeptical of the idea of rocky beaches. I mean, we have those on Orcas Island although I haven't done much ocean swimming in the Pacific Northwest since I was little. The first couple days I walked around looking at different spots that were listed in maps but also saw all of these ladders -like you'd see in a swimming pool - attached to huge rock masses leading into the ocean. 

My favorite one (located right around Punta Leva) had some old ruins that served as sort of a hot tub area (at least warmer than the actual sea) and semi-flat rocks you could lay around on. You can image how warm the sun makes these rocks so it was a perfect spot to lay out and dry off after swimming. I did visit a couple of the rocky beaches and found them to be more populated and they were trying to sell you a lounger rental for 10 Euros (pass). I found the little swim holes on the rocks to be much more interesting.

I had to be pretty careful eating seafood in Croatia because in my 30's I gained an allergy to crustaceans (crab, shrimp, lobster that I know of) and so many of their seafood dishes come out with shrimp on it, with it, beside it. And to be honest, I didn't want to be the American that asked them to cook it differently. So I ate a lot of pizzas and things with truffles in/on it...Croatia is one of the largest exporters of truffles in the world (from the Motovunian forests in Istria). They also produce some great wines that I would say rival some of our best areas in the U.S. 

Another thing I love about wandering around Lošinj are the cute, colorful homes with luscious olive trees, fruit trees, jade plants (reminds me of my mom) and tons of what I believe is wisteria that drapes itself over walls creating a wonderful sight and scent. There's another flowering bush that bees or hornets (I didn't stay long enough to determine which) love. The first time I heard the noise I was walking on a back street and thought something electric was being used and then I saw flying things and I ran. My neighbors had told me about hornets nests they had found so again, I didn't need to find out.

One morning I hiked up to St. Ivan's Church. There's a lot of places in Croatia that you can only find for the first time with coordinates. They don't pull up on Apple or Google maps. They don't have an address. They are there for the adventurer to find. This was one of those places because it was nowhere to be found in maps. I Googled it and saw there was an All Trails review on it but it showed that person did a weird loop - they didn't even go up the trail. So I ended up finding this one lady who had created her own Google Map where she pinned places she had gone to in Veli and she had put a pin at the trailhead (I wish I would've bookmarked that b/c now I can't find it to share). In reality, if you just walk uphill (downhill to the water, uphill everywhere else) you would see these painted emblems and arrows showing you where to walk to St. Ivan. The whole thing was pretty clear once you got going. 

It had rained early in the morning and the entire trail was rocky once you got off the sidewalk so it was slow going as I did not want to slip and fall (going down was super sketchy). I loved the walk up. Most of the time you had stone walls with peek-a-boo views of the water. I saw tons of what I believe are Chrysolina coerulans, also known as the blue mint beetles, all along the trail. At one point when I had stopped and was taking a photo I heard something rustling in the bushes (did not like that). I looked over the wall and to my surprise there was a herd of about 6-8 wild (they call them feral) goats! The funny thing is I smelled them. My grandparents had a huge goat farm and business when I was younger and I immediately recognized the smell of goats before I saw them. They weren't super concerned with me and I didn't care to pet them because they looked pretty nasty. 

Wild goats

A quick shoutout to Orcas Recycling Services/The Exchange. They do a lot of zero waste management and sustainability on Orcas Island and I do some freelance work for them. I was asked to look at how these small islands do their waste and one of the first things I saw were these big bins by one of the bus stations. Lošinj asks people to separate out their glass, plastic, paper/cardboard, metal, and then there was one bin for mixed garbage. And you needed a special card to get into it and it charged you money. I asked the local tourism lady what she thought of them and she said they were not working because people didn't want to pay for their garbage so they just threw it in one of the recycling bins (which if you didn't know, contaminates everything in that bin so it most likely all goes into the regular garage instead of being recycled). So now you know.

This week we have had off and on rain and thunderstorms during the night which was AMAZING laying in bed listening to. The not-so-amazing thing about these storms is the awakening of the mosquito beasts. Those suckers love my blood and they are just everywhere now...

And now I'm back to a travel day tomorrow and I got a notice that my boat to Zadar in the morning is canceled due to projected high winds at sea. I'm a little upset because there's this weird sea organ in Zadar that I wanted to see and hear - it's an "architectural sound art object and experimental musical instrument that plays music by way of sea waves and tubes located underneath a set of large marble steps." Alas, another time, Zadar. 

So instead of a quick 2 hour boat ride to Zadar and then a short plane ride to Milan on Monday, I'm doing a 6 hour bus ride to Zagreb (capital of Croatia) tomorrow night where I'm arriving almost at midnight and then hopping a plane to Milan at 10 in the morning. I probably won't have much time to see anything in Zagreb but if I do, I'll let you know.

Next stop...Milan!