I wanted to come to the island of Vis in the Adriatic, a two-hour ferry ride from the Croatian coastal town of Split, because I read somewhere that it’s what Mediterranean islands once were, before mass tourism. I came because I wanted to see the old Med. The
Zorba the Greek Med, a place full of wizened old men chatting in the shade, a place of olive oil and strong wine.
That first morning the sky was watery, grey, the colour of porridge, the sea a flat landscape of brushed aluminium. I sat at a portside café in Vis town, coffee in hand, and watched a flotilla of yachts set sail for the open sea. After a lazy hour the last of the boats were just visible on the horizon; the town seemed to breathe a collective sigh.
Vis is a sleepy place at the best of times, even in high summer. But now, at the beginning of spring, I practically had the whole island to myself, andfound it hugely refreshing to walk among Vis town’s beautiful Venetian streets, unencumbered by other tourists or being molested by touts trying to sell me everything.
Despite the laidback atmosphere the island’s history is rich and colourful, beginning 30,000 years ago when underwater seismic activity pushed dolomite and limestone rock up from the sea floor. By the middle of the first millennium BC, Sicilian Greeks moved in who later relinquished power to the growing might of Rome.
However, the greatest influence on Vis was almost 800 years of Venetian rule that started around 1,000AD and lasted until the Napoleonic conquest of Europe. But it was the last half of the 20th century that shaped today’s Vis.
As the westernmost island in the Dalmatian archipelago, it was of strategic significance for Tito’s Yugoslav Government, used as a naval base and cut off from the rest of the mainland. That isolation effectively stopped any kind of tourist infrastructure developing. So now Vis is adding tourism to its two other main industries, fishing and wine.
Most Croatians speak a little English, so striking up a conversation with locals isn’t too difficult.
I was strolling along Vis harbour on my second morning, the sun making brief appearances, when I noticed a man standing by the edge of the yacht moorings, throwing what looked like a weighted tennis ball attached to a long string into the sea. Curious, I asked him what he was doing.
“Octopus,” he said. “It’s the best way.”
It seems that octopuses are curious too and can’t help grabbing the tennis ball as it passes along the seabed, although their curiosity means they will only end up in a salad.
Between throws Zoltan (I never got his last name) told me that since Yugoslavia fell apart in the 1990s things on the island have been changing; that although Vis has been popular with yachtsmen for almost a decade, the number of boats using the harbour in the last few years has increased dramatically. This, he says, has boosted the local economy, and he insists that tourism is the way forward.
“My wife and I have an apartment that we rent to tourists near the town of Komiza,” he said, “but I still get up every day at 4am to get my boat in the water. However, the fish stocks are down and it’s costing more and more to run the business. So we need to earn a living doing something else and tourism at the moment seems to be the way to do it.”
Although Vis may be embracing tourists, the island’s inhabitants are acutely aware of what mass tourism has done to other areas of the Mediterranean, and remain determined not to let it rule them. “We need tourism,” said Josip Santic, a local businessman. “But we want it on our terms. We are not interested in building huge hotel complexes or accommodating the whims of large international tour agencies.”
