by  Andrew Findlay

Ian McAllister and I  drop anchor and lower the Zodiac, then aim for where a tea-coloured torrent spills into the azure waters of the bay. Misty drizzle falls from a sky as grey as the granite ramparts looming above the inlet. Ancient red cedars, like foreboding old men, exchange whispers of wind. As we nudge ashore on alluvial flats and tether the dinghy to a chunk of driftwood, that avian trickster of First Nations legend, the raven, squawks disapprovingly from a nearby cedar-snag perch. We are the only humans at the head of this forgotten inlet in B.C.’s Fiordland Conservancy. But the vast coastal wilderness hums with life, and it’s here we’ll begin our search for that most elusive of wild creatures, the wolf.

courtesy Ian McAllister/pacificwild.org

Our gumboots make loud sucking sounds in the mud along the shoreline, where McAllister, the man Time magazine named one of the “Environmental Leaders for the 21st Century” in the late ’90s, kneels to examine a pugmark – signs of a wolf. But the prints are poorly defined, like smudged pencil markings, suggesting the tide has come and gone since the animal sauntered this way. A few steps further, crammed into a square-foot patch of rich earth: the mingled prints of another wolf and a deer – predator and prey. Clambering up the bank, we enter a field of knee-deep Lyngby’s sedge, cow parsnip and brilliant purple lupines, with a circle of trampled grass where a grizzly has flopped to rest. Bears are opportunistic omnivores that carve chaotic swaths through the estuary as they meander, digging for chocolate lilies and “rice root,” the latter coveted for its starchy bulbs. Wolves are strictly carnivorous and far more economical in their movements, treading purposeful, straight tracks through the grass between rainforest and water’s edge. Two hours slip by. “I’m getting antsy. I haven’t seen wolves for awhile,” says McAllister, his ginger hair damp from the rain, brow creased in lines of concentration – or frustration.

We pause next to the creek, imagining life as a wolf in these wild inlets, where the predator must kill or scavenge daily to survive, armed only with a cunning intellect, speed, agility and jaws that crush with a force of up to 680 kilograms. In a similar spot, McAllister once observed a black-tailed deer grazing within 50 metres of a wolf pack, hidden in the tall grass, that had gone days without a kill. Still, the wolves made no move. Clearly they’d calculated opportunity versus cost and the latter was too high.

I spot movement. “There’s a grizzly!”

McAllister raises his binoculars. “That’s not one grizzly, that’s two, and I think they’re mating.”

I practically tear the binoculars from his hands. Sure enough there are two: a massive boar and a much smaller sow engaged in an unexpected display of spring fever. The bears part and the female walks away, peering coyly at her ursine suitor over a shoulder rippling with muscle. They circle each other in slow, almost choreographed movements, a courtship that continues for a quarter of an hour until the bears suddenly disappear into unseen reaches of the estuary. We too head for the timber, where the acrid smell of carrion drifts on a light breeze, to follow a well-trod wildlife trail running parallel to a stream. McAllister crouches where the path narrows between two tightly spaced hemlocks and pinches a tuft of silver-grey hair – snagged by the rough bark of the trees – between his fingers. We’re travelling a wolf highway. I envision a silent pack of wild canines cantering single file, heading upstream to a den sequestered in the old growth. Walking on, muted light and flickering shadows trick my mind into perceiving movement everywhere. The woods are eerily silent, and I sense why, for many cultures, they represent the dark, the foreboding and the unknown. Somewhere in this wild world, there are wolves.

courtesy Ian McAllister/pacificwild.org

Two days earlier in late June, the two of us had set sail aboard McAllister’s trimaran, Habitat, from Bella Bella on Campbell Island. Ahead of us, a loose eight-day itinerary: to explore and search for wolves among McAllister’s favourite inlets and islands of the Great Bear Rainforest.

