Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia 2008

Lucy’s Big Adventure
In Montenegro, Bosnia and Croatia
September 9, 2008 to October 6, 2008

And truly a big adventure this was. The blogging I intended to do did not happen because of the scarcity of computers in the developing part of the world. I think daily travel logs are boring~! So I’ve been musing at length to come up with a non-travel log story for you about my trip to three countries formerly known as Yugoslavia.

If you read no further than this, the one thing I learned from this great adventure is how very much these people love their land and how proud they are of the freedom they have. I was very humbled.

In a Nutshell~Location

This bicycle tour was divided into two sections. Cavtat, Croatia was the home base for the tours. Cavtat is about ten miles south of Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian Coast of the Adriatic Sea. The first twelve-day tour went south from Cavtat into Montenegro making a big counter-clockwise loop from the sea through the villages and towns of Kotor, Budva, Podgorica, Kolasin, Zabljak, Pluzine, Niksic, Danielgrad, Citinje, and Tivat then back to Cavtat. After a two day layover, the next twelve days we traveled north along the Adriatic Coast and ferried between islands sightseeing and cycling. The main places we visited were Mali Ston, Korcula, Stari Grad, Makarska, Hvar, Split, Supratar, Neum (Bosnia), Dubrovnik then back to Cavtat. The border crossings were very strictly regulated. It usually took 20-60 minutes to pass.

The Weather

For the month prior to my arriving in Croatia, the temperatures had been in the 80’s and 90’s F. so I was worried about being too hot. Two days after I arrived, Europe experienced an unseasonably cold and rainy spell. The temperatures fell to 40’s at night and 50-60’s during the day with rain about half the time. Consequently, I was not prepared with warm enough clothing and had to buy rain gear, gloves, warm shoes (I only took sandals) and long pants. Lesson learned: be prepared for all types of weather!

The Cycling

I really loved cycling in the rural parts of the mainland, on the islands and right along the water’s edge of the Dalmatian Coast. City traffic was nerve wracking. We cycled between 35-60 miles per day for a total of about 600 miles with 31,000 feet elevation gain over all. I spent all day every day, stopping to take pictures and visiting with the people every chance I had. We cycled a total of 19 days in 24. The remaining five days were lay-over for touring or traveling by ferry between islands. The last day riding in Croatia along the coast, we traveled through a 10-mile stretch of Bosnia which was given to them for a sea port after the war in 1991. I stopped at the border to ask for a stamp on my passport and the policeman said, “No stamp here. Go to Sarajevo.” They have changed their little piece of the Adriatic coast into a lovely, modern resort area with no sign of shipping. I stopped there for lunch so I could say “I’ve been to Bosnia.” No one spoke English. I ordered hot chicken soup which I’m certain it was Lipton instant chicken soup, but it was warm and the bread was good.

During the first two weeks of cycling through Montenegro I only saw two other cyclists. One was a young man cycling from his home in the Ukraine. He was traveling self-contained for a couple of months. The drivers are unaccustomed to seeing cyclists on the roads, but were very courteous. I wore a bright orange jacket most of the time for visibility. About half of the 600 miles of roads I cycled were in rural areas and were about fifteen feet wide with no shoulder. The pavement was usually very smooth and traffic light. When a vehicle approached from the rear, the driver usually gave a “courtesy beep” which I acknowledged, then I moved as close to the edge as I felt safe and hung tight. The “beep” was very deceiving because even the big truck horns only made tiny “beeps.” The drivers all gave me a wide birth. Only once did I feel in danger when a woman turned right within two feet of my front wheel. In the larger cities, however, the traffic was heavy and a bit nerve wracking. The big roads had two lanes with a line down the middle and were about 20-30 feet wide. I walked through several tunnels which had no lights. They all had a very dirty sidewalk about 18 inches wide on both sides.

I had two flat tires. The second one I was all alone in a tiny village along a beautiful river in Montenegro. As I started pulling out my stuff to fix my tire, out from the only business on the waterfront came a handsome young waiter in white shirt and black pants who offered to help me. He was 22 years old, born and raised in the village, spoke broken English. He told me that the village was once a resort area for the royalty of the old country. But when the communists took over, they tore down the palace and built a fish factory. Many of the buildings showed the scars of bombing and war. I completely wore out my brake pads descending all the steep mountains. One descent had 26 swtich-backs! My nine-speed Bike Friday performed wonderfully well on the climbs. I didn’t have to walk any of the steep grades. The steepest were about 15 percent but very short.

