Back on the road, our first destination was a town called Makarska. This was another potential paragliding spot on the coast. We tried to locate the landing zone down on the beach but knowing how precious coastal real estate is in this area, we didn’t expect to find a large, open area for a guy flying in on some strings and a bed sheet would be easy. We decided to try driving up to launch, only armed with some GPS coordinates and a multi-country scale map. Ascending about 400 meters above the sea, we arrived at the gate for the Biokovo nature park. We spoke with the older park ranger and with his limited knowledge of English he happily pulled out a book that paraglider pilots were to sign. It was obvious that this wasn’t a frequent task he had to perform and Garth thought that he saw that the last paraglider pilot hadn’t flown since April. We had read a sign that stated that one must call a specific dude before flying but since we had to sign in already, it had been a long time since the last person had flown, we had no cell phones and it was a 15 minute drive back into town, we decided that we’d just go for it.
The beautiful Dalmatian coast:
Rolling in Betty:
All the things you shouldn't do in the park:
The road climbed on switchbacks through the forest before emerging above to the rocky terrain. The view was breathtaking and we weren’t even a third of the way up to launch height. Betty plodded her way up the mountain and we briefly stopped at a honey seller as Holly is a honey lover, her father having been a part time beekeeper. As we reached the top of the ridge, but still being a ways from the launch and even further from the peak that one could drive to (by the way, this is the highest mountain road in Croatia!), we stopped at an information hut just to make sure that we hadn’t gone too far. Inside the visually and thermally cool rock building, an older mountain guide was initially helping some Germans before we were able to talk to him. Turns out that we should have just kept going. He was a nice enough fellow but a bit of a talker. He explained that we really did need to call the guy that was on the sign since they had had some accidents here and the mountain rescuers really appreciate if you have fully checked in before flying so we needed to return to town to call him (more than 35 minutes of driving back down). He then proceeded to show us a few mountain pics on his cell phone and both Garth and I contemplated why he didn’t offer to call the site guy for us...but there must have been a reason. We begrudgingly thanked him for his help and then decided to continue on to the peak, past the paragliding launch. The road became quite narrow and it was a fun cat and mouse kind of game with cars who were descending as we were headed up. Sometimes it was obvious who should concede and back up to the next best slight pullout but other times it felt like a Mexican standoff. The craziest one was when we ran into a 12-16 person van descending. I pulled to the left, into a slight pullout but then the drive frantically waved for me to come towards him and off to the right. He was quite an impatient fellow. He passed me by and a few of the passengers in the van smiled and waved at me as they passed by. Two more vans of a similar size followed suit but at least their drivers were a little more laid back. We continued to the top which entailed some more switchbacks and quite a final climb. There was a massive multipurpose antenna on top and a small parking lot where a park ranger guided me into parking Betty at a downhill angle...it’s almost like he knew her starting problem.
High up:
The view from 1.7 kilometers above sea level, when you can see the sea, is phenomenal. Numerous islands were in view as well as the countryside behind us. We checked out a small church around the other side of the antenna and then had a bit of lunch in the vehicle while admiring the view. The descent was much quicker than the ascent but there were still parts that required one to go slow. We headed into town to try and locate a payphone to call this paragliding dude but it proved to be more difficult than you’d expect. We did find one at the bus station but it only accepted cards, and not any card that Garth and I had. Garth did have success at the post office and the guy, Matko, told him to walk out to the waterfront and he yelled at him from across a small bay. We walked over there but then couldn’t locate him. Garth returned to the post office to call again as I waited by his house but we never ended up getting in touch with him. It was 5pm now and we had tried our best to play by the rules but screw it, at least one of us should go and fly. Garth insisted it should be me so we left Holly to hang out in town while we began the slow drive up to launch. It didn’t last long as we noticed that there was now a soccer game happening in the landing zone I planned to use. It seemed the gods were against us flying today. We returned to town and after a bit of searching, located Holly and began to drive north along the coast towards Split.
The view from the top:
Enjoying the view from the top:
Make Rocket Go Now:
View from the harbor in Makarska:
A panorama from town:
We found a lovely little campsite, really just a large, flat gravel parking pad with a seaside view and covered over with grapevines. The old lady, Maria, who owned the place with her husband was super friendly although she didn’t speak any English. Once again my very minimal German knowledge came in handy. After a sit down and a drink, we headed off in search of a restaurant as we still hadn’t been able to locate camping gas for Betty...hopefully we will soon as it would be nice to cook some of our own meals. We had a lovely dinner on the beach at a restaurant called Mario’s and returned to camp, only to find out that the peaceful campsite we had left turned out to only be 100 yards from an outdoor nightclub with thumping bass blasting....oh well, you can’t win them all.
Betty camping on the Croatian coast:
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