The blue Adriatic
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So before planning the trip the traveler needs to think about his preferences. If you like busy places and prefer whole day trips, the Istrian Rovinj, Krk town or Biograd is ideal for you. Those who like to stay in quiet, direct sea access apartments and enjoy if the dive center just a few steps away, will be happy in the small villages where they can watch the sunset over the sea on their quiet terraces with a glass of a good local wine. Most of the divers avoid huge resorts and luckily there are thousands of affordable self catering holiday homes to choose from. If the dive center helps to organize the accommodation, you don’t have to walk too much and it’s possible to discuss the dives. When the guide showed us the jet plane wreck near Razanj, we wanted to know more about. So we met in the evening again, and we learnt a lot about the war. They showed a video footage of a crashing Yugoslavian fighter and we tried to recognize the location where it fell into the sea. We felt like archeologists as we to tried to solve the mystery, we examined the photos we took to find out the type of the jet aircraft and browsed the databases of the crashed war planes. It was an awesome dive experience which hadn’t finished when we got out of water.
There were boats used for liveaboard trips in the past which were small and uncomfortable but offered a diverse diving adventure. Nowadays there is a handful of larger, better equipped dive boats of high standard. From Zadar the boat can make a round trip which reaches the famous Kornati national park and several wrecks, from Dubrovnik it’s possible to sail to the remote islands of Mljet and Lastovo and there are many more possibilities for those who want to dive more.
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Getting to Croatia is easy, as there are motorways, trains and a few airports. But keep in mind, most of the dive centers offer their services only if you go to their office directly. You won’t find the typical “from door to door" transfers of the Mediterranean in every island. The reason is simple: majority of the tourists still arrive by car and ride on their own. My advice: contact the dive centers in the area you want to visit and ask their help, maybe they will wait you in the airport or pick up every morning and they can arrange accommodation too. It can be a good idea to rent a car, especially if you would like to visit the mountains, Krka waterfalls, Plitvicke lakes or historical towns- Croatia is more than just the shoreline, there are wonderful places in the surface as well. The high season in the summer is very crowded, but until May and after September everything is cheaper and there are less guests so seasoned Adriatic divers pack their drysuits and organize wreck trips in the spring or autumn.
It’s simply impossible to talk about a usual Croatian dive trip because nothing is the same depending on season, place and dive center- except the cool water under 20 meters (65 feet). For those who arrive here from distant countries it’s a great destination to dive and to learn a lot about European past from the ancient Greeks until the Yugoslav Wars. An extraordinary chance- a visit to this exciting country means real adventure under and above water.
Rudolf Gonda
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.jpg "One of the most exciting animals under water is a real expert in hiding.")
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