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The Times & TimesOnline 11.07.09
AMID THE BEAUTY AND BLADES OF DALMATIA....Emma Tucker checks out two cracking Croatian hotels.
Croatian gem: Korcula's narrow, winding streets are a labyrinth of Venetian delights.
Maybe it was a nervous reaction, but the traditional Korculan "Moreska" sword dance was making me laugh.
Thirty hot, sweaty men whacking swords together above their heads, across their bodies, and below their knees with meticulous timing. Clash! Thwack! And ha-ha! Look at the sparks flying, just centimetres away from the spectators!
I think it was at the point when I leant over to my husband to whisper something thoughtful about how other countries don't get nearly so hung up about health and safety that one of the sword blades flew off its handle, twirled vigorously through the air and landed in the mini-skirted lap of a young Croat sitting in the second row.
There was a gasp - from the audience, from her and from her friends, a group of overdressed beauties whose presence had been distracting the dancers from the start.
The Moreska continued on to its noisy climax, in which the White King wins back his woman from the Black King. Crash! Bash! The poor girl got an apology at the end. I simply marvelled that the sword hadn't taken out an eye or lopped off an ear.
Afterwards Toni, the concierge at our hotel, whose arms sport their own criss-cross pattern of scars from years of dancing Moreska, explained that the dance, once common across southern Europe, was now confined to Korcula, the sixth-biggest island in the Adriatic.
It was hard to get replacement swords, he said - and he should know, having once travelled all the way to Kosovo to find new blades for his troupe.
There is no doubt that the dance has an enthusiastic following that goes beyond entertaining tourists. This turned out to be a common theme on Korcula - you couldn't help but think that if the tourists disappeared (as most did during the Croatian war of independence in the early 1990s) not a lot would change.
Visitors eat and drink as the locals do. That wasn't a problem since the locally produced food is delicious. I had one of the tastiest meals of my life at a ramshackle restaurant called Mate in the village of Pupnat. There were olives, marinated aubergines, mild feta, curd cheese with pears and honey, and a wild asparagus omelette.
Home-made macaroni followed, one dish served with almond pesto, the other with a fennel sauce. There was sage ravioli, too. The joke in Korcula is that the elderly women who make the macaroni roll it into shape on their thighs.
Mate's chef, whose thighs were to be reckoned with, sat behind us throughout lunch with a deadpan expression. Repeated praise and protestations of how good it all was provoked the occasional nod. Lunch ended with chocolate cake, a hard sugary doughnut and a dish of rosemary sorbet.
The restaurant could probably claim a one-mile catchment area for all its produce. The herbs that flavoured the pasta and the home-made grappa sprouted up the side of the terrace and all over the garden.
Almonds hung on trees above; even the fruity posip white wine that accompanied lunch came from vineyards over the road. And at dinner the night before the Adriatic had produced a lobster as juicy as a peach.
Korcula is easy to reach, perfect to combine with a trip to Dubrovnik - three hours away down the coast - and a delight. It was a favourite destination for Yugotours, the former Yogoslav government tourism agency. A friend recalls staying there in the 1980s. It was all monstrous hotels and bad food, he says, but a great holiday.
The monstrous hotels are still there (though not very visible) but in spite of its appeal there has been little investment in Korcula since the 1990s war that rent Yugoslavia asunder. Dubrovnik was the priority, shrug locals, some of whom are campaigning for Korcula Old Town, a gem of Venetian architecture, to be awarded Unesco World Heritage status.
Things are set to change. The island is now home to its first boutique and sole five-star hotel, the Lesic Dimitri Palace, an 18th-century former bishop's palace and five medieval cottages straddling one of the tiny town's narrow streets. It opened this summer and is made up of six comfortable apartments, each tucked inside the ancient walls.
Visit now before other investors follow suit. The Croatian Government is paying attention to the way it develops its tourist industry, however, so it's unlikely that the island is about to be spoilt.
One of the great pleasures of Korcula is its old town, ruled on and off by the Venetians from the 13th to the 19th century. It's worth hiring a local guide. Ours took us through the nooks and crannies for almost three hours, which is quite a feat considering how small the town is.
But the limestone streets hide endless architectural curiosities - not least its own unique construction. The town is built, appropriately enough, like a fish, with a main street forming the spine and the side streets the bones.
The "bones" facing northeast are curved to stop the cold air of the winter gusting through, while on the southwest side they run straight, allowing cool summer breezes to circulate.
"It's an early form of air-conditioning," Ivan, the guide, said before talking us through the popular belief that Marco Polo was from Korcula. There are still people of that name living on the island.
It was on a totally different scale from Dubrovnik, which we had explored earlier. I felt like a better, more educated, person just for having wandered around Dubrovnik for two days, although it was more like slithering than walking when the rain tipped down and turned the city's famous marble streets into skid pans (another chance to ignore health and safety).
From Dubrovnik the drive to Korcula is worth making in its own right. We hired a car (moderately expensive, but no more so than in Italy or France) and drove along the Peljesac peninsula to Orebic, where a ferry leaves for the island. In early June we had the road almost entirely to ourselves, although no doubt it fills up later in the summer.
The drive takes you through the region that produces the red dingac wine - and runs along the unspoilt coast, peppered with small harbour villages and oyster farms. Everyone stops at Mali Ston for oysters.
On leaving Mali you get a fantastic view of Croatia's defensive wall - an impressive combination of fortresses and battlements built to keep out the Turks. It worked, at least here. The Turks never reached Korcula.
Nor, till this year, did I.
I can't quite believe that over the past ten years, as friends spoke enthusiastically about Croatia, I stuck doggedly to the Spanish costas. Well, my allegiances have shifted - even if, next time I go to Korcula, I pass on the offer of a chance to watch the Moreska dancers.
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