An author,  photographer and determined conservationist, the 39-year-old McAllister and his wife Karen have been exploring the B.C. coast for the last two decades, tussling with loggers, government and sport hunters and playing a pioneering role in preserving one of the world’s most ecologically significant temperate rainforests – which 20 years ago was in imminent danger of wholesale industrial logging. The result, his 1997 award-winning work of photojournalism The Great Bear Rainforest: Canada‘s Forgotten Coast, has been credited as the centrepiece for Greenpeace International’s North American forest campaign; Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote the foreword. Yet when he first explored the Great Bear Rainforest, in the early 1990s, McAllister gave little thought to its wolf populations. But that all changed just over a decade ago, when he stumbled across a wolf den, a litter of grey pups bouncing around its entrance, looking confused yet curious. Surprisingly, the adults retreated into the trees and howled anxiously, disturbed by the human intrusion but unwilling to attack.  “If a bear, cougar or any other species had infiltrated a den site it would have been efficiently attacked and likely killed,“ says McAllister. “So the question that immediately came to mind, and that I continue to ponder, is when and where did these wolves learn to not consider humans as prey?” And in the years following, the more he encountered wolves on the coast, the more he was intrigued.

Meanwhile, groundbreaking research by biologists Paul Paquet and Chris Darimont was revealing that the genetic diversity of the grey wolves inhabiting B.C.’s central coast is far greater than that of their interior and northern brethren. So much so that McAllister, along with Darimont and Paquet, became convinced that the wolves are genetically distinct, and that the  biological richness of the temperate rainforest drives this diversity. In a relatively small geographic area, for example, “you can find island-hopping wolf packs eating seals and shellfish, and then just 20 km away,” says McAllister, “another pack subsisting on salmon or tiny sitka deer.”

But something far less tangible than wolf genetics also fascinated McAllister: the fact that B.C.’s coastal canines seem to have no collective memory of the persecution experienced by wolves elsewhere in the province, including indiscriminate shootings by ranchers to protect livestock and by hunters to protect game, as well as government- sanctioned culls aimed at recovering such threatened species as the mountain caribou and Vancouver Island marmot. He read every wolf study he could find, diligently  recorded his own sightings and observations and found inspiration in the writings of author Barry Lopez, who, in Of Wolves and Men, suggests that we know far less about the reality of the wolf and far more about “what we imagine the wolf to be.” And finally, in 2007, after a decade of research, McAllister published his own critically acclaimed work, The Last Wild Wolves.

Yet McAllister’s journey into the world of B.C.’s marine wolves is far from over. Though many environmentalists hailed it as a victory when the provincial government signed its Great Bear Rainforest Agreements in 2006, creating some 55 new land conservancies on the coast, McAllister remains a cautious voice. He believes the agreement falls short of adequately protecting a coastline so rich in biodiversity that American and Canadian philanthropic foundations have directed upward of $60 million toward conservation and sustainable economic opportunities for B.C.’s coastal First Nations. Why? The level of protection afforded wildlife in a conservancy is questionable, he says. Oil supertankers could soon ply the treacherous waters of the Inside Passage. High-grade logging of old-growth cedar continues in valleys and on islands still unprotected. Salmon farms in pristine central coast channels such as Sheep Passage are raising fears of sea-lice infestations among migrating wild salmon smolts. And industrial wind farms are being proposed for wild outer-coast islands that few British Columbians have heard of, but on which McAllister has spent weeks in solitary exploration, where wolves roam windswept beaches, feasting on barnacles and squid.

The diesel engine drones quietly as we leave the bay at dusk and retrace our route back down the inlet, most likely observed by wolves that choose not to be seen by us. McAllister takes the helm and stares fixedly ahead with the air of a man accustomed to spending weeks in the wilds, alone. I go below deck to brew coffee and thumb through sea charts of B.C.’s labyrinthine coast. The persistent, light drizzle  gives way to broken clouds and sunshine, and as the boat chugs slowly up Princess Royal Channel, I can see the trees onshore slipping by. But when we enter McKay Reach, the wind howls down Douglas Channel and wraps around Gribbell Island, transforming the sea from glassy smooth to something rough and recalcitrant. The boat rocks and rolls. Barely an hour later, rounding the northern tip of Princess Royal Island, the ocean is again placid.

