“F***, what the hell happened to Šunj,” I asked myself whilst the speed boat I was on pulled into the shallows.

Last weekend I was a tourist in Dubrovnik. Can you really be a tourist in your home town? Absolutely!

It was one of those rare summer days that I was free of any work obligations and my wife had planned a surprise. For a few days she had been asking, “Are you free on Saturday?” and then more precisely “from 9 till 3.” Yes, you’ve guessed it my wife isn’t great at keeping secrets.

So that, in a nutshell, is how I found myself on a speedboat heading towards the Elaphite islands. My fellow passengers were mainly from another island, the Emerald Isle, or Ireland. Quickly the conversation turned to an ancient Gaelic Irish sport, hurling, leaving my wife scratching her head. Before long we had U2 and The Cranberries playing from the boat’s speakers. If we had Guinness on board rather than Osječko they would have felt right at home.

Seeing Dubrovnik through the virgin eyes of tourists in always fascinating. “Look at that castle,” as they saw the city walls, or “wow, a pirate ship,” as Karaka passed us and “looks like another new hotel is being built,” as we sailed past the new cemetery on Dubac.

Our first destination was the Blue Cave on Koločep, sorry Kalamota or Kalamos.

Clearly a hit destination as when we arrived I counted 16 other boats, meaning numerous bobbing heads in the sea. Now I do sometimes feel claustrophobic but this relatively wide cave was just a taste of what was to come.

Next stop the so called, three green caves. “Now the smaller one to the right is the least interesting and quite small,” our guide started to explain. “The middle one is wide and larger and you can actually get out of the sea in there, and the one on the far left is more challenging,” he added. Of course, we dived in the sea and headed towards that one. So if you can imagine two giant gravestones that have fallen together and left a small gap at the bottom there you have some idea of the rock face in front of us. I swam to the dark opening and a rugby-player sized man appeared “That’s not for me,” he smiled. Either a) he thought he would get stuck or b) his nerves had got the better of him. When I entered I soon realized that both a and b could apply.

I vaguely remember the guide saying something about having to dive underwater from one cave to the next, but guessed he was probably just joking. He wasn’t.

You kind of had to twist your body to one side as shoulder on it was hard to move. The water came up to my waist and with the rock face kissing my head from both sides I slide in. “I feel like bloody Indiana Jones,” I whispered back to my wife. The crack stopped, the only way was down, between the rocks and under the water. I could see some daylight from the other side, I took a deep breath, dipped down and swam for the light under the hollowed rock. I popped up between two such underwater cracks, not a place to be if you suffer from claustrophobia.

Back under for the second cave and into the wide Adriatic.

And third stop was the biggest shock, yes even bigger than almost getting stuck underwater in a cave. Šunj, or should I say Dubrovnik’s version of Benidorm.

If you’ve never been to Benidorm on Spain’s Costa Blanca, don’t! It was probably a cute fishing village before, but now it has been utterly and totally destroyed by mass tourism.

Šunj, which I haven’t visited for ages, gave me that Benidorm feel. “What nature gave us, man has destroyed,” wisely said a local. How long before Pasjača gets its soul ripped out as well? Šunj’s sand had disappeared under a mountain of greed, AKA countless sunbeds. Piles of garbage tucked just out of view from day-trippers, hastily (and tackily) constructed buildings and a general lack of class, style or infrastructure.

“We only have 40 minutes here,” said our guide. To which I replied “Thank God!”

Back on the boat and heading home I asked the Irish “How was your day?” – “Grand, just grand, such a beautiful country, although that last beach was a bit dirty,” they replied.

Read more Englishman in Dubrovnik…well, if you really want to

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About the author
Mark Thomas (aka Englez u Dubrovniku) is the editor of The Dubrovnik Times. He was born and educated in the UK and moved to live in Dubrovnik in 1998. He works across a whole range of media, from a daily radio show to TV and in print. Thomas is fluent in Croatian and this column is available in Croatia on the website – Dubrovnik Vjesnik