One cycling day was so rainy we had to take a train the 53 miles between villages up a winding narrow river valley. The next day we rode in the drizzle because there was no train. One rider on a titanium road bike slipped on the wet pavement, slid into a barrier, landed in dense bushes on the other side of the barrier. Fortunately, he did not go down a steep incline which was along most of the road. He slammed into the barrier hard enough to fracture his right tibia and fibula. We stopped a car and had the driver phone the police. Ken was cold and going into shock so we covered him in our rain gear and huddled him to maintain body heat. About an hour after the accident the police arrived. We communicated in very broken English that we needed an ambulance. They wanted to see Ken’s papers first. So I dug out his pass port. (Always carry your passport on your person in foreign countries, I learned.) Finally after another 30 min, they said, “No ambulance.” Only police car.” A retired fire fighter and I splinted the leg with two night sticks and a roll of police barrier tape. The others then did a five-man carry to get Ken into the police car. The car was not much bigger than a mini-cooper.

As it turned out, Ken ended up 100-miles away from the accident scene in the hospital in Podgorica for five days before he could be flown back to California. The US Embassy sent a woman to interpret for him and help him through the paperwork jungle. He was the only person on the tour who had purchased “Medivac Insurance.” His hospital stay cost $900. The medivac company flew a nurse from California to Montenegro to get him home on a commercial flight. While in the hospital he had x-rays of his leg, they splinted it with a very loose, gauzy splint, put him in bed, didn’t take vital signs or move him at all for five days. His food was bread and tea for breakfast, barley soup for lunch, and plain pasta with no sauce for supper for five days. The sheets were clean and pressed. The hospital was built after WWII when the communists took over the country. None of the beds were mechanical. All three of his roommates smoked non-stop. One played a boom box day and night. What an experience! When he got home he had surgery and placement of a titanium rod in his tibia.


The People

The people of these three countries have been fighting civil wars with one another since Tito left power and the communists took over about WWII. All three countries rule themselves independently now that communism is gone. So in Croatia one does not say anything about how wonderful the people in Montenegro were during the time visiting there or vice versa. But the people in both countries were genuinely hospitable, kind, helpful and hard working. In Montenegro I did not hear English for two weeks with the exception of a word or a phrase. In Montenegro the people speak Serbian and use the Cyrillic alphabet. In Croatia, they speak Croatian which is very similar to Serbian but use the same alphabet we use, making signs easier to read in Croatia. I found the best way to communicate was to write down what I was trying to say in English, especially the names of cities and then do a pantomime. Trying to apply English pronunciation to the native spelling didn’t work. Croatia is still using the Kuna. Montenegro and Bosnia use the Euro. The Russians are investing lot of money into Montenegro and building ski resorts and big buildings. Croatia on the other hand, is very proud that Russian enterprise is not allowed by their government.

In northern Montenegro in the mountains of Durmitor National Park, the people are of Serbian descent and are sheep herders. They have very dark hair and complexion and short stature. But along the Dalmatian Coast of the Adriatic Sea in both Croatia and Montenegro, the people are of Austrian and Italian descent. They have lighter brown hair, round faces and wide-set eyes. In even the small villages, children play soccer in the streets. In the top of the Durmitor Mountains near a farmhouse, I saw a basketball standard stationed along the edge of the road with a “three-point” circle drawn on the pavement.

The owners of an apartment in Croatia invited us for “coffee” the day we left. As soon as we arrived, they called their niece and nephew to come over to speak with the Americans. They were a 17-year old girl in high school and 19-year old boy in college studying economics. He tried to engage me in discussion about the Iraq War but I skirted the subject. All the Europeans love Obama and wanted to know how we felt about him. They are very interested in the American political process which deeply affects their own politics.

The Sea and the Land

The Adriatic Sea and the Dalmatian Coast lie just east of the Boot of Italy. The limestone mountains spring right up out of the sea. The sea is stunningly blue-green and clear because there is no sand along the sea shore, only limestone. There is no tide and the limestone is so hard that the sea water ripples from the wind cannot break it down into sand. Every stone is embedded with fossilized plants, shells, and ancient sea life. The water is salty and warm as a bath tub so the people build piers out into the water for sunbathing. I only saw two areas that resembled what we call “beaches.” They were covered with smoothly rounded limestone about two inches in diameter~too big to walk barefoot comfortably. So the beach goers take a plastic lounge chair to sit in and sun on the stony beach.

On the islands and for two hundred miles inland that I traveled, the land was mountainous limestone. Building a house requires a big crane with a jack hammer to break away enough stone for the foundation to sit upon a flat spot. Consequently, in the larger cities, the houses are within spitting distance of one another. No one has more than a driveway so they have potted plants all over their patios and stairs. Little villages are connected to the main paved road along the coast only by dirt roads. In order to clear a patch of ground for cultivating grapes, olives, rosemary or lavender, the people have to hand carry away the limestone rocks. They are stacked into huge piles and long rows dividing the terraces on the hills. These piles of stone are hundreds of years old. The land is very dry and arid inland, but beautifully lush and green along the sea shore and in mountainous areas with running streams, rivers or lake. A few hundred feet from the water source, the arid limestone supports very little vegetation.

