Jelsa, Hvar Island, Croatia

On the ferry to Hvar island we met an 82 year old Croatian man who lives in Auckland, New Zealand. He left the old Yugoslavia in 1953 for Chile with his wife and 2 children and then in the 1980s settled in NZ. He was at his family hometown for a holiday and to help his brother with the grape harvest. While there he was setting up a museum of stone, wood, and steel wine processing equipment. The museum is owned by the town and would take any profits from it. He told us that there was a wine festival in Jelsa the next day so we headed there on the local bus.

We spent the day at the beach and headed back into town for the 6pm start of the festival. The town band officially opened the festival with a march up and down the street with the locals in pursuit dressed in their pirate-like black and white shirts.

There were stalls selling local fast foods- little skinless sausages (chevapi), meat patties, char grilled cuttlefish, squid and octopus, fish soup, and prawns. Of course there were locals selling their freshly made wines.

We couldn't read any of the signs telling us what the events were, so it was all a surprise. A teenager led a herd of beautiful donkeys down the street to the end and then they thundered back with small kids struggling to stay on their saddle-less backs.

This was repeated several times without warning and had the unsuspecting strolling tourists diving for cover. We could never imagine such an event taking place in NZ because of all the safety red-tape.

The raffle of a scooter was drawn and won by someone from Bratislava and lots of wine as minor prizes.

A huge rope was strung across the water and the tug of war began.

We expected the winning team to pull the losers into the sea but that didn't happen.

A leg of smoked ham was hung on a pole beside the dock and young boys from about 9 years old lined up with with muscly teenagers.

They had to jump into the water and then pull themselves up the rope, touch the ham and get back down again as fast as possible.

Sadly we had to catch the last bus out of town at 8pm and didn't see any other events. The bus took us to Stari Grad where we had to wait until 10pm for the last bus back from there to Hvar. Stari grad was buzzing. There was some kind of presentation of certificates, cups and trophies in the square. Children were dressed in 'scout-like' clothes holding signs from different countries.

After this there was a huge fireworks display over the water. Along the waterfront were dozens of yachts for the Faros Marathon- a race around some of the islands. We were surprised to see the silver fern flag from NZ flapping from the rigging on a couple of the yachts.

The last bus arrived and filled up with young Italians heading for the night ferry that would get them home in time for work on Monday.