Friday, December 4, 2009

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today: 55.51 km
Total trip distance: 2262 km
Max speed: 44.72 km/ hour
Average speed: 12.29 km / hour
Total time biking: 4:59
Total days biking: 40
Spending: 506 kuna (about $100 or 67 euros)

We left Vjeko’s apartment before the break of dawn in order to catch a 7:00am ferry to the Croatian island of Hvar, one of close to 1500 islands along its coast. As we were searching for the right pier, we found a young man in his late 20s or early 30s waiting for the same boat. “Can I help you?” he asked, smiling. “Yes, is this the boat for Starigrad?” we asked. “Yes, it is.”



As he approached, I could see from the street light that he had both his ears pierced and wore sneakers, jeans and a hoodie. He was unusually friendly and talkative. “Hvar Island is good for cycling.”

A truck driver delivering tea, coffee and chips, he advised us on roads to take (there are only two on the island, one new and very much unknown) before introducing himself.

“My name is Stjepan Radic. I’m named after a big man in Croatian history who appears on the currency.”

“Was he a president?” I asked.

“No, he led the movement for Croatian independence,” he answered. “But in 1928, he was shot dead. They (the Serbs) shot him. Boom.” He made a pistol with his hand and feigned a shot. “Where are you from?” he asked.

When I said Canada, he began a long ramble about a dog from Newfoundland who once saved 12 people in a shipwreck and has a statue built after him overlooking the water. Stjepan had a dog like him once.

“And you?” I asked. “Where are you from in Croatia?”

“Here, Split!” he answered with pride.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“Yes, I love my city and my country. I have traveled a lot in Europe. I drive my truck in France, Belgium, Germany. Every place has something beautiful, but I love my country.”

With that, trucks began boarding the ferry. “I have to go!” he said as he ran off. We saw him a few minutes later pulling a huge white truck into the ferry and met him again in the seating area.

He told us of a beautiful new road, barely used, south of the main road along the island’s coast. But it would add a few kilometers to our ride across the island and we would have to cross a 5km stretch of gravel to get to it, he warned.  “Ok, now I go down there. There’s one couch on the ship – just one – with no arm chair in the middle. I sleep.”

We disembarked in Starigrad two hours later and decided to take the riskier but more rewarding route. Within one kilometer, I felt I was going to puke. It was a quick reminder that two weeks off the bikes was probably not the best idea. Richard wasn’t doing much better. “I’m dying,” were his exact words when I met him halfway up a hill. After three hours of biking the mountainous island, we had cycled only 26km.



The ride, however, was beautiful, just as Stjepan had promised, reminiscent of Cinque Terre’s jagged rocks jutting out of the earth, with small stone houses topped with red tile roofs forming small villages along the way. Old ladies waved to us and we saw what Richard believed to be Greek stone formations used for trapping water, and still used today.



Stjepan had also told us of a hand-made tunnel along the way. What he neglected to tell us was that it had no lights whatsoever. It was like entering an infinitely long cave with a blindfold on. Of course, we couldn’t turn back and it was the only way to go forward. Within seconds, I got off and walked my bicycle. Richard was up ahead. He called back to me: “Heba?” He had turned ha;fway through the tunnel but couldn’t see me. “I’m coming!” I called back. He couldn’t hear me. “Heba?” he called again. It took two more tries until he heard my reply. (Look carefully and you'll see the small opening at the other side of the tunnel)



I moved ahead gingerly, but the further in I got, the darker it was, as the hole at the entrance no longer lit the way. Over time, my eyes lost their sense of reality and I couldn’t see a thing. I was literally walking in pitch black with no idea where the walls where, whether there was a big hole in the ground or whether a car would come and trap me in the one-lane tunnel. Like Richard had done before me, I walked into the wall. I took out my headlamp to try to light the way, but the batteries were so weak, I couldn’t see past my handlebar bag to the ground or the walls. I had enough sense left it in me despite my fear to take the red flashing light off the back of my bike and used it instead. Twice, cars passed me, and I hugged the wall to avoid being hit. When I finally got outside, Richard had three worlds for me: “That was traumatizing.”

We rode into Jelsa, the biggest town on the island, where every bar/restaurant we found was closed during the off-season.

“You want to eat?” a loud voice boomed.

We looked up to find a frenetic man on a scooter fly in. “Follow me!”

He led us across the street to the only open restaurant in town, where we met three French guys we presumed to be the only other tourists in Croatia at this time of year.

Today was the first day we really felt crazy for cycling in December. With the mountains, the wind and the threat of rain, we thought maybe we should have gone straight to Greece for warmer weather.



25km short of the island’s end, I just couldn’t go any further after a day of almost uninterrupted uphill. It was already near pitch black on a mostly uninhabited road without lights. We found a closed hostel across the street from a church with flat, grassy ground where we could pitch out tent. But camping from 4pm to 7am in this weather, we’d probably freeze. We stopped to ask the man who lived at the scary-looking house next door if there was a ‘Sobe’ or room for rent in the surroundings, secretly hoping he would invite us in.

“Govorite li Engleski?” I asked if he spoke English. “Malo,” he answered. Badly.

“Sobe?” I asked. He told us to hold on while he scurried to his phone and made a call. When he got no answer, he told us to wait there and jumped into his car. He returned five minutes later with a blond woman and, to our surprise, keys to the hostel.

“Not many customers these days?” I asked Blondie, as we entered the three-room pristine hostel, which we would have all to ourselves.

She shook her head. “The last people we had were last month.”

“Are our bikes safe outside?”

“Yes,” she answered, almost laughing. “There’s no one around here.”

We were so grateful, we didn’t care that we ended up paying 30 euros for a place with no running water, no heat and electricity that cut out once during the night. At least we were out of the cold—or at least the rain.