The two-way radio crackles. Biologist Janie Wray and partner Hermann Meuter have been studying the whales of Camaaño Sound and recording their sweet voices and subtle communications for the past half-dozen years. Still, Wray’s voice over the radio is full of excitement: humpback whales are feeding near Ashdown Island in Whale Passage. We hurry – as much as is possible in a sailboat with a top motoring speed of six knots per hour – and, 30 minutes later, witness four humpbacks circling languorously, churning the water almost within arm’s reach of Wray’s powerboat. The great mammals exhale – puffs of breath that sound as if they are being forced through a giant snorkel – then dive, their barnacle-encrusted tail flukes slipping silently beneath the surface. Seconds later, one leviathan re-emerges in a burst of bubbling water, great baleen plates exposed, scooping up mouthfuls of krill and other small fish – some of which spill frantically from its jaws. Scientists call this bubble-net feeding: the deft corralling of schools of fish no longer than my baby finger – by a mammal that weighs more than 35 tonnes. It is astonishing to behold.

An hour later we are bucking the tide north up Principe Channel, flanked by two huge, uninhabited isles. Banks Island, to the west, is a brooding expanse of low, rounded hills and weathered trees contorted into bonsai. To the east rise the rugged snowy mountains of Pitt Island, a topography reminiscent of the mainland Coast Range.

“Check this out!” shouts McAllister, pointing off the Habitat’s bow. Killer whales are approaching from the north, a pod of seven led by a massive bull, its elegant dorsal fin proudly protruding two metres above the water line. The pod nears the boat, then divides, and three whales pass rapidly on the portside, four on the starboard, like commuters on a water highway – in pursuit of salmon, perhaps. These “wolves of the sea” are as adept at hunting beneath the waves as wolves are on land.

Two days later, we anchor in a secluded bay near the Tsimshian settlement of Kitkatla. Again the sky is a steely grey, the tide low, the scent of the sea pungent. On shore: a few decaying wooden houses that, along with some rusting farm implements, trucks and a system of dykes, are all that remain of one homesteader’s 1970s utopia.

McAllister is anxious to be ashore in this place where he has spotted wolves many times. Soon we are balancing on stones covered in rockweed, which pops underfoot like bubble wrap, then shadowing a crystalline stream deep into the rainforest past groves of centuries-old trees, their branches laden with witch’s hair and wolf lichen. Canine prints are everywhere; wolves have recently splashed across the stream bed and padded along its silky sandbars. Fresh scat containing bones marks a trail through shin-deep moss of an almost luminescent green. The forest is as peaceful as a monastery, yet I am convinced we are being watched. We lose track of time, until the fading light reminds us that evening is approaching and we are compelled to turn back. Reluctantly, I again resign myself to not seeing a wolf this day, though we have sensed their presence as viscerally as a salmon senses its natal river.

The next morning, the last of our journey, the sun warms the deck where I lie sprawled against the wheelhouse, savouring a coffee. McAllister picks up the binoculars and scans the tidal flats around the bay, then sets them down on the deck. A minute later, alerted by the croak of a raven, he scopes the bay again with keen eyes.

“I see a wolf – a female I think.” He points to a narrow isthmus of sand between brackish pools less than a half-kilometre distant.

It takes a few seconds to locate the  wild  wolf through the binoculars. Without movement she would be perfectly camouflaged against the palette of rocks and sand. She is smaller than the average domestic husky, and lean. Her coat – save for a patch of dark grey on each haunch and an artful white stripe down her nose – is a uniform tan colour, with the healthy sheen of an animal that has only recently shed its winter pelage. I hold my breath as she trots along the beach, charcoal snout pointed our way, until she plops down on a sandy flat. She stays there for half an hour, basking in the sun and observing us with canine curiosity. Then, as unexpectedly as she arrived, she saunters back toward the head of the bay and vanishes ghostlike into the darkness of the forest.

