Now you see them...

There will be no pictures from our day trip to Mljet yesterday becuase I am an idiot. This morning Joey and I took the short ferry ride from Dubrovnik old town to the nature preserve on the island of Lokrum which is situated just off the coast. On the way I was adjustiing the settings on my camera (white balance, color saturation, etc...) . I remembered reading in the manual that it was possible to create and save custom setups, so I scolled through the menu items until I came to one called "format". At this point I was beset by a temporay but devastating lapse an judgment and selected that option. I expected another menu to appear that would allow me to name and save the group of settings I had just created. Instead it erased all the digital pictures I've taken so far. There was no helpful warning message like "Are you sure you want to DELETE ALL OF YOUR PICTURES?", or "I REALLY wouldn't do that if I were you." ... Just an hour glass and then nothing.

I have a representative sample from most our trip up to yesterday uploaded to this blog, so there's no huge loss there, but you will have to picture Mljet in your mind's eye. Actually so will we... as a little ironic twist, we've taken most of our pictures on this trip with our film cameras. We just used the digital to take snapshots for the blog, but yesterday we shot almost exclusively digital.

So, I will do my best to tell you about our day with descriptions of the photos I was planning to add.

PHOTO: foreground - three pairs of feet, one with painted red toenails (sarah's), one sandled (mine), and one pair of bare size tens (joey's). Background - a secluded cove with crystal clear blue/green water surrounded by tree covered hills in front of a perfect blue sky.


We woke up at 6:30, showered, packed our day pack and walked to the small grocery store down the street to meet Sarah at 7:30. We met right on schedule and went inside to pick up some fruit and bottled watter for the trip. After we purchases our supplies we walked a little under 1/2 hour to the Gruz port where we would pick up the 9:00 am ferry to Mljet.

We arrived at the port around at 8:00 am, ate our fruit and drank coffee while we waited to depart. The boat left sailed on time and a little over an hour and a half later we docked in Polace on the island of Mljet.

The island of Mljet is a little over 30 km long and no longer than 3 km across at its widest point. The entire western half of the island is covered with a national park which includes two large salt water lakes, one of which has an islet with a 14th century monestary at its center, and Montokuc, the highest peak on the Island.

We bought our park admission for 90 kuna each (about 30 percent higher than the price listed in our guidebook - the croatians are definitely embracing capitalism). We headed up the path to the summit of montokuc (a little over 1.6 km to the top). After about a 45 minute walk up the hill (with Sarah in the lead.. she is in WAY better shape than we are) we reached the peak.

PHOTO: foreground - Sarah and Rob sitting on a rock in the lower right hand corner of the frame. background - vistic view of the two lakes below and past them the Adriatic.

PHOTO: foreground: Joey and Rob standing on a rocky outcrop jutting out over the forest below. Background: a small penninsula sticking out into a dark blue sea.

We walked down the opposite side of the mountain to the water. The way down was not quite as interesting as the way up, the path was wider and gravely (large enough for a car) and there weren't quite as many opporunities to glimpse the Adriatic. We reached the bottom and walked along the road until we found the nice secluded little area pictured in the first photo. We hung out there for about an hour before hiking the 4 or so km back to Polace.

We arrived back in Polace around 4:00 pm and sat down at a cafe to order a few cold .5 litre beers and some lunch.

PHOTO: Rob, Sarah, and Joey sitting at a table with a small port in the background. Everyone is holding their beer with huge smiles on their faces (the owner had just said something really funny and we were laughing at his joke).

For lunch Joey ordered the Mljet Game with Gnocchi. When he asked the waitress/owner (wife of the guy in the above photo) what the "game" was. She struggled with the english for a moment before replying "crazy pig" (which Joey, Sarah, and I all immediately recognized as "Wild Boar"). When the husband served us our food, he was laughing so hard at the fact that his wife called Wild Boar Crazy Pig, that he was almost crying.

We had a litre of the local white wine with our dinner, and after we finished, sat around and talked for a 1/2 hour or so until it was time to get on the boat for the trip back to Dubrovnik. We arrived back in town and started back up the hill from the port towards our rooms. We reached the point in the road where our paths diverged around 8:20. We agreed meet back at the market at 9:00 pm so we could head back into the old town for dinner.

I have to give Sarah some props here: she made the 10 minute walk back to her room, showered and made the 10 minute walk back to the market before 9. Joey and I were a little late (although our room was slightly further away and there were two of us).

When we arrived back in the city center, the whole town was atwitter with excitement over that evenings World Cup match between Croatia and Brazil. There were TVs EVERYWHERE in the old town (including a 15 foot diameter screen hung on one of the old city's fortified walls overlooking the marble streets where scores of people had gathered to watch.) We ate at a wine bar on an outside terrace overlooking the old city's ancient port. It was a nice night and normally the terrace would have been packed but we were one of only three occupied tables. Everybody else (including the waitstaff) was in the indoor dining room glued to one of 8 or so flat screen TVs set up around the restaurant... Unfortunately Croatia was bested by Brazil in a 1-0 match.

As I mentioned this morning, we took a short ferry ride to Lokrum to sun ourselves on the rocks that jut out from the pine covered island into the Adriatic. We arrived around 11, laid around for about an hour then took one of the trails up into island interior. During our walk we encountered several Peacocks (of which there are apparently a large number of on the island) and several craggy cliffs split by clear water. There were quite a few people swimming but it was still too cold for us. During our walk we encountered a small park with some soccer goals set up. It was here that Lokrum disc was born.

Here are the rules and regulations as drafted before and after the inaugral match:

Players:
2

Equipment:
Two large soccer goals (referred to as Lokrum nets)
Two Small soccer goals (referred to as grottos)
One 175 gram disc.

Field of Play:
Lokrum nets should be placed on a large grass field no less than 50 paces apart. Grottos are centered inside the Lokrum nets with front posts of grotto and net aligned to each other.

Game play
Object is to score points by throwing the disc into the Lokrum nets. Each player must tag the crossbar of the grotto and release the disc from within the redzone which is bound by the posts of the Lokrum net and extends outward for 5 feet in front of it. Release outside of the red zone or failure to tag the grotto crossbar will result in forfeiture of the scoring opportunity.

Interventions:
Each player is allowed two interventions per game (a match consists of three games). An intervention is exercised anytime the defending player comes in contact with the disc in the area between the Lokrum net posts and extending across the field from one net to the other. An intervention is successful if the defending player catches the disc within the red zone and prevents the offensive player from scoring. If an attempted intervention is unsuccessful the intervention is lost and the offensive player receives one point. If a defensive player exercises an intervention after his alotment has been exhausted, the offensive player receives two points.

Scoring:
3 points: A disc thrown into the grotto without first touching the ground.
2 points: A disc that bounces or slides into the grotto.
1 point: Any disc that enters the Lokrum net but not the grotto (on the ground or in the air)

Misc rules:
A lokrum match is made of of three games, each played to 11 points. If a player scores more than 11 points his score is set back to 7.

Defensive players may not enter the red zone until the disc has been released.


results of the first match:
game1: Rob 11-6
game2: Joe 11-10
game3: Rob 11-6

Match: Rob