Serbia

Serbia is cool. And mostly cool for one reason: our mate Denis. If we hadn´t met him, we may not have enjoyed it as much as we did.

So we caught a train across the border from Montengro to a town called Prijepolje, where we intended to ride across from here to Bulgaria. So I meet this boy on the street and he helps us with some directions, and he speaks really good english, and he takes us to this map shop where we buy a map, and then he says goodbye.

The next day we planned to buy tickets for an overnight train to Nis, after finding out that riding East would be a bit dodgy with shite roads and politically unstable countryside. So we were hanging out that day and bumped into this kid again. And got chatting, and chatting, until eventually he invited us back to his mum´s pharmacy to meet his mum and to have lunch, and then he showed us all around town, and took us to a really old monastery on bike. It was so cool.

Our mate Denis.

Denis is a very politically aware 17 year-old. He´ll probably end up being president of Serbia some day. He´s a leader of a youth group there and they do lots to help young people in Prijepolje. At present he and his friends are organising a big concert with bands, rapping, poetry readings, and other cool stuff.

So that evening we hung out in town with his friends, and they convinced us to stay another night so we could go riding the next day... we couldn´t really say no, and crashed at Denis´s folks house. His family were also super friendly and fed us loads of good traditional Serbian food. His grandma was particularly awesome.

So the next day we went for a mountain bike ride with Denis, his best mate Wildhem, Denis´ little brother Peter, and Denis´ old history professor Faruk. It was a long day´s ride, as Denis and Peter´s bikes were in very bad condition with failing drivetrains requiring Peter to walk up all the hills, and dodgy brakes which meant Denis had to walk down all the hills!

Faruk took us to some great places, I can´t remember what they´re called now. But there was an old trading route between Dubrovnik and Istanbul that ran near here and the fort pictured below was one of the outposts protecting the trade route.

Wildhem, Denis, Peter, Faruk, and me.

Below the fort was a really, really old mosque. Maybe 600 or 700 years old? Maybe older. Anyway, we went inside and had a look at a hand-written copy of the Qu´ran that was perhaps 500 years old or something. Crazy.

Faruk shows us the ancient Qu´ran.

Denis, Peter, Jen and Faruk outside the fort and the mosque.

We took the overnight train to Nis, where we were both knackered and ended up treating ourselves to a 95 euro 4-star hotel, and spent the day escaping the 38 degree heat and watching the Tour de France in blissful air-conditioning. Ahhhh...

The next day we rode for a bit, and then stayed at a small town near the border of Bulgaria. I can´t quite remember what it was called, but I do recall that we stayed in a very communist style hotel. The only word to describe this huge concrete monstrosity is ¨grim.¨ Added to that the nightclub that started pumping out music at about 1am, we were pretty happy to get out of that place.

The next day we rode through a beautiful, but very busy, gorge to the Bulgarian border.

A rare break in the traffic allowed us to take a photo of this beautiful gorge, on the way to the Bulgarian border.

Montenegro

Montenegro! One of our favourite places. We want to buy a house there one day :)


So after leaving Dubrovnik, we rode for a day and ended up in a town called Herceg Novi. This was a typical beach town with lots of tourists and crowded beaches. We stayed a night here and then headed north inland, into the highlands.

Fat Pizzas are available in Herceg Novi.

So we bought a map of Montenegro and decided we´d ride north through the mountains. There was a yellow line on the map that was supposed to represent a ¨primary¨road. It started off well, being a nice sealed bitumen windy road with little traffic, except for big garbage trucks. The road then turned to bitumen interrupted by intermittent gravel patches, and eventually after about 4 hours of climbing we got to what must have been the top - a massive rubbish dump complete with fire and burning rubber smoke. Yum.


After we pushed our bikes through the home of the rubbish men we found the road became gravel, and then the gravel stones became bigger and bigger until each rock was the size of a fist. Not good for touring bikes with 30kg of gear on the back with no suspension and slicks. So push we did.

This was some of the stuff we had to push for, for 3 hours.