Getting There Yourself:

• Pick a reputable tour operator (all have been given the thumbs up by Ian McAllister):

Ocean Adventures
Maple Leaf Adventures
Mothership Adventures
Ocean Light II Adventures
Great Bear Adventure Tours
Bluewater Adventures
Tide Rip Grizzly Tours
Northern Lights Expeditions

• GEAR Check the above operator websites for requirements.
• UPDATES on Great Bear Rainforest conservation efforts: savethe greatbear.org; raincoast.org; pacificwild.org
• TO LEARN MORE about B.C.’s rainforest wolves and how to protect them: pacificwild.org
• CRITICAL READING The Last Wild Wolves: Ghosts of the Great Bear Rainforest (Greystone Books, 2007; $40/softcover 2009; $29.95);  The Great Bear Rainforest: Canada’s Forgotten Coast (Harbour Publishing, 1997; $40); The Wolf Almanac, by Robert H. Busch (Lyons Press, 2007; $19.95).
• ON SCREEN The BBC video Earth’s Great Events: The Great Salmon Run; National  Geographic’s Last Stand of the Great Bear and Search for the Coast Wolf; Ian McAllister’s “The Last Wild Wolves” video series on YouTube.

Lead image courtesy Ian McAllister/pacificwild.org

“There are some tricky sections up ahead. If you are anxious here, then you will be 150 times more nervous on Triglav,” says Spelic, without the slightest trace of a smile. A few in the group shuffle their feet and glance up at the 2,864-metre peak, Slovenia’s highest and the centrepiece of Triglav National Park, now ablaze with fiery morning light. The wiry, no-nonsense 32-year-old spent two years in the Slovenian army’s crack mountain unit in his early 20s and now runs ultra-marathons in the mountains here for fun. We take him at his word.

Bounded by Croatia, Hungary, Austria, Italy and 40 kilometres of Mediterranean seashore, Slovenia is a tiny land of mountains, forests and rivers straddling the cusp of Europe and the Balkans. The island-dappled Dalmation coast of the latter, Croatia, bears the marks of the Venetians, Romans, Greeks, Austrians and various other traders and invaders through the ages, and is next up on this journey’s three-week itinerary. Together, the two countries once made up the northern and westernmost portions of the former Republic of Yugoslavia, a complex political artifice that emerged from the rubble of World War I. Josip Broz Tito, known popularly as “Marshal Tito,” fought the Nazis during World War II here and went on to successfully consolidate this republic of Christians and Muslims under communist rule. After Tito’s death in 1980, Russia’s geopolitical experiment slowly unravelled in a pressure box of ethnic tensions that finally erupted in war in 1991.

The Julian Alps

On this six-day traverse of the Julian Alps, however, I’m experiencing only the region’s stunning beauty, which escapes the notice of most North American travellers. I’ve already discovered that Slovenia’s soul is in its mountains, with Slovenians celebrating their outdoor adventure athletes – such as Davo Karnicar, the first human to ski Everest, and famed Himalayan alpinist Tomaz Humar – the way Canadians revere Gretzky and Lemieux. In fact, there is a folkloric belief here that to be truly Slovenian, Triglav must be climbed at least once in one’s lifetime.

And so, suitably prepared for our own Slovenian right of passage, we set off, wrapped in the cold, indifferent shadows of an alpine morning. Soon the trail is less a path than an obscure track following narrow weaknesses in otherwise sheer cliffs. Hands grasp at the jagged, icy wall for balance and find rock prickly and coarse enough to shred skin and the via ferrata’s thick cable bolted waist-high. We cling to this safety line as Spelic and Loboda point to a pair of chamois traversing a cliff across the valley. Spelic watches carefully as we negotiate the trail’s “tricky sections” and plod up a massive cone of talus.

