On a fishing boat off Lastovo Island, Ivica and his wife Helena are discussing fjaka. It’s the Croatian word for the lazy contented mood that follows a good lunch, Ivica says. “Fresh fish, wine, the sound of cicadas and the heat — you can do nothing but sit.” Helena says that she often feels it in the morning. Ivica pulls a face. “That’s not fjaka, that’s just mornings.”
Dalmatia’s own F-word, pronounced “fee-yaka”, could only have come from a region of sun-baked islands. Inland they make rude jokes about Dalmatians as tovari (donkeys), but that misses the point. With fjaka Dalmatians have elevated easy living into an art form — it is a state of mind. It’s no places to go, no appointments to keep. It is not thinking, allowing time to unspool. Just being. In short, fjaka is meditation-meets-holiday gold.
In the mood for some holiday gold myself, I planned a trip to the source of fjaka — a quixotic hunt for something that even Dalmatians can’t entirely define, but which I imagined would also lead me to the perfect Croatian island.
It might seem a perverse choice to make straight for Korcula — it entails an 80-mile drive along the coast road northwest from the airport, ignoring many treats along the way. Dubrovnik’s astonishing roofscape slips past, bays wink “come on in”, and vineyards on the Peljesac peninsula pour some of the best booze in Croatia’s cellar. But then you catch a ferry from Orebic and everything makes sense — ahead is a medieval citadel jutting into the sea, guarded by towers like chess pieces, terracotta roofs swelling above ramparts to a white campanile.
The island’s eponymous main town likes to claim Marco Polo as its own, but this can’t be true — it’s so beautiful he’d never have left. A Lilliputian city the size of a hamlet, it is built of faded grandeur and forgotten secrets. Carved balconies overlook tiny piazzas; pensioners emerge from doorways that reveal the courtyards of long-dead noblemen, washing strung between their galleries like bunting. At dusk, when the town glows pale gold, it appears to float in the sea. Which is all lovely, but there are too many holiday rentals for my liking, too many boutiques. Also, there are only so many times that you want to hear YMCA in the aptly named Déjà Vu bar. Four miles southeast, the village of Lumbarda also has holiday apartments, but the loudest sound on its glassy bay is the gurgle of the sea.
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Couples drift beside the harbour at dusk; enterprising pensioners sit at makeshift tables to flog homemade olive oil and jars of preserved fish. Follow the lane through a patchwork of olive groves, allotments and vineyards, and you’ll reach Vela Przina Beach, an arc of rare Croatian sand.
In 1877 Bozo Krsinic was in his fields when his spade struck stone. The Lumbarda Psephisma tablet set down the rights of 200 Greek families who settled here 2,300 years ago. Academics speculate that it was ancient Greek settlers who refined Illyrian grapes into grk, a white wine you’ll drink nowhere else. “Grk goes through our veins,” Josip Bire tells me in the cellar of his family’s vineyard. “It is who we are.”
He grows philosophical over an hour slurping plavac mali rosé (summery, dangerously gluggable) and grk (complex, mineral-rich). The thing to understand about Lumbarda, Bire says, glass in hand, is that it remains a community. His worry is that the island might embrace mass tourism. “I was swimming today and I thought, ‘We live in paradise, but we don’t know it,’ ” he says. “What makes Korcula special is that it is not about money or resorts. To love this island you just need to be.” It sounds as though I might be on the right track.
Korcula offers numerous hiking and biking trails if you have the energy. I don’t, though, so I take a drive instead. Silver-green olive trees fleck dark hills of pine and cypress. Occasionally the road crests a mountain to reveal a heart-swelling panorama of Adriatic. The wild beauty makes the island a dead cert for development — but it hasn’t happened yet.
Most of the 15,000-odd Korculans seem to care more about getting on with their lives than tourism. Sure, the Michelin people noticed Konoba Mate, in the village of Pupnat, in 2018, but the family owners still greet you at the door wearing aprons and serve gutsy plates prepared from their farm’s ingredients: smoked ham and goat’s cheese; chewy macaroni with cream and fennel; superlative steak. They still charge the same prices too. (In the main town Adio Mare is the go-to for a terrific meal.)
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When I arrive in Blato there’s no gift shop anywhere, just kids larking in the park and old boys on benches.
In Smokvica the problem is depopulation. At the Centar café Marija tells me that wine-growers left after communist collectivisation in the 1950s. Now the young are leaving for work. Yet she stays. “It’s beautiful here,” she says with a shrug. “Sometimes it’s better to have less money and a better life.”
I’m looking for the perfect beach, and soon enough I realise that everywhere on Korcula’s south coast fits the bill. Zitna and Bacva are lovely pine-scrubbed notches. In Slatina, at the end of a remote dirt track, I float alone in glassy kingfisher-blue water — it feels like flying. Best of all is Pupnatska Luka, a crescent of smooth white shingle below bosky cliffs. “Don’t worry about a thing,” Bob Marley sings from a beach bar. Who could? The sun shines, the sea is warm and the air is heady with pines — it’s pure fjaka territory.
