I awoke this morning to the sound of heavy rain beating relentlessly against my door, a thumping so urgent that I thought it might want to come in. Grappling in the dark for the light switch, I succeeded only in turning the extractor fan on in the bathroom, waking everybody in the house by turning the radio to full blast, and causing a sudden cry of dismay from next door where something had obviously happened that I am still unaware of. The only thing I didn't do...

According to the online weather forecast today, the temperature in Dubrovnik was supposed to peak at about 19 degrees and 50 percent humidity - a not unreasonable temperature which would probably have you reaching for a light jacket and commenting on what a pleasant day it was going to be. Well, let me stop you right there. You might be aware, after the whole Michael Fish hurricane debacle proved once and for all that weather forecasters understand as much about ...

Strolling though the green lane at customs, doing all the things normal people do in order to avoid making eye contact with anybody with access to rubber gloves, I found myself being eyed eagerly by a bored looking security officer who clearly needed to fill his daily quota of laughing at tourists underpants. "Ah," he thought to himself, "here's a guy with hair slightly longer than regulation length. He obviously must have several kilos of crack cocaine stuffed u...

A lot of the trees we passed were warped out of shape in quite extraordinary ways -some were bent around on themselves, others were apparently two separate trunks growing out of the ground which suddenly merged into one higher up. One tree even looked as through it has been deliberately bent by a giant, growing perfectly straight for a couple of metres before suddenly going off at exactly forty-five degrees and growing sideways for another metre before bending up...

When we arrived back at John's office the next day, our guide was waiting for us with his 4x4 parked outside and ready to go. Bruce, which is what I'll be calling him on the basis that I'm really not that good at recalling names and, let's face it, every man in Australia is called Bruce, was a jolly sort with a thick Aussie accent who spent the entire tour pointing at things and explaining the age and history of everything we walked past in a loud and confident t...