Walks along Kosirina

Winter in Tisno wasn't all about snow, sub-zero temperatures (although it was painfully chilly at times) and crazy winter parties. As you can see from the following photos, we had some amazingly beautiful sunny days, which were perfect to explore the island of Murter. I adored the northern winter sunlight - it had this incredible warm, golden hue to it, which reflected magically on the crystal clear Adriatic Sea. And being winter, I had the opportunity to completely appreciated the natural beauty of the island of Murter without the hoards of tourist from all over Croatia, Europe and beyond, who flock en masse to the coast to inhale the delights of a Dalmatian summer. 

When the weather was clear, and the mercury was at a reasonably level, I could think of nothing better to do but to be outdoors. After being cooped-up indoors, almost physically attached to the heater and unable to move due to feeling like an ice-block, the warm sunshine was unbelievably alluring. 

On a number of occasions we'd spend the afternoon walking around the Bay of Kosirina, which is located on the western side of the island of Murter. Kosirina is one of a number of bays on the island, which house auto-camps, camping grounds, restaurants and night clubs during the summer months, as their natural beauty and coastal location attracts a great number of tourist. The owners of these bays, residents of Jezera and Murter, have obviously been very successful in capitalising on their 'prime' real estate, which was once, before to the great wave of tourism, consider worthless due to its tough soil, which made it extremely difficult to earn any decent living from agriculture on these rocky, barren outcrops.

The bay of Kosirina has a labyrinth of paths, which allow you to walk either along the water's edge, or over the masses of rock and shrubbery. Many of these paths connect Kosirina with neighbouring bays and onto the towns of Murter and Jezera. Presumably, these rocky paths were once used by locals on their daily journey to and from their fields. Walking around Kosirina, you can image sun-kissed peasants walking in their dirt encrusted trousers on an autumn afternoon with their olive-laden donkeys, exhasted from a hard days work and keen to get home. Even today, the stone walls erected by the Jezerani and Murterini, which enabled them to distinguish their plot of land to that of their neighbour's are still there, as if for them time had stood still. Unfortunately however, the majority of these small plots of land are now overgrown, as most people have turned away from the toil of agriculture in favour of tourist dollars.

There's something about the island of Murter, and other areas of the Dalmatian coast, that I feel a strange connection with - the rocky landscape, the salty sea. I think many Dalmatians, and children of Dalmatians, feel the same way. Walking around Kosirina, breathing in that crisp sea air, even just looking at these photos again, I feel this affinity to the sea and the land, as generations and generations before me were inextricably connected to it - they lived on it, lived from it, they loved it, they despised it. But without it, they wouldn't have existed. It formed their identity.