Elaphite Island

Little Lopud was one of my favorite places in Croatia

(Dateline - Chris)

If you spend ten minutes in Dubrovnik, you'll notice Croatians standing around on the street trying to make eye contact with you. One batch of these are greeters at restaurants. Their job is to stand out in front of their restaurant and entice you to a table. The other group are barkers for ADVENTURE. These guys stand on the sidewalk, at booths, at corners in Old Town or in storefronts. They would love to rent you a jet ski or hook you into a parasail, but judging from their ubiquity, what they really want to do is out your butt on a tour leaving Dubrovnik.

As I recall, these guys offered four main itineraries, and we wanted to do them all. One was a day trip to Kotor, Montenegro, you'll recall that we rented a car and went there ourselves; Jen wrote about it, and didn't much like it. The second was a day trip to Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina; we didn't do this one, running out of time and budget for it, but if we had done it, we would have taken the tour. The third was a boat ride to Mljet, one of the Dalmatian Islands and site of an eponymous national Park; we didn't make it to Mljet either. The fourth, and most ardently advertised, is for the Elaphite Islands.

The Elaphites have no connection at all to elephants, unfortunately; the name is from the Greek for deer, ελάφι, and while we didn't see any, I don't doubt they're lovely places for deer to live. According to Wikipedia, there are 13 Elaphite islands, but the three main ones are Šipan, Lopud and Koločep.

The tours will send you on a ship to these three islands, but if you're cheap enough, you'll discover that ferries run to each of them out of the port a few times a day for far less money. So with Jen working on a grant for Hakensack Riverkeeper, Otis and I hoofed it down to the Jadrolinija ferry dock at the port and laid down 70 or so Kuna for a round trip ferry for two to Lopud.

We chose Lopud primarily for its beach, and secondarily for the little hike you need to get there. Otis and I like beaches and we like hiking. Lopud's beach is called Sunj, and it was easily the nicest beach we had been to so far. It was quiet; the sand was fine and soft; the water was clear, clean and brilliant; and while there were two restaurants, they didn't fill up the entire beach with for-rent lounges and umbrellas (shots fired, Italy).

Needing to leave our Lapad Airbnb the next morning for our road trip, we couldn't stay nearly as long as I would have liked, but I loved Lopud. I'd even consider staying on the island and taking the ferry to visit Dubrovnik, rather than vice versa, if what I was looking for was primarily a quiet and peaceful beach trip.

Lopud's harbor is super beautiful, with crystal water and light sand, but we were looking for more

Sunj beach was maybe a two kilometer walk from the dock; if you're liquid and or lazy, dudes will drive you here in a golf cart for not-too-many Kuna

Good sand for castles

In addition to this sea horse, we also saw a number of founders hiding in the sand.

When I first found this little guy, I thought it was dead

Otis poses by his completed mountain range, with a shell on each peak

The hike had nice views in both directions, and was a little steep, but never too demanding 

Its not too bad waiting for the ferry when the sea is like a high definition television showing a wealth of fish-based programming.