South Istria in September

This time we spend our holidays next to Pula in a town called Puntizela. We had chosen this town for the proximity to wreck diving and the national park and we knew that for dinner we would have to walk either to Pula or to Fazana which is always a 10km distance to cover for one meal. Eventually we had to realise that neither would work really well due to the lack of good cooking. So, as time progressed we did the cooking ourselves and things started to go the normal way again.

Our walks to Pula lead us through a seemingly forgotten place north-west of the city. Once being a naval outpost of the Austrian-Hungarian war navy it had served the Serbs under Tito as barracks and military base just until the end of the war in the 90s. Today a ruined place and a cleared mine field there is plenty of opportunity for spooky discoveries. We spent there two days.

The scuba diving in Puntizela was more or less dissatisfying. Just two days before our arrival the hot temperatures fell down to 20 - 23 degrees and the weather generally changed from blue sky to overcast. There was no jetty to embark the diving boat. Consequently, all wreck dives were called off as the boat ride takes 1.5h one way. Instead, we did do dives around the shores of Puntizela, Stoja and the national park not far away just to realize that this area is over-fished.
Having had enough of all of this we left Puntizela prematurely for a better life in the South Tyrol mountains.