It was depressing pushing our bikes downhill. Really depressing. And we really weren´t sure where the hell we were. Where was the primary road that was marked on the map? It seemed this was it. We followed it for a few hours, not sure whether we should turn back or not, but eventually we hit bitumen and were relieved to finally get back on our saddles.

We were still lost however, and what made it even spookier was that there was absolutely no-one around. It was deserted. There were loads of old farm houses that looked like they´d been bombed. It was eerie.

Eventually we found a couple of boys who couldn´t speak much english, but rang their parents who could and we talked to them on their mobile phones and got some vague directions.

We ended up camping near a small village called Grahovo, where the lovely lady at the grocery store gave us directions to a lake we could camp at for free! We were stoked. It was a perfect end to an epic day... We´d been riding since 6am and set up camp at around 6pm.

The beautiful lake we camped at, near Grahovo.

The next day we rode to the town of Niksic, which was pretty dusty and boring, so no need to say anymore except that we didn´t get lost this time!

Then we headed north towards the town of Zabljak, which apparently had loads of outdoor stuff to do like mountain biking, rafting, hiking, skiing (when in winter) etc, and was also home to the Tara Gorge. This was a spectacular part of the ride, with quiet roads (some unfortunately riddled with potholes) and magnificent views.

On the road to Zabljak.

The road to Zabljak was uphill. And lots of it. It nearly broke us, as we thought we´d be riding up to a plateau and then it´d be mostly flat, but it certainly wasn´t the case. I don´t know how high we climbed, but we spent a good part of 10 hours riding uphill of our 12 hour day. Beautiful, but buggering.

We spent 3 nights in Zabljak, I think, just resting and chilling out. We did some exploring of the area too and managed to get ourselves lost a couple of times. We hiked to a lookout of the Tara Gorge, which was beautiful, and met a couple of local Montenegran fellas who were visiting Zabljak for the weekend. They gave us some good insights into the political situation there.

We also took our bikes around the Black Lake, which ended up being a fun easy mountain bike plus a bit of hike-a-bike up the stairs, but it was certainly a lot of fun.

Leaving Zabljak was for once mostly downhill, and we really enjoyed it! Here´s a picture of the Tara Gorge from the bottom of the descent. The colour of the water was just unbelievably beautiful. We´ll have to come back one day to paddle it.

The beautiful Tara Gorge.

That was the most exciting part of Montenegro over. I think we rode along for another day or so and then caught a train into Serbia.

Croatia

We didn´t see as much of Croatia as we would have liked, but what we saw was pretty cool. The first town we stayed in was called Rijeka. It was quite a busy port city and traffic was pretty horrendous, and hotels expensive. The only hotel in the city with a vacancy was the local Youth Hostel which was ridiculously priced at 20 euros per person per night... suffice to say we only stayed one night!

Our plan was to ride down the coast, however, on a recconaissance mission to the island of Krk, we found the highway to be death on 2 wheels. We spent 2 nights on the island and just relaxed and chilled out in the heat. Lots of holiday makers and probably the biggest camping ground we´ve come across so far; it took about 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other!

One of the nicest city beaches we´ve ever been to, I reckon. It´s in Rijeka, and tucked away from the busy road by some 30-40m high cliffs which essentially isolate you from the noise and the hustle and bustle. We ended up playing classic catches with our tennis ball with a local 10 year-old kid who loved it.

Since our mission to the island of Krk was soured by the worst traffic we´d yet seen, we thought it safer to catch a ferry down to Dubrovnik, which is near Croatia´s border with Montenegro. It was an overnight ferry and we bought cheap tickets without beds... the cool thing was, well, you know how on the Spirit of Tasmania you´ve just got to stay in your seat the whole night, well on this boat you could lay down a sleeping mat and camp anywhere! Every man and his dog (yes, there were plenty of cute doggies onboard too) had laid out their mat and blankets to sleep the night away. Pretty cool hey?

So fortunately for us we laid our mats close to these lovely young English ladies whom we befriended and spent the next 3 days hanging out with. They were Nikki and Julia, pictured below.

