I awoke to a grinning Matt, who happily told me that our Aussie house now has a tenant until December!! Yay for more icecream money. Less excited about the prospect of living out of suitcase from August until December 2013, but so worth it. Huge thanks to Matt's fam (Des, Loretta, Dan) for all their help getting the place ready (since we haven't even seen it yet!!) We thought it would be good fun to buy a flat on the other side of the world without ever setting foot in it. As you do. Anyway.
Quick brekkie at Marijana's, backpacks on, and strolling down the
tiny lane to the rumored bus stop, which we're told is the garage
with two doors. Oh ok. We find said garage, 10 minutes early, and
proceed to wave frantically at every passing large motor vehicle for
the next 45 minutes. By this point, we have drawn a bit of a fanbase
from the few patrons of a little cafe next door. Matt gives up and
pulls out his phone to call Marijana, just as -typical- the bus rolls
up, we jump in, and we're on our way back to Zadar.Matt sits with his face pressed to the window admiring the scenery which he slept through on the way out. Dark storm clouds roll in, and lightning and thunder threaten, but not before we make a pitstop at a road-side cafe which just so happens to have a couple of pet bears out the back!
The pervs and smokers (or pedos and weed-os as Matt is now calling them) are still out in full force and we barrel through them and out into tumultuous downpour of rain to wait for the bus. The bus shelter helpfully has a giant hole in the roof, so we get lightly drenched. Also, there's a huge puddle we haven't spotted which a truck drives straight through, so we get heavily drenched. The rain stops around about the time Matt remembers his backpack has a rain cover he can pull out and over it. He curses the spiteful rain and proceeds to leave the cover on the rest of the day anyway.
We queued up for the ferry, only to be told at the entrance/customs gate that we needed a boarding pass, we only had reservation papers. Panic! Fortunately those can easily be acquired by crossing the street to the small Jadrolinija (ferry company) office. We receive boarding passes in exchange for our reservation papers and a quick flash of our passports. Back to the customs gate, still fortunately with an hour to spare, where we each add to our collection of passport stamps before we finally board the ferry.The reception office on board hands us a few vouchers for breakfast and directs us to our palatial suite. We dump our bags, and set off to explore the rest of our giant floating home. We race for the top deck like a couple of excited school kids - I won, but Matt says he let me ... pfffft. The ferry, as it turns out, is anchored to the pier with several giant ropes. They are as thick as a man's arm and fastened to holds along the length of the ship. It transpires that one man's job is apparently to wait on moped for some unseen signal, then dash through unlooping them all as quickly as possible.
Our guy apparently didn't feel like unlooping the last one before speeding off on his moped. We watched in surprise and with some alarm as we slowly pulled away from the moorings and the rope grew tighter. Fortunately one of the numerous waving bystanders decided to take action, and casually stepped in to unhook the million ton ship just in time. Then he sauntered back to his family, shrugged at them, and turned once more to wave at the ship. True.
After exploring the rest of our ferry (highlight: flashing, empty dancefloor approx 6ft wide) and observing the various creative sleeping places/positions of the more regular travellers, we retired for the night. Early start tomorrow, we are scheduled to dock and disembark in Ancona at 7am.