There’s just one problem. All afternoon a dusky blue silhouette has been sliding across my windscreen, humping in the sea like Treasure Island. “Come,” it whispers. “Explore.” The ferry map shows that it’s the last stop after Korcula and arguably the remotest island in Croatia — perfect.
Lastovo has no boutiques and no gift shops. Its one hotel is a so-so Yugoslav relic (you’re better in a holiday rental). Its bus (singular) is a people carrier that greets you at the port, Ubli, which is a few houses around an inlet where a couple of men sit with fishing rods. The island is built of wild hills and muscular cliffs. As a Yugoslav military base it was off-limits to visitors until 1988 — as in a Bond villain’s lair, tunnels for ships and rocket bunkers bore into peninsulas facing Italy.
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The phenomenon of island-trapped waves sucks nutrients from the deep sea to the surface, making local archipelagos a Noah’s Ark for fragile life. Some 80 per cent of the Adriatic’s rarest shearwaters — the yelkouan and Scopoli’s birds — breed here, as do Croatia’s entire population of the endangered Audoin’s gull. Offshore there’s stellar diving, with 130ft visibility. In 2003 the WWF called Lastovo a last paradise of the Mediterranean; in 2006 the Croatian government designated its archipelago a nature park.
Although tourism has arrived — a catamaran service launched from Dubrovnik this summer, and there’s even talk of a new hotel — the lives of the 400 or so permanent islanders have been almost unchanged for centuries. They prune vines, fish from dayboats and go to church on Sundays. In summer they tend allotments, and in autumn make olive oil and family-recipe rakia, flavoured with fruit or herbs. In spring they observe an arcane festival called the Poklad, which culminates in an effigy being paraded backwards on a donkey (it represents a messenger who was part of a legendary pirate attack), before it is hurled down a zip line with explosives attached to its feet.
That’s in Lastovo’s main town, a semi-ruin thanks to emigration in the 1950s — there are more Lastovians in Geelong, Australia, than Lastovo. It’s haunting to explore — weeds sprout through marble staircases; bottle-green shutters hang off stone houses the colour of old ivory. But for the occasional radio playing behind lace curtains you would think the place was abandoned entirely.
The heights of sophistication here — and they’re not that high — are in the bay of Zaklopatica. Its seafood restaurants — such as Triton (traditional, charming) and Augusta Insula (glamorous) — cater to a growing fleet of yachties, and if you’re going to spot a holidaying Russian oligarch, a football star or a Hollywood A-lister (hello, Goldie Hawn), it will likely be here.
For a few days I do nothing very much. I rummage through the main town’s alleyways, daydreaming of a simpler life in the perfect doer-upper.
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In Lucica I discover the last best little harbour in Dalmatia — to gripe about the lack of beach feels churlish; it has old fishermen’s houses along the wharf, cobalt-blue shutters and sea in matching shades. What more do you need? My hour-long trip melts into an afternoon.
One night I join a star-gazing trip run by the local tourism board. In an inky sky boiling with stars we see Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s four largest moons. The hope is that the island will be accredited as Europe’s first Dark Sky Sanctuary.
“This place is a refuge,” Diana, a refugee from Zagreb, tells me. “Nowhere else in Croatia is this pure. You feel the quiet.”
Keen to get afloat I book that fishing trip with Ivica and Helena. “This is my boat,” Ivica says, standing by a glossy wooden gulet at the wharf. He clambers on board, then clambers straight off, on to his utilitarian plastic tub moored alongside.
During summer the couple run fishing trips for visitors in partnership with the WWF. Ivica is probably right when he says that it’s more like play than real work, but it also helps to preserve endangered species, and guarantees him an income when the fund compensates for lost earnings, so win-win.
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It’s also a lovely trip. Ivica yarns about island life as he hauls up nets in a series of dark-teal bays — catches include a beautiful bullet-nosed bonito and scorpion fish. Then we fire up the griddle in an empty bay and eat fresh fish soused in the couple’s olive oil and homemade fennel bread, accompanied with their wine and rakia. The boat rocks to a gentle swell. The sea chuckles. Time slows. Fjaka found.
James Stewart was a guest of the Croatian National Tourist Board (croatia.hr); Premier Inn, which has B&B doubles at Gatwick’s North Terminal from £31 (premierinn.com); and Intrepid Travel, which has seven nights’ B&B on its Premium Split to Dubrovnik trip — including Korcula and Lastovo, and a fishing trip with Ivica and Helena — from £2,405pp (intrepidtravel.com). Fly to Dubrovnik
Eight more fantastic Croatian getaways
1. Solta
You can see Solta from Split’s waterfront, but this laid-back little island is usually bypassed in everyone’s haste to get to Hvar and Brac. They’re missing out on the cute fishing villages Stomorska and Rogac, as well as acres of award-winning olive groves and empty pebbly coves that dig into the rugged southern coast. Sunset-seekers head west to Maslinica and Solta’s only hotel, the luxurious Martinis Marchi, a 300-year-old converted castle that harks back to Dalmatia’s Venetian days. Yachties love Solta, with the happy result that many of its waterside restaurants are a cut above the rest.