Julia (playing her Ukulele) and Nikki, chillin´ out on board a ferry off the coast of Dubrovnik. We´d spent the day checking out a nice island off the coast that Jen´s brother Antho had worked on a few years back.

So we spent the next few days checking out Dubrovnik and some of the islands off its coast. We walked around Dubrovnik´s city walls, which was stunning at sunset, and well worth the fee to get on. You could see lots of new roof tiling, evidence of the mammoth rebuilding effort that was required after the bombing not so long ago. There were also roped-off water polo fields in the sea, just off the coast, where club games were being played... Eastern Europeans love their water polo it seems. I wonder what it would be like it the water became really choppy?

Dubrovnik, from the city walls, at sunset.

Open-water water-polo.

After a few days in Dubrovnik, we said goodbye to Nikki and Julia and headed off to Montenegro! Julia lives in Buenos Aires, so we hope to meet up with her when we´re there in January.

Slovenia

After riding over that b$%¿h of a pass called Wurzenpass we made it into Slovenia! This place was beautiful. We spent the first night in a town called Bled which sits on a beautiful lake. The camping ground was very touristy but at least it had free WiFi. We hung here for a night, but then decided to move on. We planned to get further into the Julian Alps, in the Bohinjska National Park.

The beautiful lake at Bled.

So the next day was a fairly short 35km day to Bohinjsko Jezero which is a bigger lake in the Bohinjsko reserve. We ended up staying 3 nights there because it was just so amazingly beautiful. Lots of outdoor activities to do and we had a great quiet campsite in the forest at the edge of the lake. So the hot days were filled with swims, hiking, riding, and resting.

Bohinjsko Jezero.

On one of our rest days we went up in the cable car to the Vogel Mountain area, where we did a lovely little 5 hour hike to the top of Mt Vogel. Here´s a view of the Julian Alps from the cable car as we went up. It was cool.

Up the cable car. Our campsite was tucked in the trees in that green lump you can see at the bottom edge of the lake.

After a good few rest days, we heaed out of Bohinjsko National Park and took 2 days riding some beautiful, and some not so beautiful and in fact terribly busy, roads till we got to Croatia.

Austria

After we finished in the Dolomites, we decided to head into Austria for a day, just for a laugh. So we had to climb a virtual wall of switchbacks up to the Pickenpass (I think) into Austria in raging heat. Oh and it was my birthday that day too.

The Pickenpass - a virtual wall of switchbacks to the border between Italy and Austria.

After we got into Austria, a long fast descent followed. The road was smooth but had the occasional smooth edged pot hole, one of which was a monster and claimed Jen´s back wheel. This was to pose some problems further down the track, which you´ve all probably heard about anyway.

The next section was a flat ride along the foothills... ¨boring¨ we thought so we jumped on a train and landed in a town called Albertstein where there were no swimming pools. A swimming pool was what we were craving for, and because it was my birthday we had agreed to go to a nice hotel with a pool to chill out for the rest of the evening in the balmy 38 degree heat. But no matter how hard we tried, it was to no avail and we were swimming pool-less for the day.

The next day we headed into Slovenia which meant a climb over the Wurzenpass. This didn´t seem very high, but when we got to the foot of the pass, we saw this (much to our chagrin):

Yes, that´s correct. 18%.

Luckily it wasn´t really 3.5km of 18%. But it was probably 2.5km of 13-14% and then one horrendous km of truly epic 18%. There were signs on the road telling drivers to slow and change to first gear. We were kinda already in granny gear, so this didn´t help us. We rounded the corner after said sign and both of us swore like pirates at the veritable wall of bitumen in front of us. This time it wasn´t a wall of switchbacks, it was just a wall of black tarmac and we had no where to go but straight up.

Both of us managed to get up without falling off our bikes, which is a huge achievement I reckon. We were stoked.

Slackness

Sorry we´ve been so slack in keeping up to date with this blog.

We´ve added new photos however! So see the new links on the right for photos from Bulgaria, Turkey, and Colorado.

The last time I wrote anything sensible was probably after we were in the Dolomites! That´s 2 months we need to catch up on.

I´ll summarise in later posts.