A trio of Englishmen, buoyed by their early morning ascent, tramp cheerfully toward us with tales of another climber, a Scotsman, who greeted them on the summit with bagpipes and a celebratory tune. Finally, the morning sun has erased the shadows, and car-sized boulders, damp from dew, are smouldering with steam. The Julian Alps are dominated by limestone, which, because of its solubility, can be rendered by water into a phantasmagoric subsurface world of sinkholes, caves and disappearing rivers. Yet Spelic treads quickly across the moonscape, springing effortlessly from boulder to boulder, demonstrating the Slovenian stoicism, love of the outdoors and reputation for hard work. Predominantly Catholic, the Slovenian people have always identified more with Europe than with their Balkan neighbours to the south, farming their valleys in tidy plots of vegetables rimmed by mountainside pastures for sheep and cattle; managing small-footprint logging operations that make the industrial-scale destruction of North America’s woods seem criminal.

We climb nose-to-heel – the mountains peaceful, with not even a puff of wind. Of course, this hasn’t always been the case. During World War I the Italian army battled the Germans and Austrians here for supremacy over critical passes and valleys. Artifacts of that brutal conflict are still evident: cement bunkers, rolls of rusted barbwire and mule paths by which provisions were delivered to the harsh alpine front. Cresting the talus slope, we find only picnic tables outside the Dom Planika pod Triglavom hut. But Spelic, our own personal drill sergeant, propels us onward after just a quick bite – the forecast is calling for clouds and possibly rain.

I fall in behind John Robertson, a good-humoured Glasgow Crown attorney whose normally boisterous chatter is replaced by grunts and laboured breathing as the terrain steepens. Then a seemingly featureless, blank wall of limestone reveals an improbable rock crevice that allows us to quickly gain the ridge, and from here we scramble rapidly upward, following the via ferrata to a flat notch and, beyond, across a steep ramp covered in pebbles as treacherous as ball bearings. A carelessly placed foot dislodges a basketball-sized boulder that tumbles over a series of ledges before launching into the void below. We wait for the inevitable crash of broken rock, but there is only silence. A barely perceptible, bemused grin creeps across Spelic’s face as he observes his latest band of foreigners facing down their fears.

The sky remains brilliantly clear, though below, dense clouds shroud the valleys, advancing and retreating, glaciers of air moving in compressed time. In the distance, limestone ridges protrude like shark fins plying an ocean of cloud. We pass memorials to those who have died attempting the climb, including one ornate marble plaque dating back to 1795. “Most of them perished when they were zapped by freak lightning strikes,” says Spelic, while noting such incidents have done little to deter the thousands who tackle the mountain every summer. “Some days you might have 200 people on Triglav. Half the population has climbed it. I don’t know why we have to prove ourselves – maybe because we’re such a small country,” he muses, laughing, as we regroup where the ridge is as wide and flat as a highway. “I’ve even seen people up here in flip-flops.”

The Summit

The summit is guarded by a final tower that from afar looks impassable. But as we clamber up the via ferrata’s crude, carved-rock steps, the faint, incongruous smell of cigarette smoke wafts downward. No bagpiper heralds our arrival at Triglav’s blocky peak, just a climber with the chiselled, suntanned complexion of a European mountain guide, nonchalantly puffing a Marlboro next to the odd, metal obelisk that serves as an emergency shelter. Below, mountains shimmer like waves toward the horizons of Austria and Italy. We linger for a few cliché photos as more scramblers, young and old, arrive to tag the apex of Slovenia.

“I think we go now?” says Spelic. The need for summit celebrations is muted by the need to get everyone down again safely.

Two days after the ascent, we hike down to our trek’s final chalet, Blejska Koca Na Lipani, situated in an idyllic meadow and protected by a semi-circle of limestone bluffs. The late-afternoon sun washes the mountains in warm, diffuse light; below, the forested Pokljuka plateau unfolds like a carpet of green. A savory aroma wafts from the hut where a commissar with tree-limb forearms greets us. “You want soup? Es good,” he says.

Later, over dinner, Spelic introduces Frank Kozelj, a lanky man with thinning silver hair sipping grappa with friends. A former Slovenian Olympic rower, Kozelj recounts how he moved to Vancouver in 1968, and we share a laugh at our coincidental encounter. Soon we are invited next door to the family shepherd’s hut to meet his brother Tomiz.

