STONED ON KORCULA ISLAND

STONED ON KORCULA ISLAND AT CAMP MINDEL

It was September and over 35 in the shade.
All we could do was sit under the olive tree and get stoned – by dry olives falling from above. Every meal we were bombarded by huge wasps but the Korchula kittens tumbled and climbed to amuse us.
Camp Mindel is on a ridge between several beautiful almost deserted bathing coves. Mr Gorana had his own wine and olive oil to sell and we languished very comfortably in the heat. His mother-in-law makes the most delicious tomato sauce for pasta that I have ever eaten and the figs are soft purple honey!
The island is amazing – the hillsides have been terraced over millennia probably to clear small patches of earth that grow figs, olives, and almonds. Peasants used to live in tiny stone-roofed, stone huts without windows among these metre thick, metre high stone walls. It is impossible to conceive of a harsher existence – even the Greenlanders seem to have had more comfort!
Even now there appears to be a drought and the trees seemed to be dying. Rain is truly a blessing.