August 6, 2025
Time to move on from Split! I woke up way too early, before 5AM, and couldn’t go back to sleep so decided to try and sort out a change to our time in China. The Chinese government declared Sept 3rd as the day for their Victory Day Parade, which means leading up to that lots of things will be closed, the city will be crowded, and long lines everywhere. Our planned time in Beijing was Sept 1st to 5th so with the help of our travel coordinators for Asia, Our Whole Village, we are changing around the trip to go to Beijing from Sept 5th to 9th instead. All that said I had to book some new flights and cancel some old ones.
Once that was done, I realized how tired I was and went back to lay down in bed where I found Ollie asleep. He had come in when Kayleen was there and now that she was up, I took her place, much to his surprise when he woke up.
Kayleen went for one last walk in Split through town and to the green market where should got some snacks for our car ride, most notably figs. The figs here are big and green and look unripe at first glance but are actually very ripe and delicious. She got one last coffee from our coffee spot and came back to start with the packing.
We somehow have way too much stuff again! For this 1.5-hour ride to Pakoštane we just threw things in bags but our next travel is a Ryanair flight with no checked bags so we are going to need to ditch the necessary items we have.
The owners, Ivana and Ljubica, met us as we were leaving to help with our bags and start to clean the apartment. The boys finally got to climb the stone wall and over the green fence for their final exit from our courtyard after a week of telling them not to do it.
The van we got to drive all of us to the Pine Beach resort in Pakoštane picked us up first. We loaded all our stuff in and realized it would be a tight squeeze for all eight of us to fit. Next, we went to pick up the Bonk crew at their apartment. After a lot of arranging, we got everything, and everyone, in the van! I was in the back with Bradley and Ollie, Jeff in the middle row with Lenny and Brycen, and Kayleen and Red upfront with the driver. All people with some type of bag under or between their feet. The hour and a half drive was mostly uneventful, though Lenny and Brycen got a hold of a black marker and took to tattooing themselves…
Once we arrived, just after noon, we got a little taste of what this place was during check-in. The rooms were not ready yet so we left our stuff in the back at the reception hut. The timing of when they would be ready was uncertain. The Bonks had to spend the first night in a grass hut, there are probably one to two hundred of them on the property, before moving to a mobile home tomorrow. We were set to start in the mobile home.
When booking we had no idea how big the grounds were, or more importantly how many people they crammed in with so many of these huts. Some huts are small, no bigger than a tent, and have no electrical. The one the Bonks got is bigger with electric plugs and lights but no air conditioning. None of them have bathrooms so there are communal bathrooms throughout the grounds. The mobile homes, maybe there are thirty of them on the property, have two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen with stove top and microwave, mid-sized fridge, air conditioning, and nice porch looking at the sea. Quite the meeting of the worlds.
We started with lunch while we waited for our rooms to be ready. The cafeteria style food hall was nice enough and easy to get a table for all eight of us but as soon I walked in I could tell this would get old fast and we had probably booked too many days here. The food itself wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either. The kids had fun picking from so many options.
After lunch we explored the grounds. The kids found a playground near the sea and spent some time there. There are tall pine trees everywhere that provide a good amount of shade throughout. All along the sea are different rocky areas with lounge chairs for people to sit and spend the day in and out of the water. We walked further down the coast toward the beach area and it was much more crowded. The beach was sandy, not dirt sand, but there are still some large and small rocks in the water. We found out that people can come for the day which is why the beach area was so crowded.
The main reason we went to the beach was to check out the obstacle course on the water. The boys stripped down to their underwear, our bags were all still at reception, and put on some life jackets before swimming out to it. They all made it out there and helped pull each other up onto the course.
After watching their antics on the course for a few minutes Kayleen prepared to have to jump in and swim out to provide some help and on-site supervision. There were various climbing points on the course that if you fell in you would be trapped without a ramp to pull yourself up. The kids were mostly too little to get themselves out of this type of situation.
Jeff headed back to reception to check on their room around 2:30PM and was told it was ready and that ours would not be ready till after 4PM. Five minutes later he was told that ours was ready…. I headed back to get all the stuff moved to our room and unpack a little. It took about an hour for the whole move and unpacking process before I headed back to find the group.
I found the kids playing mini-golf near the first park and learned that Kayleen, now soaking wet, did have to go out to the obstacle course for some rescues from the pit. Lenny fell off and got stuck in the water and was unable to pull himself up. All of the other kids tried to help, including two strangers, but Len was acting like dead weight and they couldn’t get him up. Thankfully she was wearing workout shorts and a tank top so unlike the boy’s, underwear was avoided. She pulled Len up and then got involved in a brief game of tag before everyone headed to shore. The water was surprisingly cold given that we are kind of in a cove and that when we swam in the water the other day none of us complained about it. But when she went to “rescue” Len, his body was chilly through and through. Regardless of needing a rescue the kids still had a blast.
After some more time on the playground I took the kids for snack hour at the cafeteria and they were pleased to see doughnuts. They each took down multiple powdered sugar doughnuts with orange jelly filling while we caught a few Pokemon. Then it was back to the park area to regroup, Kayleen and Red attempted to go to yoga and I took our boys back to have a shower.
There were plenty of activities on the activity board, a lot of which didn’t match the activities listed on the app. I went to the main reception area near the park, different from where you check in, to try to book some stuff. My expectations were low after watching Jeff’s interaction about moving between rooms tomorrow. It basically went like this; I asked what we needed a booking to do, the staff would say something like kayaking, I would say OK let’s book it for 8 people, the staff would say OK and then tell me it was fully booked. I spent about 30 minutes cycling through this until I found things that had openings, usually days out in the future.
We headed to dinner, and the masses were hungry and hangry. Again, we got a table no problem but the line for things like pizza where insane and when more pizzas would come out people would jump to the front of the line and grab some. There were a few near fights breaking out but we eventually I got some pizza for the table. Another sign we are staying here too long. Again, the food was fine, but nothing special for sure. After dinner we had one quick drink by the park as the kids played and then headed home to bed.
