The Sailor Went to See the Sea
Day 3 - August 1
The day started a bit grim, perhaps due to my mood, I had not had one of the best nights ever behind me - but, luckily, I did not get wet. After packing up my tent, I reached the town of Kocevje, where I had a big breakfast at a sparkling new Spar supermarket, they were nice enough to charge my phone. I was mildly frustrated, there was some construction going on in town; I misunderstood a sign and made a large detour of on a bumpy road, oh well. I was cruising through villages in the initially flat landscape, when a strong climb started and I thought this would last till the Croatian border, which was about 20 kilometers away, after all, most border crossings are at the summit of mountains - but no, here it was actually soon downhill, reaching a river, called Kolpa. Not far, was a huge castle (the second largest in the country), called Kostel - it was a tough decision, but I decided not to visit it, but to ride further.
Next to the river and not far from the border crossing there was a big music festival going on, with teenagers chilling - waiting for the evening, when the concerts would resume. The border crossing was a breeze, the lady at the booth did not even bother to lift her eyes. One comment: this is a Schengen border, as Croatia is not in the circle of countries you can move freely between. I had a rest on the Croatian side.
Remember, I had thought the crossing would be at the top of a mountain - well, the uphill part started on the Croatian side. It was a rather fatiguing 11 kilometer climb to the town of Delnice (at an elevation of some 700m) - the town itself was not so intriguing, it was the nature around it that was beautiful, an outdoor sports paradise, including skiing, rafting and rock climbing.
Little did I know that I was not done climbing, now I was on a major road (number 3, if I recall correctly) with little traffic (as it ran net to a motorway) and this road kept creeping upwards, not too steep, but continuously. There was a big lake called Lokve Lake, I was tempted to go for a swim, but the nearest beach meant a 5 km detour (downhill, but then you have to creep back up), I had no appetite for that. Apparently, some of the the Winnetou movies were shot in this region, at least there were signs (in Croatian) about this. Later I spotted signs to the Risnjak national park, which I visited a many years ago on another bike trip, where I ended up cycling through the Balkans, all the way down through ex-Yugoslavia to Albania, then took a ship to Bari in Italy, then biked south to Reggio de Calabria and finally to Messina in Sicily.
I was glad to have reached the summit at 880 meters and even more glad to have spotted the Mediterranean Sea from high above, it was a gorgeous sight. It was evident that I just have to drop down to the coast - no more climbing for the day, or so I thought. There were two roads to the coast and I took the one with less traffic.
Cruising on the way down, I crossed a major motorway and had a nice view of the Croatian mountains flanking the coast.
I spotted the bridge connecting the island Krk, which I had crossed with my friend Rupert on yet another bike trip on our way to Mali Losinj like 15 year ago, many nice memories of this area. Soon I reached the city of Rijeka, also called Fiume. As it was in the afternoon, around 5 pm, I thought some warm food would be fine. There was a small restaurant with a veranda, with yet no guests, it looked inviting - the lady host smiled and even without bringing a menu card, she said she will prepare a dinner. After a few minutes, the soup arrived; it was an entire tureen, large enough for about four servings. I was full after just two, then the entrée arrived: a pan with two stilts of pork, with lots of roasted potatoes and onions. I could hardly eat anything more, but did drink the half liter of house wine and a full liter of sparkling water. For all of this, I paid Eur 20, which was not a lot for all what I had received. The place is called Krcma (pub) Bujan, I can surely recommend it.
This is was lady serving me.
With a full belly, I continued dropping to the coast and reached the picturesque town of Bakar, a small bay with red-roofed houses. I had stayed there on the ex-Yugoslavia bike trip, this time, the only available room would have cost around Eur 500, naturally I decided against it. Here is the picture of this pretty town.
...and one more...
Now I realized my earlier mistake: from Bakar, there was a huge hill to climb to reach Rijeka proper (the other road at the pass would have taken me directly to Rijeka). I was compensated by the nice view of the Bakar from different directions, as the road curved up a large hill.
One more nice view from the summit, now it was really just rolling down, leading through small suburban places just before Rijeka. On the internet, the hotel situation was dire: no places to stay below Eur 250. On the road, however, there were signs to a B&B accommodation and reaching it, I was told they were fully booked. With some translation help of a guest from Germany who was originally from Tajikistan and speaking Russian with the host lady (Croatian is a Slavic language), I was given another address to try. It was in a large house belonging to one family, the old mother had a room to let for Eur 25. It was actually a sofa in her living room, she was sleeping right next to it in her bedroom. She asked me for some time, as her favorite series was running and the TV was in "my" room. I did not mind: after getting a schnaps from her, I walked down to the coast, about 10 minutes away, and went for a great, refreshing swim in the sunset. By the time I was done, my bed was made and the room was all mine. I slept quite well, except for having been bitten by mosquitoes a couple of times.
Here is the map, I covered some 100 km, with about 1,500m of climbing - and 2,000m of dropping.