Details Five nights’ B&B from £1,350pp (audleytravel.com). Fly to Split
2. Dugi Otok
Sleepy Dugi Otok, or “long island”, lives up to its name, snaking its way through the Zadarian archipelago. Smothered in olive and pine groves here, beautifully barren there, it all leads lazily southwards to Telascica Nature Park, with its six islets and 25 coves. Tucked away in this backwater, the luxurious hotel Villa Nai 3.3 opened in July. Carved into the hillside and surrounded by ancient olive groves, it’s a decadently bewitching place for lounging by the infinity pool and taking in Adriatic views.
Details B&B doubles from £843 (villanai.com). Fly to Zadar
3. Rab
The baby of the Kvarner Gulf, Rab outdoes its bigger neighbours by squeezing in loads of sandy beaches — 30 at last count. You’ll find some of the loveliest among the pine groves of the Lopar peninsula, including the naturists’ favourite Sahara, where the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson may or may not have frolicked starkers in 1939. But it’s the main town’s absurdly beautiful medieval centre — with its quartet of romanesque belltowers and patchwork of marble lanes — that’s the real draw. The old town is topped by ornamental gardens, where the Imperial Valamar Collection Hotel stands with its large outdoor pool.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £760pp (prestigeholidays.co.uk). Fly to Pula
4. Mljet
Probably Croatia’s greenest island, Mljet is worth much more than the cursory glance that Dubrovnik day-trippers give it. Yes, you could probably “do” Mljet National Park in an afternoon, but its two saltwater lakes, island monastery, pine-shaded footpaths and mountain trails demand a slower, more careful exploration. And the national park is only one half of the island — at the eastern end the village of Saplunara and its sandy beaches are tucked into a dangling peninsula. The stylish Pine Tree Boutique Apartments hover over the beach, and its restaurant is one of Mljet’s best.
Details B&B doubles from £152 (pinetreemljet.com). Fly to Dubrovnik
5. Istria
Autumn in Istria gives you the sort of sensory overload you probably need right now. The scent of truffles, the olive harvests kicking off in October and the celebration of the season’s new wines form an aromatic backdrop to a leisurely self-guided hike across this heart-shaped peninsula. Follow La Parenzana, an old Habsburg railway line that winds past medieval hilltop villages bathed in seasonal mists, stopping for homegrown food in an agroturizam. Your goal is the delightful coastal town of Lovran, via the forested hills, canyons and waterfalls of Ucka Nature Park.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £1,045pp (inntravel.co.uk). Fly to Pula
6. Cres and Losinj
You get two for the price of one on these islands, joined by a bridge. Cres (roughly pronounced “tsress”) moves to the slow rhythms of fishing and sheep. Ancient paths explore the bosky north and griffon vultures circle cliffs above the village of Beli, while Cres’s main town, in a Venetian medieval harbour, is blissfully unaware of its beauty. Losinj (“Losheen”) was developed as a tiny resort for Austro-Hungarian grandees, which is why Mali Losinj and Veli Losinj have good restaurants on lovely harbours, plus five-star hotels near pretty coves — such as the Alhambra Palace.
Details Three nights’ B&B from £968pp (kirker.com). Fly to Pula
7. Zagorje
Head north of Zagreb and you’ll enter a Croatian fairytale, soon to be blazing with autumn colours. In between the capital and Varazdin — Croatia’s finest Hapsburg-era town, full of mansions in icing-sugar colours — are ramshackle farming villages pillowed in cornfields. Tubby castles, such as Veliki Tabor, stand on hummocky hills with family vineyards on their southern slopes. This is the Hrvatsko Zagorje — folksy and enchanting, and a lack of visitors means it’s likely to stay that way. Stay in pretty cabins at Yuglec Breg, a winery hotel with a pool.
Details B&B cabins for two from £87 (vuglec-breg.hr). Fly to Zagreb
8. Vis
In Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, filmed on Vis, Donna says she’s there “to make some memories”. What she really sought is that which Croatians visit the island for: fjaka — the Dalmatian word for living slowly, free from strict ideas of time. Villa Silente, at the end of a dirt road on Tiha Bay, is a two-bed rustic charmer on a wild cove. Komiza Harbour near by has good restaurants, but you’ll spend most of your time here swimming, reading on the terrace and remembering how to relax — the Mamma Mia! fantasy.
Details Seven nights’ self-catering for five from £1,915 (croatiagems.com). Fly to Split
Mary Novakovich and James Stewart
