CROATIA – OLIVE GROVES, ISLANDS AND SUNSHINE

Or… Heat, hills and an in depth analysis of Croatian road planning.

Our entrance into Croatia was somewhat comical. After enjoying the privilege of entering Europe and travelling freely for three months, on entering Croatia and leaving the Schengen zone, we once again needed to turn our attention to border controls and, in particular, the current COVID related restrictions. At the time, citizens of the EU could move in and (mostly) out of Croatia freely without quarantine. So could their families. However, New Zealanders would be required to present a negative COVID test or quarantine for 14 days. There is also a form to fill out and hand in at the border and accommodation to be booked. So, I duly got prepared. I read the requirements. I filled out the form. I found and printed our marriage certificate. I booked accommodation. Tom watched all this and, confidently (read: having done no research, never having been to Croatia and generally not engaging at all), assured me that none of this was necessary and it would not be an issue.

So, on getting stamped out of Slovenia, we proceeded to the Croatian border and handed over the documentation and passports. The border control official proceeded to hand them back to us without looking at them. I proceeded to request that she find a stamp and stamp me into the country. Thomas proceeded to say I told you so. Nice.

Thus, we were in Croatia, out of the Schengen, and we had 90 days in which to determine what to do with ourselves and where to go next. We promptly proceeded to do not much at all and spend a fair amount of time hopping between the Croatian islands in the northern part of the country. More on that below.

Knowing that we would be reaching Croatia in the summer and that the coast was meant to be stunning, I had spent no small amount of time cycling through the rest of Europe day dreaming about the lovely beach front locations at which we would stay, the sunshine, the seafood, the islands – i.e., the general relaxation that would characterize our visit to Croatia after our time constrained exit from the Schengen zone. At no time did I imagine that I would be climbing some of the most disgusting hills of our trip so far and exercising every bit of cardio fitness and hill climbing stamina I had built up in the previous three months. Unfortunately, shortly after entering Croatia, Thomas and I experienced this somewhat concerning reality check.

Turns out, the Croatian road planning authorities like to make you work for your relaxation. Any time a road is built anywhere in Croatia, I am certain that the road works team carefully considers the highest point in the general vicinity through which it would be realistic to pass and promptly proceeds to design the road directly through such point (to put this in context, our time on the northern coast in Croatia involved more vertical ascent than any other country on a daily basis and, other than the single day climb to the Gotthard pass in Switzerland, we have nowhere climbed more in a single day than in Croatia). This requirement to climb was further compounded by the fact that the car ferries (it is not possible to put bicycles on ferries for foot passengers) just about never leave from the key town on any island, so you will arrive at one point on the coast, climb to the highest point on the island, and descend to another point on said, same, coast. Lovely. I was decidedly dirty about the whole affair for at least the first week and I was only somewhat placated by the stunning olive groves, the old rambling stone walls, the wild herbs, the ripe figs and blackberries to be picked roadside along the way and the incomparable views of spectacular turquoise seas. Only. Somewhat.

At this point, a side note on cycle touring generally. Cycle touring really changes your perception of travel. Things we have enjoyed about cycle touring the last few months have certainly included the freedom that comes with it. We can basically leave almost whenever we want and go almost anywhere we feel like. We are not constrained by public transport timetables or routes, we do not have to stand roadside and hitch, we spend zero dollars on transport, we see the areas we cycle through in a level of detail that one would never get to experience in other modes of travel and we can go off-road with relative ease. However, in some senses, touring by bicycle is also constraining (not a popular opinion with most cyclists, but in my opinion (and in our case), rather true). While it is possible to go just about anywhere, where one wants to go quickly becomes influenced by the ease of getting there. If one is touring by car or motorbike and one sees, for example, a castle on top of a hill up a side road 10km away, it is no big deal to take a quick drive up there and check it out. Not so with a bicycle. Each outing rapidly becomes carefully analysed by distance and incline and our willingness to participate in such outing determined accordingly (read: those less lazy than us may have more appetite for massive extended inclines up dead end roads – we do not). So, while one does actually have more freedom than when relying on public transport and we can reach places that would not be reachable backpacking, in a car or on a motorbike, it is in some ways actually less freeing than having our own motorized wheels. Suffice to say, probably when other people visit Croatia, they note the tiny, idyllic roads and the excitable local driving techniques. After the trip, however, the fact that every road mounts a never-ending hill probably is not something that they noticed or, if they did, that stays with them as a key characteristic of the country. Not so for the cycle tourist. We will forever remember Croatia as a country of spectacular scenery – but scenery that we worked VERY hard to see!

