dot the Adriatic coast of Croatia like a long line of bread crumbs, ranging from 2-acre specks to 35-mile-long spines of rock and scrub. Beautiful and remote, the labyrinth stretches for several hundred miles, from the northern coastal town of Rijeka past the walled city of Dubrovnik. In the 19th century, the Austro-Hungarians and their monarch Franz Joseph, then rulers of the Adriatic, vowed to make the seas around these islands safer by building 48 sturdy lighthouses. Each was constructed following similar architectural plans, using local stones; each boasted a revolving and refracting light designed and built in France. By the early 1990s, while all of the lighthouses still stood solid on their foundations, their keepers had become unnecessary, thanks to automation. But in recent years, keepers have found another reason to inhabit 11 of these historic lighthouses: as innkeepers. Tourists can book the simple but comfortable apartments that were once home to the keepers' families. They have new, neat bedding, draperies and chests of drawers, and kitchens with refrigerators, stoves and utensils. Guests provide their own food, and for one or two weeks at a stretch, they recreate the isolated life of a lighthouse keeper. This is what I did last June when I visited several of the lighthouses, among them, those on the islands of Palagruza, Susac and Lastovo. Palagruza, the most remote of the islands, is closer to Italy (24 miles) than to mainland Croatia (75 miles), and on a clear day, from atop the 295-foot cliffs rising straight out of the sea, you can see both. The best place to hide from the midday summer heat is inside the thick, cool stone walls of the lighthouse. At a long table in the kitchen of one of the upstairs chambers, lunch was lobsters pulled from the sea that morning and beef delivered from the mainland. Three generations of lighthouse keepers passed plates of potatoes and greens. Ranging in age from 30 to 65, they had nearly six decades of experience working on Palagruza. The family's nominal patriarch, Duro Cehouski, 65, arrived in 1972 and ran the lighthouse for 18 years. “Since then,” he told me, “I've known dozens of lighthouse keepers and have decided there are just three kinds of people attracted to the job: adventurers, existentialists and fools. I am definitely of the last. It's a life only for the truly committed.” The lighthouse, the largest in the Adriatic, is reached by a steep climb up a trio of switchbacks, passing through the excavation of a sixth-century Roman village. It was put into operation on Sept. 25, 1875; the original lens and clockwork, made in Paris in 1873, are still in use. There are two apartments for visitors, each with two bedrooms, a kitchen and a private bath with shower. Legend has it that the Greek hero Diomedes, a survivor of the Trojan War, lived on Palagruza. Pope Alexander III stopped there in 1177 with a fleet of 13 galleons, driven in by a storm. How bad can conditions get? “Eight degrees Celsius,” Cehouski said. “Big, fast-changing winds. That is the worst.” Still, he said, the keepers' ultimate devotion is to the light. Even if a keeper dies, the lighthouse must stay on. Years ago, a keeper died and it was three days before a replacement could arrive. “His wife kept the light on!” he said. “What a beautiful thing!” The lighthouse on Susac was built in 1878, on the southwest corner of what has become known as the Dry Island, for the way it drinks up rainfall. Looking over the back wall, down steep white cliffs that run right up to the edge of the massive lighthouse, you can see 300 feet down to the aquamarine sea. A pair of keepers awaited me at the protected dock. One, Frano Foretic, 30, had the curly hair and wild eyes of a newly discovered Marx brother. The other, Bosnic Gordan, 20 years his senior, had the presence - and politeness - of a Nebraska insurance executive. Gordan lives for the sea, but not with quite the enthusiasm of his Palagruzan comrades. The job is not that well-paid, he said. The boats are not in the best of shape. The keepers have no hot water (though the two apartments, both of which sleep four visitors, do). Susac is just 20 minutes by boat from the large island of Korcula - “close enough to go for an ice cream,” Gordan joked - yet feels totally adrift, cut off, remote. There are pathways and bays to explore. One gentle downhill walk on a neatly groomed stone path leads through an A.D. 500 Roman village, to the crumbling compound of the island's only other resident, Goran Gospodnetic. A second-generation farmer on Susac, he keeps 300 sheep. His sheep gorge year-round on rosemary, and salt water imbues even the morning dew, making for the tastiest lamb ever, consumed at a wooden table set beneath a spreading olive tree. On Lastovo, the Struga lighthouse was built in 1839 atop a 210-foot hill. Jure Kvinta is a third-generation lighthouse keeper there. He and his forebears have labored for four of the entities that have, over the centuries, laid claim to the island: the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Italy, Yugoslavia and, now, Croatia. On this night, Kvinta is less worried about whether the light is working than the whereabouts of his 15-year-old daughter, who is - at 11:15 p.m. - officially late. Rather than leading the usual isolated life of a lighthouse keeper, he is a 15-minute drive from the town where both he and his wife, Nada, grew up. They even have their own house, at the foot of the lighthouse. And no struggling uphill by donkey; they've got a car! Each morning, Kvinta drives his two children to school in the town of Lastovo, five miles away, and then stops at his family's farm to work the field for an hour or two. He grows potatoes and grapes on land his family has farmed for centuries, and fishes nearly every day. The lighthouse itself has four apartments, each with a kitchen and bath, and accommodating two to five people. Despite its easy access to civilization, Lastovo is part of a remote archipelago of 46 islands in southern Dalmatia, declared by the World Wildlife Fund as one of the Mediterranean's “10 last paradises.” There is much to explore. The archipelago boasts 46 churches - and 46 vineyards. Its medieval stone villages are still largely intact, its fields still worked by hand. The Kvintas were eager to share the island's most enduring anecdote. “I know you will find it hard to believe - everyone does - but at the end of the 19th century, fishermen caught a giant lobster - 45 pounds! - right there off the coast,” said Kvinta. “They presented it to Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph, and were rewarded by a large trunk of coffee and sugar.” He noted the transition that modern-day lighthouse keepers have made: In the beginning they were an independent cog in a wheel necessary to keep ships safe from the rocks. But now the lighthouse is fully automatic. “It's just like the Hotel California here,” Kvinta said, “Just check in, and relax. You may never truly check out!” - New York Times News Service __