Cycling on the Island of Hvar, from one side to the other, we came upon a “resturan” where we stopped for a drink. The woman spoke enough English to explain that she and her husband had bought the land in 1980 and hand carried all the stones for the building from nearby abandoned fields. They still do not have running water, but have the “fire engine” bring it to them. They have built a lovely home, bar, and “reception center” for weddings, christenings, and banquets on the top of the mountain.

All of this area of the world was once part of the Roman Empire so nearly every city was once “walled.” Many Roman ruins remain as great tourist attractions.

The Food

Naturally, along the Adriatic Sea fish, squid, oysters, and mussels are abundant. We rode past several quiet inlets where mussels and oysters are farmed and shipped all over Europe. They are also very cheap so many of our group had a huge bowl of mussels every evening for dinner. One dinner my friend Morgan ordered “fried fish with chips” expecting something like deep fried white fish chunks. What he got was a huge stack of deep friend minnows! They looked like a stack of grey twigs on his plate. We both did a big double take and burst into laughter, but he ate them.

The “national” dish is boiled potatoes mixed with boiled chard flavored with garlic and olive oil~never prepared the same way in two “resturans”. A dish of steamed vegetables is tomatoes, squash, light green, sweet bell pepper, egg plant and potatoes with chard. A mixed salad is shredded white cabbage, tomatoes, cucumber slices and sweet peppers. They are each arranged on one quarter of the plate and not “mixed” at all. Lettuce is rare. Pizza which is on every menu is handmade bread with thinly spread fresh tomato sauce and a very few pieces of whatever toppings you order. A large pizza is about the size of our medium pizza. Ketchup is one of the toppings offered. I snickered behind my hand when I saw a cook turn over a ketchup bottle and squeeze it all over the top of a pizza he was making for “take away.”

In the mountains of Montenegro where sheep are raised, the dishes are lamb based. One very cold sunny day in the high mountains I dropped over the top of a peak into a little meadow with a sheep herder’s hut. A wooden sign said “Resturan.” There were my fellow cyclists sitting at a picnic table devouring lunch. The little building in the middle of nowhere was owned by a man and woman in their forty’s. They had no running water or electricity, but on their wood burning stove they made the most savory lamb and vegetable stew I’ve ever tasted. It was served in earthen bowls with huge chunks of chewy bread which had been baked in an earthen oven. There was a ¼ inch deep layer of fat floating on top of the stew, but it was so tasty and I was so cold I didn’t care! The woman said to me with a wide smile, “You like the food?” “I made it myself.”

In the resort areas along the coast breakfast consisted of three eggs per person, either boiled or as an omelet, chewy bread, very thinly sliced pieces of ham, yogurt, white cheese and orange juice or coffee. But in the poorer places inland, it was only eggs and bread with coffee.

If we stayed the night in an apartment with stove, refrigerator and dishes, I would buy and boil eggs for breakfast and to carry to eat during the day along with bread, cheese and fruit.

For lunch on the road I usually stopped at a market and bought the smallest piece of bread I could get and some Gouda cheese and a liter of orange juice (which I diluted in my water bottles for the day) and a tomato, cucumber, pepper, peach, orange or banana.

Coffee was Turkish~three times a day~breakfast, lunch and mid afternoon. It was strong and sweet so a tiny cup sufficed. I learned to “linger” over meals and coffee. No one is in a hurry. Dining as opposed to fast food is the rule.

At one apartment I rented for five days the owner had his own wine still in the backyard. Twice he brought a bottle of his red wine to my door, which I graciously accepted then passed onto my fellow cyclists. He also made the “national drink” grappa which is very strong. In the fancy restaurants at the end of the meal the men are served grappa and the women are served a lighter and sweeter liquor. The waiter makes certain that women don’t drink the grappa~it is only for men!

Accommodations

About 2/3 of the time we stayed in private apartments in the homes of people. For the most part these were very clean and well kept. However, a couple of places were dirty and had fleas or bed bugs. In the larger cities, we stayed in hotels which ranged from five star down to one built by the communists in the 40’s which had black mold growing in the shower and on the outside walls. However, in everyplace the sheets were always pressed and clean. Toilet paper and towels are small and scarce. No little bottles of shampoo, conditioner or lotion were to be found anyplace. Washing is hung out to dry~no dryers. Washers hold about 1/3 of what ours do. I washed cycling clothing in the sink nearly every night because sometimes it didn’t dry overnight. We are so spoiled!

Looking Back~

I can truly say that this was one of the greatest adventures of my life and the hardest cycling trip I’ve ever taken. I wasn’t expecting so much climbing. The climbs around here now seem to easy. Would I repeat it? Yes! if I could just figure out how to avoid that “killer” 26-hour trip from Cavtat to Hurricane.