Croatia Day 2: Alan and Zavratnica

On our second day we decided to do something mild so that the drivers can recover from sleep deprivation and regain power. I have to say, it's a bit ironic how the day really looked like, because it definitely wasn't a mild one.

We decided to visit Zavratnica - the place where a sunken ship lies in the bay and can be visited with snorkels. We wanted to spend the day a bit active though, so we went for an option to getting there from Jablanac - a 4-km-route "for adventurers". Well, of course we are adventurers!

But on the route it turned out that there is a path leading to a mysterious mountain called Alan. Noone was really prepared for that (we were all wearing sandals), but I managed to convince people to go and try climb Alan. Now I admit, it was silly.

On the route we got lost and found ourselves walking on the stone run. It was extreme, very dangerous but most of all fun. And the views were spectacular.

At last we found the route and decided to keep walking to Alan. We had lots of fun by that, shouting "Alan! Alan!" all the time just like the groundhog on a well known video by Animal Planet. The route was getting steeper and steeper, our water supplies were shrinking and let's face it - sandals is not the best choice for going into rocky mountains. So somewhere in the middle we had to give in. That hurt my pride but don't worry, I promised myself to come back and I did just two days after.

The views from the route and  place we reached...

On our way back to Zavratnica we were really tired, our feet hurt but that was not the end of the surprises. We got to know why the route in the guide was described as "for adventurers".  In principle, there was a section where we had to slide down a steep stone river. Well, we ended up all fours desperately trying to reach the bottom. Dangerous but fun!

All the hardship was paid off though when we reached Zavratnica bay. First thing we did was to jump into water. Very refreshing.

We snorkelled down to the sunken ship, it was not very deep (we didn't need any special equipment). That was pretty cool. There were fish of different kinds, sea anemones, rusted metal covered with seaweed. We did some photos with the underwater camera.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the underwater world, sunbathing and relaxing. On our way back to Jablanec we took even more lovely photos.