So, with that in mind, on entering Croatia, we decided to island hop down the coast. We went to Cres, Krk, Rab and Pag Islands before ending up in Zadar to do some admin (fun things like fixing the gearing on Tom’s bike, trying to fix the camera (again), buying jandals (flip flops for those non-kiwis), my (finally) changing out the inner tube on my front tire to account for a small leak after my accident in Milan (yep, we probably did over 1,000km before bothering to fix this), etc).

Cres was a very large island and the northern section is largely unpopulated. It was also our first experience of being deposited at a ferry dock about 30km from the main town and being required to mount a seemingly endless hill only to descend to the coast on the other side of the island. The scenery was incredibly idyllic and Cres itself was a lovely little fishing town with lots of tourist apartments and not many tourists. We spent a couple of days catching up on chores from home (sadly these do not stop while on tour), writing, eating local mussels and sampling Croatian wine. We also visited Valun on Cres, which is a tiny settlement nestled in an incredibly idyllic bay at the bottom of more very steep hills. We stayed at possibly our favourite campsite ever here – there were no campervans and the tent sites were set in an old olive grove with terraced sections surrounding a crystal beach.

Next, we checked out the lovely walled old town in Rab, which sits on a jutting little peninsula and is absolutely worthwhile in my opinion. We also enjoyed a day cycling around this island, which was one of our favourite outings in the North – a weird contrast to go to a WW2 internment camp memorial (mostly Slovenes were interned here, and, following liberation, the majority of these joined Tito’s partisans until the Germans retook the island for a period later on in the war) followed by an afternoon of swimming in spectacular coves. All this was coupled with sensational sunsets, sundowners on the docks and some pretty good seafood.

In order to get to Pag, we needed to take a ferry from Rab to the mainland, cycle some 20 kilometres, and then take another ferry to Pag Island. This excursion involved some serious hills (too much to ask that the road hugs the actual coast), but we were also treated to some insane views and, thankfully, by this time we were starting to get used to this state of affairs. Pag itself was lovely in a quite different sense to the islands we had visited to this point. It was much more arid in nature and also more agricultural. While this seems somewhat of an oxymoron, Pag was littered with scrubby bush, wild herbs (in particular, sage) and lots of stone walled enclosures for the sheep that are farmed to make the famous Pag sheep cheese. The island felt sleepy as it baked under a blistering sun and the cycle was quite evocative. The various roadside shacks where a lamb (or sometimes a pig) was being slowly roasted on a spit as we passed by added to the laidback air of the place. Side note: Spit roast lamb was something of a thing in this area and, in town, one could visit what is effectively a butcher selling only roast lamb by the kilo and potatoes. Absolutely sensational for those non-vegetarians out there.

Pag was followed quickly with a cycle to Zadar. The cycle was incredibly arid and very reminiscent of Khasab in Oman for us (see fort below). Not much tourism was done in Zadar other than a wander around the old town, consumption of gelato, a visit to the sea organ (a sculptural installation where the sea makes musical sounds overlooking the tip of the town) and the farewell to the sun (another sculptural installation where many solar panels create a night time light show) for sun-downers. Alfred Hitchcock apparently liked the place.

The final island we visited in this part of Croatia was Dugi Otok (or Long Island) on which we spent a disproportionate amount of time. Dugi Otok is, indeed, a very long island and, happily, relatively untouched by tourism. There is a national park on the island, which is incredibly low key, but also quite lovely for a cycle and swim. The main town, Sali, is a small cluster of shops in a tiny harbour. We stayed a few kilometres over in Zaglav, and were welcomed with an incredibly steep climb to our accommodation (85m in the space of a 1km cycle). We enjoyed several nights staying in a studio apartment on the property of some lovely hosts, who showed up with gifts of corn on the cob, chocolate cake and figs and who spoke not a word of English. We also ventured to some sea caves, which were quite lovely, but where Tom managed to injure his back (more on that in the next post).

We did not eat out very much in this section of the trip (still needing to somewhat detox after our Italian adventures), but we did make the most of purchasing, or foraging for, various local ingredients on the islands we visited. Tom gathered sea urchins and we had them with eggs on Dugi Otok, we collected blackberries roadside for snacks on Cres, we ate figs everywhere and made some excellent fig and blue cheese salads, we used the local fresh Pag cheese to make a lemon, spinach and ricotta style pasta and the wild sage to enjoy in a browned butter sauce with ravioli and we bought local mussels and cooked them up in garlic and white wine in Cres and Krk. And I, obviously, needed to try that lamb mentioned above.

I will leave thoughts on Croatian wine to my next post (do not worry, we definitely sampled this) – but the wine regions in the south really are worth a special mention and we waited until we got there to try the good stuff.

September 2020