Inside, the stove crackles and the scent of wood smoke permeates thick wooden walls. Tomiz pours three generous portions of schnapps – “ancient mountain medicine” – and carves spicy sausage onto a platter. “For a long time we were hidden, just this little mountain country that nobody knew about,” Kozelj begins.

Spelic, in training for a marathon, abstains from the spirits but raises a thick slice of sausage as we lift our glasses to the mountains of Slovenia. The strong schnapps, sweetened with honey, floods my insides with warmth and brings tears to my eyes.

If the soul of Slovenia dwells in its mountains, then Croatia’s is surely found on the country’s Dalmatian Coast and the thousand or more islands that lie in the Adriatic like strips of limestone torn from the craggy, arid mountains of the mainland. Here, four days into a week-long sail, water laps the sides of the SS Leonardo as it glides toward a concrete pier on the island of Vrnik. The ship’s owner, Leonardo Naranca, a towering, thick-chested bon vivant, is seated on deck enjoying an early morning cigarette and glass of sharp, Croatian red wine.

“Zivjeli,” he shouts, raising his glass and offering the traditional local toast when I chuckle at his breakfast of champions. The crew ties up the boat. Over the railing, the Adriatic is so clear it looks drinkable; stairs leading down into turquoise waters are festooned with the magenta spikes of sea urchins, a shoal of small fish darts in the depths. Grabbing a towel, I jump ashore and am soon submerged in water as warm as tepid tea, contemplating something Naranca said yesterday over another glass of wine between the islands of Mljet and Vrnik. “I have lived my whole life on the sea. My father and grandfather were both sailors.” On a more philosophical note, he had then added: “The sea gives, and the sea takes.”

Croatians keen to escape life in the capital of Zagreb have always journeyed to the coast for rejuvenation. In times of trouble, they have also fled here for refuge. Barely three days ago, we too steamed northwest from the noise and crowds and stresses of city life, though not from the capital but from the ancient seaport of Dubrovnik. The UNESCO World Heritage Site once played a pivotal role in Mediterranean trade, and its outstanding baroque, Gothic and Renaissance architecture, dating back to the 13th century, makes it an international treasure.

Tragically, during what Croatians call “the homeland war” of the 1990s, when Yugoslavia disintegrated, the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav army laid siege to Dubrovnik for some 10 months from 1991 to ‘92. The fighting devastated the city and laid waste to the tourism industry on the Dalmatian Coast. But wandering Dubrovnik’s narrow, cobbled alleyways, past Benedictine and Dominican monasteries, Onofrio’s Fountain and one of the world’s oldest pharmacies, we had to search hard for signs of the conflict – a stone wall pockmarked with bullet holes or new, red-clay roof tiles bordering ochre-coloured tiles of ancient times. Tourism, long a staple of the region, seems well on the way to recovery. In fact, Dubrovnik is a city besieged with cruise-ship passengers, even in late summer. Boarding the SS Leonardo for a cruise between lesser-known villages and islands has provided welcome relief from its torrent of photo-snapping humanity.

Sailing the Coast

In contrast, the boating season on the coast is winding down – a good time to walk Vrnik’s waterfront. According to Samantha Brocklehurst, the ship’s sanguine British guide (she of the impeccable Oxford accent, with a sailor’s sense of humour), the city is renowned for its limestone, and modern and ancient quarries pock its hillsides. Standing in the hollow, desolate base of one, it is difficult to imagine stonemasons carving out blocks of stone to build the ramparts of Korcula Town, visible across the narrow straits. For there isn’t the slightest suggestion of activity anywhere in the city. Houses seem strangely vacant. Small, ostentatious, turreted summer manors are boarded up, their gates locked, their gardens left to grow wild in a riot of olive trees and bougainvillea – what Naranca calls the “dent of time.”

