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The beautiful, little-visited Neretva Delta on the Dalmatian Coast is looking to tempt tourists away from the busier parts of the country such as Dubrovnik and Zagreb with its laid back charm
Twelve years of vegetarianism, and it wasn’t a late-night Big Mac or a fragrant rasher of bacon that broke me, but a frog and river eel stew.
As a travel writer, it’s important to fully immerse yourself in the local customs, to convey the smells, sights, sounds and tastes of the world with real feeling. That said, I had hoped that my charming companion and driver for the week, Alen, might’ve taken one for the team when it came to the wiggly, slithery dish that sat steaming in front of me at our riverside table in Vid, Croatia.
“Apparently it tastes just like chicken,” he tempted, untemptingly, as I lifted a recently sprightly frog up on a wooden spoon and looked into its forlorn face. In accordance with my flagged dietary requirements, vegetables had been provided, but more as a token side dish.
Stewed frogs are cooked whole and then best tackled with one thumb pinning the body down while the flesh is scraped from their legs. Mercifully, the meat harvested is limited in quantity and does taste like chicken, albeit mixed in with a bit of river water.
However, the eels are the real main event.
Earlier that morning, I watched a fisherman stand on the banks of the Neretva River and fish out one of the fizzy drink bottles bobbing along its surface. It was not the result of littering, as I’d first assumed, but an eel trap float. The fisherman hauled out his long contraption, and there in the shimmering netting was a slippery-looking critter.
The enigmatic European eel’s life ended in pieces that day, chopped into bits by a chef in the Djudja and Mate restaurant and put on the stove. Had it escaped the net, it may have had the chance to follow the ancient eel ritual of swimming out of the river, into the Mediterranean and to the place of its birth – the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic. There, eels mate once, and then die, leaving their tiny, glassy offspring to drift on the ocean currents for two years before making it to freshwater in Europe, where they stay until it is their time to make a singular journey home.
European eel numbers have plummeted in recent years and they are now listed as critically endangered, yet they remain a key part of cuisines across the Continent.
The fisherman of Vid, which sits in the heart of the beautiful, little-visited Neretva Delta on the Dalmatian Coast, say their means of landing eels as long as one metre links them to the many generations who have done so before them. It is sustainable, they claim, such is the small numbers in which they are fished.
Whether or not I believe them, or if the slightly muddy taste of the eel is enough to distinguish it from a carp or another kind of less threatened river dweller, remains a live question. What doesn’t is the undisputable charm of this quiet corner of Croatia.
Unlike the Games of Throne famous Dubrovnik further south, the capital Zagreb in the north or the festival islands off of Split, the Neretva Delta is at the beginning of its tourism journey. The Croatian Tourist Board is hoping more tourists will make the hour and a half road journey there after touching down in Dubrovnik, either for a day trip or overnight stays, to ease the burden on the ancient city and to discover the delights of this intriguing region.
It is a place that makes you feel as if you’ve stepped back 20 years to a time when Croatia was a destination only frequented by those in the know. Glasses of cool beer set you back a couple of euros and are drank on plastic pub chairs while watching the lives of locals. A group of boys are mucking about with sticks by the river, close to where a group of men (presumably their dads) are enjoying a cigarette, basking in the sunshine.
So long as you don’t indulge in the cheap drink too much, it’s easy to nip between villages along the river to enjoy the relaxed tourist attractions. For me that meant a guided tour around the Narona Archeology Museum, which houses some of the treasures unearthed in 1995 when archaeologists in Vid made the extraordinary discovery of an Augusteum, a temple dedicated to the cult of the Roman Emperors, built around 10 BC.
As much as I did not expect 2,000-year-old statues to tower above me so magnificently in such a relaxed, understated town, the Etno House Ilic up the hill is, in a way, even more remarkable. The museum is the half-century work of an avid collector of household items from across the region and past three centuries, brought back to life through their placement in a traditional family cottage. Perhaps it was the stew talking, but the love and care clear in the presentation was quite moving.
The true splendour of the place is felt up in the hills, but even more so down on the water, where several family firms are willing to take guests down the river on wide wooden boats that provide 360 degree views of the landscape and access to a central table. On here you will find a small pile of local delicacies including cheese, Dalmatian ham and, of course, rakija.
Just 50 years ago large parts of the area was inaccessible swampland, but now careful management has turned it into a navigable, nature-rich wonderland where insects buzz and 300 species of birds live. It is a truly beautiful place.
