We slept in after a long day traveling and running around yesterday. The late morning turned into early afternoon and we picked up some breakfast at the local Pekarna and set off for the local rental agency to rent a scooter. From reading about the island and in the little time we had already spent on Brac we decided that the only way to really see the island would be by scooter. Unfortunately, the rental agency owner decided he would not rent a scooter to us because we did not know how to ride one. He figured that Brac was not the right place to learn how to operate a scooter for the first time. I guess I was thinking I could learn from him and then take it from there. But he was adamant. You should take a taxi or rent a car he said. If on a scooter for the first time, when you come to an intersection or pass too close to a car you’ll get nervous and fall and then there’ll be damage to the scooter and the police must be involved…He was sure any experience we would have with a scooter would be a bad one. So, accepting our fate and not wanting to negotiate with any of his competitors, we rented a car from him for a similar price. We drove to Bol, a resort town on the other side of the island, to see the beautiful beaches at Zlatni Rat. The roads on the way were very curvy. With several hairpin turns and numerous steep drop-offs as well as narrow spaces to navigate while other cars were coming head-on, the driving was quite treacherous. Along the way we stopped at the small town of Nezvednicje where we believed we could pick up the road to Vinova Gordo, the tallest point in the Adriatic Islands that would offer us great views of the Brac coast on the Bol side including Zlatni Rat. After several trips through Nezvednicje we were unsuccessful in finding the correct road. Each road led to either a private residence or seemingly in the wrong direction. Making matters worse, the map we were using to navigate was woefully inadequate. Many unsuccessful attempts yielded nice
views of bucolic Mediterranean towns in the mountains of Brac but nothing about Vinova Gordo. The search being fruitless, we gave up and continued on our way to Bol. But on the way out of Nezvednicje, we saw a sign for Vinova Gordo. The long drive to the peak (including a stand off with a bus) took us up the mountain to its highest point. Up there were a handful of tourists and a Konobar manned by a couple of locals who looked like they lived in the nearby caravan year round. The smell of freshly burned coals surrounded this encampment. The views of the coast and Zlatni Rat were extraordinary. Zlatni Rat is perhaps the only beach in the world that is perpendicular to the shoreline. It sticks out into the Adriatic like a tongue and was glimmering in the sun. The wakes of the numerous wind surfers and parasailors were also visible from such a high point. The surrounding rocky shoreline and the tops of the houses and hotels created a picture perfect scene. There were only a handful of other tourists on this mountain near the Konobar. We descended the mountain happy to have finally found what we had been searching for and finished the drive to Bol. The rest of the drive was just as challenging as before and forced us to wind our way through the mountains to the coastline. The town of Bol is actually a few km from the beach so we didn’t actually get to see the town until later.
Being on the beach was thrilling. The sand really extends out into the water with essentially “two” beaches created with one on each side. The wind was of course very strong as the sand itself was essentially more level with the water than the rest of the beach. The windier side of the beach was sparsely populated with bathers and had only a handful of beach chairs facing the sun, all of them empty. The very tip had virtually no bathers but plenty of wind surfers and parasailors who harvested the power of the wind with great skill attaining very high speeds or soaring 20 or 30 feet into the air as the case may be. The strong wind did make it a little too chilly to swim even on the warm side of the beach which had considerably less wind on account of the trees growing along the beach that were between the windy side and the less windy side. We relaxed on the beach reclining on two beach chairs. Instead of returning to Supetar for dinner and the Waterman Club, we decide
d to stay in Bol. Our Lonely Planet tour guide had some viable options but the one we chose proved to be unlocatable. Either a poor map or sub-par navigation skills forced us to choose a place on our own which ended up working out well anyway. This was a very nice restaurant overlooking the harbor with the resort town of Bol in the distance. This was the nicest dinner either of us have ever had while wearing our bathing suits. We split a first platter for two with fully boned bass, gilthead, shrimps (prawns), squid and mackerel. It was very good but the views and the location could not be beat. 
We watched the sun set on the restaurant’s expansive terrace while drinking white wine and enjoying our fish platters while listening to local Croatian music. I had become quite adept at eating whole fish – knowing how to de-bone and pick the fish apart. It was no easy task and one we had to master in order to actually eat.
views of bucolic Mediterranean towns in the mountains of Brac but nothing about Vinova Gordo. The search being fruitless, we gave up and continued on our way to Bol. But on the way out of Nezvednicje, we saw a sign for Vinova Gordo. The long drive to the peak (including a stand off with a bus) took us up the mountain to its highest point. Up there were a handful of tourists and a Konobar manned by a couple of locals who looked like they lived in the nearby caravan year round. The smell of freshly burned coals surrounded this encampment. The views of the coast and Zlatni Rat were extraordinary. Zlatni Rat is perhaps the only beach in the world that is perpendicular to the shoreline. It sticks out into the Adriatic like a tongue and was glimmering in the sun. The wakes of the numerous wind surfers and parasailors were also visible from such a high point. The surrounding rocky shoreline and the tops of the houses and hotels created a picture perfect scene. There were only a handful of other tourists on this mountain near the Konobar. We descended the mountain happy to have finally found what we had been searching for and finished the drive to Bol. The rest of the drive was just as challenging as before and forced us to wind our way through the mountains to the coastline. The town of Bol is actually a few km from the beach so we didn’t actually get to see the town until later.
Being on the beach was thrilling. The sand really extends out into the water with essentially “two” beaches created with one on each side. The wind was of course very strong as the sand itself was essentially more level with the water than the rest of the beach. The windier side of the beach was sparsely populated with bathers and had only a handful of beach chairs facing the sun, all of them empty. The very tip had virtually no bathers but plenty of wind surfers and parasailors who harvested the power of the wind with great skill attaining very high speeds or soaring 20 or 30 feet into the air as the case may be. The strong wind did make it a little too chilly to swim even on the warm side of the beach which had considerably less wind on account of the trees growing along the beach that were between the windy side and the less windy side. We relaxed on the beach reclining on two beach chairs. Instead of returning to Supetar for dinner and the Waterman Club, we decide
d to stay in Bol. Our Lonely Planet tour guide had some viable options but the one we chose proved to be unlocatable. Either a poor map or sub-par navigation skills forced us to choose a place on our own which ended up working out well anyway. This was a very nice restaurant overlooking the harbor with the resort town of Bol in the distance. This was the nicest dinner either of us have ever had while wearing our bathing suits. We split a first platter for two with fully boned bass, gilthead, shrimps (prawns), squid and mackerel. It was very good but the views and the location could not be beat. 
We watched the sun set on the restaurant’s expansive terrace while drinking white wine and enjoying our fish platters while listening to local Croatian music. I had become quite adept at eating whole fish – knowing how to de-bone and pick the fish apart. It was no easy task and one we had to master in order to actually eat.After dinner, knowing we had a long challenging drive ahead of us, we left Bol for Supetar. Driving these roads at night was more difficult especially with wild goats, cows and marmots wandering into our path. There were no highways to guide us and the roads were not lit at all. Fortunately, we drove carefully enough and returned to Supetar. However, it took some tricky navigating to figure out how to return to the Waterman Club once we actually got to Supetar. With a seemingly endless maze of one-way streets, our return to Supetar was not the end of our return journey. We were trapped amongst these one way streets in Supetar far from the resort. A return to the main road solved our problems and helped turn us in the right direction.
Zlatni Rat is one of these rare beach formations we may not have the chance to see again so rare is it. We both appreciated how beautiful it was, how rare it was and with all of the water sports activity how exciting it was to experience.
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