Enjoying the rough charm of an Adriatic hideaway

The sun beats down on the bay and beach at Trstenik, on the Peljesac peninsula Bouncing down a dodgy coast road on the peninsula of Peljesac, I glance at the glistening Adriatic and catch sight of the island of Mljet. Many Croatian place names look like typographical errors: Losinj, Krk, Pag, Unije, Hvar. Call for a new proofreader!
Such names, with their emphatic, truculent consonants, are one of the charms of foreign travel. Strange languages, strange peoples, missing vowels — and missing teeth, too, if this pot-holed, rubble-strewn road  continues much longer.
The bay and beach at Trstenik, on the Peljesac peninsula
Unspoiled haven: The sun beats down on the bay and beach at Trstenik, on the Peljesac peninsula
The crickets aren’t just singing, they are shouting. Sunshine beats down and a bleating goat suddenly breaks cover from the bushes.
Below us, at the end of this steep path — which looks barely wide enough  for a pregnant goat — shimmers a tiny inlet where we hope to find a bar and a tiny pebble beach.
Gripping the steering wheel, I develop an urgent thirst for a cold pivo (beer) and a chaser of one of those pelinkovac fire waters.
Another Croatian day, another adventure. This Dalmatian coast feels like Spain in the Seventies; many villages unsignposted and little more than a couple of farmhouses.
I enjoy the roughness, the otherness of Croatia. There is romance in its gnarled old farmers, in its tumbled outhouses, in the simplicity of its amenities. Paradoxically, its poverty could be a tremendous asset for the tourism trade.
We’ve had three of our past four summer holidays in Croatia, doing battle with our Serbo-Croat phrasebook (Bok! we cry in greeting to locals, often to be met with faintly suspicious stares) and negotiating the enchantments of cevapcici sausages and peceno odojce (suckling pig).
Two of our holidays were in the Croatian north-west, in Istria, across the water from Venice.
Istria may have been Shakespeare’s Illyria. Strolling its coastal towns at dusk, you can imagine yourself running love errands for Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night. Istria is Italianate, but lacks the Latins’ swagger, which means it is quieter.
Last August, we tried the south of Croatia, flying cheapo to Dubrovnik, then hiring a car from a chaotic outfit at the airport (tip: avoid the chaps of Kompas car rentals) before driving two hours north to Peljesac.
Once we turned left on to the peninsula, the drive became magical: empty mountain views, a plateau full of vineyards and then our fishing village, Trstenik. First sight of pretty Trstenik was from the high road — its harbour wall, ramshackle roof tiles and compact setting under the wooded hillside.
This actually brought cries of ‘Wow!’ from the mutinous teenagers in the back. Once we reached the village we found it had a dozy, dusty charm, dogs strolling the street and sleepy waiters sitting by their all-day cafes.
Peljesac makes Istria look thrusting. Croatia charms because it is unlike busy, over-populated, globalised Europe. It does not gush modernity.
It does not primp itself or sashay down the promenade, showing off its energy. We found no disco in Trstenik, thank goodness.
The teenagers (only 14 and 13) did not mind. They spent their time jumping off the harbour wall into the blue water and eating pizzas as vast as Mercedes hubcaps. We took a rough little boat out one day and they all laughed when I made a nonsense of the navigation.
Though it was high season, the place wasn’t packed. Croatia ambles along, the service slow, the prices lower than England. The supermarket in Trstenik wasn’t much of a place, but we could buy cheese from an ancient farmer under the village tree.
The adults’ faces here have a lean quality — wary, private. There is a lot of recent history in Croatia. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I look at the middle-aged men and wonder what they did in Croatia’s ‘Homeland War’ in the early Nineties, when the Croats fought to free themselves from Serbian-controlled Yugoslavia.
If there is gravity in these Peljesac men, who can blame them? Miro owns the Villa Silencia we have rented (and true to its name it’s pretty silent, save when the student cruise boats moor on a couple of nights).
He’s a former engineer who lost his job in the economic mess after the war. Every morning, tar-throated Miro quietly contemplates the seafront, watching the lobster pots being emptied. He unobtrusively brings our daughter an enormous cake on her 13th birthday, then melts into the shadows.
With a few gentle, retreating words he supplies us with grapes from his vine and the juiciest figs I have ever eaten. His son takes us out in his speedboat. Miro lives upstairs, sitting in his eyrie and  watching the little Mljet ferries chug in and out of Trstenik.
We do the two-hour journey to Mljet one day in an oily 12-seater which we christen HMS Sickbucket.
It is skippered by a Tom Conti lookalike who fought in the war and chats up the wives. Mljet is astonishingly quiet. Odysseus holed up here for a while. You expect to meet him round every pine tree.
Dalmatia is almost virgin coast for scores of miles. Much of the housing seems Napoleonic, though ugly bungalows have sprouted in Orebic, half-an-hour north, where you catch a car ferry to Korcula.
When so much of continental Europe’s coastline has been wrecked by moneymen, it seems a miracle that the bulldozers and multinational hoteliers have not seized this beautiful place and ripped out its guts.
Croatia has been saved by its political inheritance of communist isolation in the Tito years and then the violent struggle against the Serbs. Might that soon change? Having won their independence, the Croats might be about to surrender it again, this time to Brussels.
Depending on a referendum, Croatia could join the EU in 2013. Croatia’s currency is the kuna, but the euro is accepted by some small businesses (our boat-hire man quoted his price in euros, but took kunas).
Even without the euro, Croatia’s face is changing. Since 2009, all EU citizens have been able to buy property in Croatia on the same basis as Croats. Before then, foreign buyers had to get permission from the Ministry of Justice — a process that took anywhere from a few months to several years.
As foreign buyers move in, architectural styles are altering. The place is being tarted up, dollified, its distinctive identity blunted. The same is happening agriculturally. With wine production now subsidised by the Croatian government in an EU-related policy, small-holdings are disappearing and the farmyard goats are yielding to something more efficient, less varied.
Black new highways are being built, too, smashing through the countryside. We must experience the rubble-strewn tracks while we can.