Ragusa - Dubrovnic

Friday, 22^nd

We have arrived at Porto Montenegro to take on duty free fuel. Things start to go wrong, the re-fuelling takes longer than we expected; eight tons of fuel take at least two hours, so we can’t get underway until nearly ten in the morning. The voyage would normally take about five hours, we had planned to leave at 9 am and arrive at 1pm. Now its looking like we will be in Dubrovnic at 2 pm. Things go from bad to worse; at about midday we are enveloped in a thick sea fog, at one point we can hardly see the prow of the boat from the wheelhouse, we slow down to five knots – half speed. We are within quarter of a mile of the city walls and still can’t see it. We nudge gingerly around to the back of the town to the main port where we must go to clear customs and immigration. We finally dock at nearly 4 pm. We wait for an eternity while Tim goes through the port arrival formalities. As we have to be in Mljet Island tomorrow at 10 am to meet our guide, it seems that we will hardly get to see Dubrovnic – a great disappointment. We are meant to meet our “fixer” here but he can’t get past the fenced off enclosure. The locals certainly take their time stamping our passports and issuing us with our permits. At last, at about 5:30 pm we are free to leave and our fixer meets us with all our paperwork and itinerary details for the guides and places we will be filming. We make a fast pit-stop to buy local phone cards and then head for the old town.

To our surprise the town is bathed in beautiful evening light while out to sea a white blanket of fog hides everything except the tops of the offshore islands; they seem to float amongst the clouds.

We loose no time in climbing the many steps onto the old city walls and are rewarded with some stunning views and excellent low evening light, Tim our cameraman, is in ecstasy. As we walk around the fortifications, I tell Derek something of the history of the city-state of Ragusa as it was known; an Italianate independent city state from 1386 until it was ended by Napoleon, that destroyer of sovereign states both small and large, in 1808.

The city roofs show evidence of the massive destruction in the recent war. Only a few lichen covered old roofs remain among the brand new red tiles.

The fortifications are impressive; a fact that helped to preserve the independence of this tiny state for over 400 years; the city government, made rich by the trading merchant princes, used its coffers to bribe and pay ransom in order to remain free.

As the light faded and the twittering swifts headed for their roosts in the eaves of the houses, we head down from the walls to join the throng of strollers in the lamp lit old streets of the city.