As you can see, the coast of Croatia is protected by numerous islands. In most of the Mediterranean we've seen so far, we haven't had the opportunity to anchor. The harbors at cities are often artificial, and we stay in marinas. Marinas have their virtues, like power and water connections and being able to step ashore to a town. All the same, they can be expensive if you have to use them every night, and anchoring is always more private.

So we've been very pleased to find many protected anchorages in Croatia, and we've tried to anchor about half the nights we've been here.

We didn't take this picture, but it's hard to show the Kornati Islands National Park from sea level. Of the 140 Kornati islands, 109 are included in the park.  The islands are karst rock, carved by underground water into caves, rivers, sinkholes, and barren, rocky ground.

From a distance, the islands look bluish and barren. From close up, the rock is often striated diagonally, or with ridges that look like fallen dominoes, or huge cliffs, or rounded, with growth that looks like a pale green carpet.

This settlement, called Vrulje, is inside Kornati Islands National Park. We anchored in the harbor one evening and took a path that gave us a fine view of the settlement.

The island of Iž has been inhabited since prehistoric times. At only about twelve kilometers (less than eight miles) long, it is said that Iž supports 78,000 olive trees and 100 hectares (a hectar is 10,000 square meters) of woodland. That's more than a million square yards.

This village, I Veli (big Iž) has a ferry to the mainland and a marina. This picture shows most of it. Iž  Mali (little Iž) is the older of the two settlements. According to a woman we met in Biograd, life in her hometown on Iž hasn't been the same since the ferry began. Now there's even a pizzeria.