Makarska, Croatia

Camera is now also dead, along with the laptop, GPS, and my patience with this whole endeavour. Cruise is over tomorrow, then I can get off the boat and start fixing this mess. May write more someday. Sorry for short worthless post, but some people were asking what’s up.

Bland morning. Lots of people not in condition for breakfast. Non-descript sky, not much of a sunrise. Time to get off the boat. If I could have been writing on the laptop, or editing wedding photos, this would have been awesome, but as it is a week on a boat with nothing to do but beer and books is apparently too decadent for me.

Gotta figure out what’s next. I have no clue where I’m going tomorrow. I probably need to head towards Zagreb for any hope of repairing laptop and camera. One of the women on the cruise, Lucy, is going to Plitvice, so I might tag along.

16:30: managed to spend an hour in a decent internet cafe researching the camera problem, so now I’m sitting here drinking coffee and waiting, with the lens off, batteries out, memory card out, and camera turned off, for the thing to reset itself. One ray of good news: Canon finally announced the new model I’ve been waiting a year or so for, the 5D Mark II. Unfortunately it won’t hit the street for a couple of months, but at least it’s coming.

Next question, if I fly to Cork to get the laptop repaired (and snag a temporary camera at duty free) do I buy round-trip or one-way? And if only one-way… will I return to Croatia? to the trip? Or will I bail and keep going west to New York and Ohio? I really feel like quitting, whimping out. It’s hard to picture lugging my stuff through dusty central Asian bus stations. (At an airport later I weighed my gear: at that time I was carrying 34kg (about 75 lbs) and that was after having delivered gifts to friends in Brussels, Lyon, and Saluzzo. I probably left Amsterdam with around 40kg on my back.)

I should probably be saving money rather than spending it. Work instead of loaf. I could just go “home”.

Anyhow. I can’t get over how pleasant I find Croatia. And taking a cruise was certainly a good idea. In hindsight I should have chosen more wisely, although this was probably very good for the price. I am certainly happy enough with it – although others aren’t. I find the typical endless discussions over price, value, etc. – so familiar from the Egypt and Nepal trips – to be annoying. Yes, they told us to expect these fees, no, I agree the “captain’s dinner” was disappointing, etc.

17:10: reassembled the camera, it still doesn’t work. Fooey.

Joined up with some others, grabbed a tasty pannini from the “Pink Pantar”, and had a picnic back on the boat. Nice evening.