July 3rd, Up the Cetina River

7/3       Wednesday

            We’re taking a boat ride up the Cetina River today, small tourboats, just a dozen or so aboard. As we leave the dock, my camera batteries die, so no camera for the cliff views, oh well.

It’s nearly as big a scene as Zion. Huge stone mountains surround our little river. The river is fairly shallow, very clear and fresh. We see fishing camps along the way, small outhouse-like buildings, open to the water. Each has a small seat, maybe an old bucket seat from a car, and fishing paraphernalia in the hut. What’s funny is to see the row of fish-huts, with some old guy sitting on his seat, fishing away, and his neighbors fishing beside him, on the other side of the rickety wall, all of them fishing alone together.

The boat lands at a park with a couple of snack shacks and an open-air restaurant. The restaurant has a great cook-table of charcoal fires. They make a country style bread, cooking it in the coal ash, and various stews and grilled meat or fish. I find a 50 kuno note on the ground, and that’s exactly what a small loaf costs. Fate! It must be good, because Bob usually buys a loaf of bread at the bakery for 8 or so kunos. We get a giant round of bread, and it is really nice. We’ll save half to give our host when we return home.

We go back to the beach after our boat trip. It’s late in the day, only a couple of hours of beach time left. The umbrella lady says something in Croatian, we don’t understand, but she comes with our change and says we get the umbrella “gratis”, because it's late. Street vendors understand the value of return customers.

This umbrella lady is about seventy - at least - with white jeri-curly hair, dark brown tanned skin, wearing a little purple bikini. Not a so-called bikini two-piece either, but an all out (oh, yes) authentic string bikini. All the beaches are full of burnt-sienna skinned, bikini-wearing grandmas, in varied stages of rotundity, sitting in small huddles, smoking and talking. It’s like Miami Beach in the sixties.

1 Video Included

Omis House on a Hill