Korcula, less than 15 minutes’ sail away, is an entirely different scenario. Like many of the local islands, its communities are scattered around the island’s perimeter while its bony interior is an inhospitable mix of shallow soils, limestone bluffs and lanky cypress trees. The Venetian merchant and explorer Marco Polo, I’m told, was captured here in 1298 during a naval battle between the fleets of Genoa and Venice. As for Korcula Town, it is Dubrovnik in miniature – minus the cruise ships. The streets are noisy with travellers who have docked their private yachts to dine at its outdoor cafés and experience the kitschy, Disneyesque Moreska sword dance. The island is renowned for keeping alive this theatrical mock-fighting performance, a tradition with origins in Spain that has flourished here for more than four centuries.

Damir Taras, the intense but amicable chief steward of the SS Leonardo, invites me for coffee onshore. Here, pedalling the ship’s bikes along the narrow, twisting street that leads from the dock to the old city, tantalizing aromas float from numerous pizzerias, betraying the longstanding cultural and culinary affinity between the Croatian coast and Italy. Entering the old city via the arched “land gate,” we park the bikes to walk on limestone pavements polished as smooth as silk by centuries of footfalls. A leggy, raven-haired beauty passes in high heels, trailing perfume and the detached demeanor of a Croatian supermodel.

At a quiet café over robust espressos, the 36-year-old Taras speaks of the war, when he worked at the Split airport renting cars to foreign correspondents flying in to cover the conflict. It was a surreal and confusing time for a young man who should have been enjoying the prime of his life, he says, and he thought about leaving. But a love of the sea and the hope that life would improve made him stay. And things have improved, he notes. Tourism has rebounded to what it was during communist times, and there is no shortage of work for seafarers like him. Still, the boarded-up houses of Vrnik, an island that in another part of the world would boast a Club Med, suggest that the coast remains relatively undiscovered – indeed, as some travel brochures note, it remains “the way the Mediterranean used to be.” For while Slovenia may have escaped the worst of the Balkan Wars and been quick to join the European community, Croatia is still vying to be fully welcomed in. The country declared independence in 1992, but its road to nationhood has been fraught with conflict and residents like Taras are still recovering psychologically from a war that pitted neighbour against neighbour, turned citizens into refugees and claimed some 15,000 Croatian lives.

The following morning Naranca is already enjoying his morning constitutional as we weigh anchor early for Sipan, and just two hours later we’re docked at Sudurad, a collection of three-storey stone houses with red-tiled roofs wrapped around a sparkling cove. Here in the Middle Ages, wealthy families built residences to escape marauding pirates in their hometown of Dubrovnik.

Joining Brocklehurst for a cross-island cycle, we follow a lane bordered with wildflowers that climbs precipitously from the shoreline before levelling off in a shallow, fertile valley of fig, olive and pomegranate orchards. An austere Catholic church occupies a wooded hillock at the entrance to the valley, and inside, the air is cool and dank. Soaring walls of cracked plaster are hung with faded tapestries and a sombre oil painting of the Crucifixion. Half an hour later we arrive at the other side of the island and another tranquil village, Sipanska Luka, where we share a thin-crust pizza. Open-hulled wooden fishing dories bob at anchor. Nearby, a huge, gleaming white power yacht is tethered; its complement of male passengers – all sporting dark sunglasses – have the appearance of Sicilian gangsters.

After lunch, pedalling slowly back to the boat, I veer off the main road on a whim to follow a dirt track that meanders uphill through olive groves and past an old mansion before fading into an indistinct footpath. A woman dressed in widow’s black walks around the corner, shouldering a bundle of firewood; a half-dozen goats follow nervously. She mutters something in Croatian, shakes her head and laughs, then vanishes down the trail.

Later, strolling back to the boat at dusk after exploring another incredible 15th-century mansion, this one gloriously restored, a soft evening breeze carries the briny scent of the ocean. Gentle waves rustle a beach of polished stones, and I dip my hand into the warm water and cradle one, rolling it around and feeling its smoothness against my palm. The lights of distant Dubrovnik twinkle across the sea.