Although there are a handful of restaurants and shops with vegan options in big cities, on the Dalmatian Coast, Croatia has not been considered a travel destination for vegan vacations. That is, until now!
Matea and Marina from Alvus Sailing created a Vegan Sailing Vacation – a 7-day sailing tour from Split with vegan cuisine on board.
“The combination came as a natural consequence of our passions,” Matea explains. She finished a sailing major in Zagreb and worked as a skipper in the summer, while Marina practiced plant-based cuisine. Partners at work and in life, they proposed the idea to their friend from a travel agency and the new tour was born.
It keeps up with trends in the sphere of caring about the meals of the guests during longer sailing trips. Here in Split, we already have companies that are trying to offer clients more than prosciutto & cheese – that actually doesn’t fit for vegans. Enthusiastic sailors cook a dinner for the guests by themselves. “Since it is very cozy to have someone cook for you on the boat, I thought that could be a very good offer for tourists in general,” Matea adds.
Besides, vegan cuisine for the tour is already thought out and tested many times by Marina. She is inspired mainly by Mediterranean cuisine which originally contains a lot of vegan dishes but also mixes it with Asian tastes. She uses different combinations and cooking methods to get different tastes and provides the guest on board 3 vegan meals with snacks per day. It seems especially valuable for regular vegans who, aside from top vegan vacation places, mostly in the US and Canada, still have this fear of eating only peanut butter and jelly on the whole trip. Split’s offer of food witnessed positive changes over the last decade. Comparing blogs of vegans traveling in Croatia, we can see them reporting about 1 place per day for vegan meals in the city 12 years ago and, respectively, about 2-3 vegan places per day in 2020. However, even now it’s recommended to have your vegan snacks with you while traveling, because it’s not easy to find everywhere in Croatia.
Vegan Sailing Vacations welcome not only a vegan audience. For non-vegan people, this tour could be even more of an astonishing surprise, its creators suggest. Marina is willing to show the process of cooking vegan food and share recipes with anybody interested. As well, the guests will be able to participate in collecting edible wild plants on islands and implementing them in meals.
Meals on Marina’s table look very delicious. But as a non-vegan person, I always wonder whether you will be strong enough for sailing stuff if you eat only plant-based dishes. The adventurous girls prove by their own experience that it’s possible to strong as a vegan. Matea is working also as a fitness trainer.
“I can just say, I had a boxing session on Palagruža”.
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