Tito’s Playground

A Most Unusual Day

When locals tell you to go visit the national park nearby, you typically expect some type of nature/hiking experience. When the national park is an island, throw in sweeping coastal views and maybe some casual beach time. This is exactly what we were hoping to get out of our day at Brijuni National Park outside of Pula on 16-Sept, 2022. The park even touts itself as “unspoiled beauty of the beautiful Adriatic islands.” We’re just guessing that “unspoiled” must not translate well and means something entirely different in Croatian.

The island was anything but untouched or “unspoiled.” To give you a preview of our bizarre experience, we’ll preface the story by telling you that the island was once the Yugoslavian dictator Tito’s personal playground where he sought refuge from the daily grind of ruling with an iron fist. It’s also where he met and entertained other like-minded world leaders of the time. Does the name Mar-a-Lago come to mind? One of the first things you see approaching the island on the ferry is a huge hotel where Tito’s international guests stayed.

When visiting the island, one needs to make a decision about how to get around. You can’t just take a car across. Because it is a tourist mecca, there are several options. You can spend an hour and a half on a guided tour on one of those silly tourist trains or make our own way on electric bikes, scooters, or in a golf cart. We opted for the freedom of the golf cart option and were awarded #69, which gave a group of high school boys we encountered quite a few giggles.

We were glad to be there a bit off season, because there were uncountable conveyances going unrented, and we could only image what the unspoiled park was like when they were all rented. The guide books all said book ahead because they go fast. With our coach secured, we were set to pick from the many paved paths to countless destinations. There were full-on swim and sunning beaches with actual sand, restaurants, and bars. When we drove by, there were only a handful of sun worshipers there. Again, we could only imagine what such a place was like in the middle of the summer.

It was a little cold for swimming and we were there to explore, so we headed out into the great open expanses. Much of the park was a “reserve” in Tito’s day, filled with animals from all over the world that were gifts from world leaders and dignitaries. (We’ll get to that soon.) As such, it does have big open spaces with some really impressive specimen trees we encountered early in our drive.

We also encountered a few deer along the way and some mountain goats who seemed to be just a bit out of place.

Part of the grasslands are, well obviously, a golf course. It isn’t a course in the traditional sense we think of it with vast green fairways and manicured greens. It was primarily closely mown sections of the native grasses. We had never seen a dry golf course before, especially one with wild deer wandering around the “greens.”

If you’re into a golfing weekend, there are accomodations available along the golf course with ocean view.

We mentioned Tito receiving gifts of animals from around the world while entertaining his well-off guests. Turns out, many of the descendants of those animals still inhabit the island. There were aviaries where up until recently, parrots who outlived Tito were housed. There’s also a vast safari park with some unexpected inhabitants. Along one path, you come to a huge wooden gate that looks private. Certainly no way you’re supposed to breach it. Actually, there was a button we pushed, and the whole safari park opened up before us. There were other visitors inside, so we were pretty sure we were supposed to be there. We confirmed it was open game (pun intended) when we also encountered the tourist train that we had avoided taking from the ferry.

The first animals you encounter entering the park are a bunch of donkeys hanging out with zebras and horses, kin of a different stripe. They’re pretty much wild, so we’re pretty sure we saw some hybrids as well.

These donkeys were in a pen to keep the mothers and babies together. She was quite friendly and probably mostly interested in what we might have to eat.

Of course, where there’s zebras, shouldn’t there also be water buffalo? Well, of course.

You see where we’re going with this. Why don’t we just throw in some goats and an ostrich and end this section of the park. The ostrich was working on a nail in the fence that was going to give it complete freedom once it was finished. We were tempted to help it along.

Not exactly wild animals enjoying their natural habitat where patient park visitors might catch a glimpse, but much closer to a traditional national park setting. Unless we add in that as the gifted animals (and we are talking elephants, lions, monkeys, etc) died of natural deaths — or more likely from trauma of being moved to an Adriatic island and kept in a zoo. Afterward, they were stuffed and put on display in one of Tito’s villas. Awesome. We didn’t go in.

Oh, wait! We forgot the safari park’s most popular attraction–that caught Jake a bit off guard. Run away!

Not a real dinosaur, of course, but a model that demonstrates the real ones who used to inhabit the island. On the shores of the safari park, they can verify this because they’ve discovered and recorded dozens of real dinosaur tracks.

Seems kind of incredible and just as unlikely as everything else on the island, but these are not fake. They are real tracks you can walk around on and in, comparing your feet to theirs.

Okay, so far we’ve got a national park with a hotel, condos, a golf course, remnants of a zoo and dinosaur tracks. What else could there possibly be to make it even weirder? While the dinosaurs just might have been the oldest inhabitants, the island was populated long before Tito took a liking to it.

We turned our golf cart out of the safari park and down another path to go visit some of the park’s Roman ruins, which represent quite a large settlement along the coast of the island.

Wander around, and you can identify baths, ovens, grinding stones, cellers, and all kind of other trappings of a town.

They knew where to build, too. There is quite a view on the location they chose. As with many places in Croatia, the island was dotted with Roman ruins, but this site of an entire settlement was quite impressive. And, there were no other tourists there. That is rare.

Of course, the island wan’t only populated in Roman times. There was also a Byzantine settlement, which left behind the requisite church ruins.

As you can see from the pictures, it was an absolutely lovely day to be wandering around Tito’s former playground, but the day was getting long and the golf cart bill was getting larger. We spent nearly 4 hours driving around the crazy island and needed to catch the ferry back. Unfortunately, this did mean that we only enjoyed the outdoor attractions and didn’t visit any of the museums or buildings commemorating the notorious dictator and his famous guests. Apparently there is quite a collection of old photos with hollywood stars and Tito, world leaders and Tito, olympic athletes and Tito. Seems so much like a current US situation, we just figured we already knew enough.

We rushed back to catch the afternoon ferry, turned in our cart and were only charged for an hour (yay!), and were the last people running down the dock to the boat. We finished back on the mainland with a lovely wine and fish lunch. As far as day trips go, it was certainly one of the most odd and unique of all the ones we’ve experienced on our year of travel. If you’re ever in the neighborhood of Pula or Rovinj, think about visiting one of the most unusual national parks you’ll ever encounter.