“You Have Left the Route”

Maribor, Slovenia - once again, the second largest city. Note the gathering clouds for the first time in our trip.

Whenever we deviate from our designated route, our navigational app warns us that we’ve left our route. It’s also been an apt description for this past week of riding. As noted above, we had our first rainfall of the trip on what would have been our longest ride - 75 miles into Zagreb. The younger versions of ourselves would have soldiered through, but the current version decided to hire a taxi to take us and our bikes directly to our hotel in Zagreb. I like this version better!

One of Zagreb’s main squares

Most of the famous landmarks were closed for renovation, a result of new EU money infused once they joined the union in January, 2023. 

Old and new coexist throughout Zagreb

These pictures sadly show a common site in Zagreb of faded beautiful buildings covered in graffiti. 

Zagreb certainly has some old world charm. Maybe it’s just that we’ve been enjoying smaller cities (and sunny weather), but we were happy to move on. 

En route to Plitvice National Park, we stayed in Karlovac, which was heavily involved in the Homeland War of 1991-1995. I vaguely remember hearing about this war, but it never received the coverage which reflected how momentous and destructive it was for the countries that were once Yugoslavia. Many cities are still rebuilding, and the war’s aftermath is still apparent. Four of the countries we’re visiting (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro) were once Yugoslavia, and it’s been so interesting hearing the different perspectives. It remains a very sensitive and emotional subject for all of the involved countries. 

War Memorial outside Karlovac 

Plitvice National Park is a stunning series of lakes and waterfalls made more striking by the tufa limestone formations through which the water is filtered. The beauty is somewhat marred by the multitudes of tour buses and selfie sticks, even in October. I can’t imagine what it would be like in July! 

 

Check out the line of humanity crossing the bridge in the background

We left the crowds of Plitvice in Croatia to explore the lesser known Una National Park in neighboring Bosnia. We loved Bosnia, from its gentle, kind people to its roving bands of wild yet sweet dogs and cats to its amazing natural wonders and lack of crowds. 

We’ve been chased by plenty of dogs on this trip, but this Bosnian dog just wanted to play. 

Una National Park in Bosnia - all of the beauty and none of the crowds. 

The Una River followed us through our entire passage of Bosnia. 

We spent a night at a tranquil riverside cabin 

Everything was going so well in Bosnia until our last day. We had planned to cross back into Croatia from a remote border, but we kept getting mixed signals from locals and Google about whether it was open.  If we weren’t able to cross, we would have to ride 120 miles to the next border, but we couldn’t think of an alternative route that didn’t involve major backtracking.  We were considering just sneaking across, but I could see the blog post virtually writing itself: “…it all went south so quickly…”. But then our lodging near the border cancelled our reservation for that night, which we took as a final sign that we weren’t meant to cross there after all!  Dennis found a great spot in another town, and the host helped us arrange for transportation to the next large border crossing, from which we would ride 50 miles to meet our friends in Croatia.

These 2 brothers borrowed their family car and a work vehicle to transport us to the border. On the way we stopped at another beautiful waterfall along the Una River and learned they had never seen any of these wonders even though they grew up 20 minutes away. They took a selfie for their mom!

We finally met up with 15 friends from Poway to bike 10 days together through Krka National Park and all along the Dalmatian Coast.  This first day of riding turned into a third route adjustment when we descended into the Park only to learn that our road out was closed til 7pm due to a local car race. There is no way to arrange alternate transportation on the fly for that many people, so we hung out for 7 hours until we were allowed to leave. We ended up riding in the pitch black dark of night, and not everyone had lights. We finally left a contingent on the side of the road and rode the rest of the way to the hotel. They had a van to bring 6 people back, but they had to hide their bikes in the bushes for us to taxi back the next morning to collect. It was an inauspicious start to the group ride to say the least!

Some days are easier than others…