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Outside Magazine, July 2005

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Destinations: Croatia
Balkan Surprise (cont.)


	STROLL WITH IT: The promenade along the Zadarski Channel, outside Zadar; left, walking near the Temple of Jupiter, in Diocletian's Palace, Split (Joshua Paul)

"THERE ARE NO new things on this island," declared Pino Vojkovic, 29, the ponytailed founder of an adventure travel agency called Alternatura, as we stood atop 1,926-foot Mount Hum, the highest point on his home island of Vis. Surveying this remote Croatian isle, about 15 miles west of Hvar, I thought it looked like a place that would make a fine hideout for a Bond villain—craggy, remote, mountainous, and riddled with caves.

"Everything here is a little... sleepy," Pino told me, and, after two days of being lulled by its slow-motion pace, I had to agree.

Still, he had just finished telling me that he and his paragliding friends liked to jump off the spot we were standing on, catch the rising thermal draft, and soar out over the water before gliding down to his hometown, the fishing village of Komiza. He had shown me a video of it that morning on his laptop, telling me that his agency organizes a paragliding festival every December and that he offers sea-kayaking, trekking, scuba-diving, and boat trips to nearby islets. Surely these things must qualify as novelties on an island of farmers and fishermen that was closed to outsiders until 1990 due to its strategic importance as a Yugoslav military base. And even Pino himself is the embodiment of something new.

"Another way of tourism is becoming more popular: outdoor trips, adventure, aromatherapy... and I don't know what," Pino told me, trailing off and chuckling to himself, seemingly over the prospect of aromatherapy. "But our government and bureaucracy are very afraid of new things. They are stuck in the old way, so they do not see this yet, but soon they will have to."



	LOOKING FOR THE ELUSIVE HONEYPOT: Dusk on Dubrovnik's Stradun, one of the city's main pedestrian thoroughfares (Joshua Paul)

Zeljko Kelemen, 52, the elder statesman of the Croatian outdoor scene, has been instrumental in helping people understand the potential of adventure tourism in Croatia. A former competitive kayaker, he now owns Croatia's oldest and largest outdoor outfitter, Huck Finn Adventure Travel. In the early 1990s, Zeljko began offering a few rafting trips that drew a steady clientele of UN peacekeepers.

"The biggest problem we have is adventure illiteracy," Zeljko told me in his storefront office on the south side of Zagreb, his new VW van parked outside with two yellow kayaks on top. "Most people have no idea what is caving, kayaking, canoeing, rafting.

"When we first started with sea kayaking near Dubrovnik, the locals saw us and said, ‘These must be poor people who have no money to pay for a nice motorboat,' " he recalled, "but gradually they realized that even though our clients are in kayaks, they are eating at the best restaurants, they are spending money, and then it started changing their idea of adventure tourism. It just takes time."

And though it needs a little more time to ripen, the Croatian outdoor scene is coming of age. For example, visitation to Paklenica National Park, a popular rock-climbing and hiking area midway down the Dalmatian coast, has increased from 30,000 visitors in 1990 to 105,000 in 2004. While the first adventure race drew only blank stares five years ago, there are now ten or so annually. And the tourist board's adventure travel brochure listed 40 agencies offering outdoor trips in 2001; by 2004, that number had grown to 120. By virtue of his expertise, contacts, and experience, Zeljko sits at the apex of this nascent network of outdoor operators—but not everyone gets what the younger generation is trying to do.

On my final morning in Komiza, on the island of Vis, I sat in a smoke-filled café with Pino and his childhood friend and business partner Zvonko Brajcic, 29, known universally as Dado.

"Here, if you are young, the older generation thinks you don't know too much, and so they don't give you the opportunity, and the banks won't give you loans," Dado said. "So the only capital we have is our enthusiasm and our ability to work."

"Enthusiasm," interjected Pino with a snort, venting a bit of his frustration at having to turn his office into a video-rental shop during the winter months to make ends meet. "Now it is all enthusiasm and not enough doing, but we cannot eat enthusiasm."

As I was leaving to catch a ferry back to the mainland, Dado produced an apt parable.

"The boats in Komiza," he told me, "were always painted black. Then one guy a hundred years ago painted his white, and the others laughed. But then they saw that he sleeps well and is not so hot and they did the same. Now all the boats are painted white—and this is how new ideas go here: very slowly."

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