“Do you speak English?”

We ended up staying in Bol for two nights, which allowed us just enough time to spend a very relaxing day lounging around on the beautiful Zlatni Rat beach that jutted out dramatically into the sea at the opposite end of Bol, where we somehow managed to secure a couple of sun loungers just inches from the warm, clear sea. There was also plenty of time for us to waste sitting around in the bar beside our hotel (and later on the balcony of the hotel room we moved into on the second night, which overlooked said bar, thus enabling us to drink beer from the supermarket at half the price while maintaining a air of superiority over the punters below). Sitting in the bar on the first night, we also gained an interesting insight into the state of Serbo-Croatian relations by watching the (Croatian) bar staff jump in unison with joy at the moment when Argentina scored a last-second winner in their Olympic basketball game against Serbia-Montenegro. I suppose it’s not really any different to watching the Scottish delight at an England football defeat, but given the recent history of the Balkans, you can’t help but attach slightly more sinister overtones.

But soon, it was time to leave and travel on to Hvar. To avoid having to travel back north to Split, in order to go south to Hvar, we had booked our next leg of ferry travel on a small tourist boat taking day-trippers over to Hvar and on to a fish picnic on one of the small uninhabited islands. As such, the journey was slightly different to our previous boat trips. The overnight ferry hadn’t at any point stopped to allow whichever passengers felt like it to jump off the top of the boat and go for a bit of a swim, for example, and I don’t recall any of our previous journeys coming to a sudden halt to avoid colliding with the Stari Grad car ferry (several times our size).

But we made it to Hvar in one piece in the end, and ended up stumbling off the boat slightly seasick around noon. Gathering our breath and stomachs on the quayside, we watched an interesting argument develop between the captain of the boat and a couple of windsurfers who’d travelled over with us who were trying to persuade him to let them store their board on top of his boat. He wasn’t having any of this and ended up yelling at them to take it off his boat and giving them their money back. Later on, as we wandered around Hvar, we bumped into these windsurfers trying to offload their board in various other locations around town, including the roof of the state ferry operator’s booking office. We could only assume that they ultimately managed to get rid of it somewhere judging by the fact that the last time we saw them, they were climbing up to the Citadel above the city. Without their board.

At this point, we wandered off to locate a private agency that the Rough Guide claimed to be the best place to find a room for the night. After two circuits in the overpowering midday heat of the area around the harbour where the book claimed it to be, with me struggling under the weight of the backpack, and asking in a number of shops to a selection of confused blank looks, we had to assume that it might have closed down, and headed for the tourist office instead. Continuing the tradition of the people in Bol, the tourist office went out of their way to be helpful.

Us: We were wondering if you have any rooms for the night…?
Her: No. They are all full.
Us: Oh… Ok.

This did not bode well. Ah well, we thought, that can’t really all be full, so we tried some of the other agencies, who confirmed that in fact all their rooms were full too.

And all the nice looking hotel rooms were full.

And the horrible ones.

Eventually, we stumbled into the shabbiest hotel of the lot, at the far end of the harbour, and asked after rooms. “Yes, we have”, said the lady behind the counter (great!), “but not in the hotel” (oh), “in the private rooms”, (oh, ok, great!), “but it has just been taken”, (oh), “but we have another one” (great!) “it is three kilometers away” (oh).

We decided to take a look at it anyway, and trundled off back to the bus station where the chap with the room would pick us up in his car. At this point, we were prepared to take just about anything, and thought that although 3km wasn’t great, it was at least a walkable, if far distance. The alarm bells started ringing around the point when we realised that 3km away meant 3km uphill along windy mountain roads with no walkable path or street lights, but when it transpired that 3km away in fact meant about 7 or 8 km along a completely unwalkable route, and in fact meant staying in a tiny, dusty, mountain village with no redeeming features, past a rubbish tip and at the mercy of a middle-aged Croatian man who spoke only German and drove stupidly fast along windy, narrow, roads with no clear line of sight, and wanted to charge us 100Kn round trip every time we wanted to go back to Hvar, we decided pretty quickly to make our excuses and leave, taking our chances back in the old town.

It was now some 3 hours or so after we had first arrived in Hvar. When we found ourselves back in the old town, we still had nowhere to stay, and were rapidly running out of options. Wandering back to the harbour, we noticed there was an agency we hadn’t tried before, and Sal went in to ask, while I stayed outside with the bag. I was just about to follow her in when a tall sweaty chap in wrap around shades popped up, and seemed to be trying to ask me something. It took me a while to work out that this affable Irishman was actually saying “excuse me, do you speak English?”. “Yes”, I replied, “but I don’t think I can help you”.

But, in fact, I could. And even better than that, he could help us, because Sal and I could take the other room in the 4 person apartment that he had just been offered. As there was just him and his girlfriend travelling, and not wanting to lose a precious room, he had set off into the town to find a couple to fill the other room. Not only did the room turn out to be fine, close to the town, and cheaper than the room-in-the-middle-of-nowhere, but our new friends turned out to be lovely people (and she was from North London as well, just up the road from us. I mean who’d have thunk it?)

It was going to take a while to recover from that little adventure, so we decided to stay in Hvar for a couple of nights…