Day 20: The Brijuni Islands

As mentioned yesterday I said I thought I had found the perfect spot for watching the sunset in Pula. I wasn’t wrong 😍💪🏼

After a restless night, I was hot and at one point resorted to lying on the balcony to cool down – it worked, I had a leisurely morning prior to my boat excursion around the Brijuni islands national park.

With prior Roman and Napolean settlements, the Brijuni islands were under Austrian-Hungarian ownership in 1815, building a fort and creating the now abandoned military bases at the edge of Pula port.

The Austro-Hungarian Navy abandoned the fortress, and in 1894 the Viennese business magnate Paul Kupelwieser bought the islands and created an exclusive beach resort. Every time someone came to the islands Kupelwieser ensured that they brought an exotic animal hence why it now has a safari park upon the main island. For the scientists amongst you, an exceptionally important task for Paul Kupelwieser was to exterminate malaria from the islands. Having read in the newspaper that Dr. Koch intended to carry out research on malaria in Italy, Kupelwieser wrote him a letter with his observations about the disease. Shortly after, Koch sent his collaborators and he himself visited the islands twice in 1900/1901. He discovered that that the cause of malaria was the anopheles mosquito with multi-colored wings. In 1901 the island was declared malaria-free. Koch then went on to win the Nobel Prize for medicine for his discovery of the cause of tuberculosis and cholera.

So there you go a history and science lesson for you all in one day. The boat excursion included lunch and unlimited wine, considering it was cooked on board my whole mackerel was spot on. So fresh and not as oily as when you get it in England.

After lunch we stopped off at the island of Sveti Jerolim a small island with a donkey and a couple of peacocks. I was on the island for 2 hours, so went for a dip, had a little explore and enjoyed a nice cold Croatian beer.