Porat - Bisevska luka

Porat — often called Bisevska luka — is a narrow bay cut into Bisevo, a small island about 5 nautical miles off Komiza on Vis, and it is the closest thing the island has to a harbour. It ends in a sandy beach backed by pine trees, which is part of why it's one of the more photographed spots in this stretch of the Adriatic. Bisevo is limestone through and through, barely 5.8 square kilometres, and had a recorded population of just fifteen at the last census: the traffic here is almost entirely day boats.

Anchoring at Porat

The harbour itself is shallow — around 1.5 metres near the beach — so most boats can't get close enough to swim straight off the stern. Anchoring works better further out in the bay, where depths run from about five to ten metres. It's also exposed to southwest and west winds, and when those pick up, the usual advice is to leave rather than ride it out; the bay gives decent shelter from the south but very little from the quarter the weather tends to arrive from. Mezuporat, a cove nearby with about eight metres of water, is the fallback when Porat gets uncomfortable, though its small quay is normally taken by excursion boats.

The Blue Cave

The reason most people come to Bisevo in the first place is the Blue Cave — Modra spilja — in a small bay called Balun on the island's east side. Sunlight passes through an underwater opening and bounces off the white seabed, turning the whole cave a bright, almost artificial blue; it's most dramatic between roughly 10:30 and noon, when the sun is high enough to hit the opening directly. The chamber runs about 24 metres long and up to 15 metres high, but the entrance the boats use is only around 1.5 metres high and 2.5 metres wide, low enough that everyone aboard is told to duck.

That entrance is not natural. The cave could originally be reached only by diving, until the Viennese painter Baron Eugen von Ransonnet described and illustrated it and, on his recommendation, an opening large enough for a small boat was cut in 1884. It now takes well over ten thousand visitors a year, on a timed ticket system worked from Komiza and from Mezuporat on the island itself.

Bisevo Beyond the Cave

The island's coast is riddled with sea caves — more than twenty are known — and the largest is Medvidina, the Monk Seal Cave, on the southeastern side. At around 160 metres it is the longest sea cave in the Adriatic, and it has been protected since 1967. It takes its name from the Mediterranean monk seals that once sheltered inside it and have long since disappeared from these waters.

Inland, Bisevo is pine forest in the north and bare maquis elsewhere, rising to Strazbenica at 239 metres, about a 45-minute walk from the houses. Near the ruins of a Benedictine monastery founded in 1050 the church of St Sylvester still stands. The island had its own school from 1947 until it closed in 1961, and electricity only arrived in the 1970s; what economy remains is vines and fishing.

Getting There

Almost everything on Bisevo runs through Komiza, the fishing town on the western side of Vis whose harbour is guarded by a Venetian kastel built in 1585. Komiza's fishermen were among the most respected in the Adriatic, sailing the long, narrow falkusa far offshore to Palagruza in weather that kept other boats at home. Porat and the Blue Cave are usually visited together, either as a day trip from Komiza or as a stop on a longer route through the islands — it's a bay best reached during a gulet cruise along the Croatia coast, since there's no practical way in by road.