An All-day Trip to 6 Islands and the Blue Cave

We booked the 6 Island Excursion with Space Fun Troghir to go to the Blue Cave, Hvar City, and a few other places along the way.

We met at their booth along the Riva with Maja and 4 other people about 7:30 AM. Maja walked us to the boat, Moody Summer, that showed up from Troghir with a Finnish family on board – mom, dad, and 2 girls.  The other passengers were a French couple, a video editor from UK (works for Technicolor), and a female psychologist from Mexico City. First stop was the Blue Cave on the island of Biševo  after a 1.5 hour speed boat ride.  The water was smooth but we both had to put on wind breakers.

This is the beginning of the off-season and we lucked out – no wait to transfer to the small boats to go into the Blue Cave.  The wait can be 2-4 HOURS in the summer. The cave was beautiful and very quiet because only 3 boats were inside at one time.  Unfortunately, the visit time is very controlled so we didn’t get a very long visit.

 

Since we had no wait, the boat took us to Monk Seal Cave on the same island – very quiet and our boat was the only one there.

Next stop was to Stiniva Beach, voted the best European Beach in 2016. It’s accessible by water and by road but the boats cannot go into the cove itself.  The boats anchor and you can swim into the cove and enjoy the rock beach.  Mark, the other guys on the boat, and the Finnish family all went in the water – I passed because I thought the water was too cold.  The Brit said “It’s refreshing” – code for “It’s cold until you swim to warm up”.

Instead, I watched fish from the boat in the incredibly clear water and chatted with the woman from France.

After a bit of swimming, we headed off to Budikovac Island, again swimming from the boat.  One man owns the island, lives on it and has the businesses on it.

At this point we took a vote and decided to head to Hvar town on Hvar Island for lunch and some sightseeing time.  We wandered through the Pakleni Islands on our way to Hvar.

At Hvar Town, Marco and company from the boat took us to a local’s place (less expensive than most of Hvar).  The Croatians think Hvar is VERY expensive, catering to Europeans and yacht owners. It’s known as the party island and the British tour member told us there was a story in the UK papers few weeks ago about the badly-behaving Brits who visit the island. Hvar was very quiet in the afternoon in October – shuttered shops and some restaurants.  The pizza we had was pretty good, sharing a table with the French couple and a young female, Mexican psychologist and us – the Americans. We all muddled through with 3 languages, all of their English way better than our Spanish or French!

After lunch, we walked up to the Castle to enjoy the view before retreating to a park by the boat.

We talked with the boat crew and asked questions about education. One of the women on the boat crew  has a Masters in history and art history and teaches one day a week in a HS. She can’t get a full-time job.  According to her, jobs go to people with connections or with money to bribe the hiring people. Many schools are on half day sessions due to overcrowding – 8 to 1 or 2 to 7 PM.  The students switch sessions every week.  Students learn English starting in first grade.

The boat left Hvar about 4:30 to speed back to Split, arriving in about an hour.  The sea was MUCH rougher on the way back.

The islands and water are incredibly beautiful – clear and clean.  I completely understand why so many sailors and yacht owners come to the Adriatic Sea with their boats.  We could be enticed to spend a few months enjoying the sun, water and beaches.