Viva la Liberta

Day 6 - August 4

My parents were off for an early start on a bus tour of the Istrian peninsula, so we said our good-byes and I continued with the bike trip - but not without taking a big breakfast at the hotel.

First, it was a very steep climb back from the coast to the main road, where I took a wrong turn and continued my climb to a nice village, however, it was a cul-de-sac. Oh well.

I continued towards the southern tip of the peninsula, passing small villages and churches. You could see the locals in the main squares, trying to escape from heat and the flood of tourists on the beaches.

Talking of beaches, at around 1 in the afternoon I had the urge to go swimming: so I chose a steep, winding road, that lead to the water for about 3 kilometers - it was nice, but then you had to climb back the entire way. In return, my beach was a hidden one, with only a few people on it.

Later in the afternoon, to my surprise, the blacktop ended and I was riding on a dirt road right next to the sea, managed to get lost a bit, but once on the right path, I took one more plunge.

Eventually, I reached the southern edge of the island, jumping in yet again in somewhat wild waters - this was pretty much the southernmost point of entire Istria. It was now getting late and I stumbled across a kind of a small, makeshift restaurant right next to the beach. It was run by a young Italian couple from Udine, the guy told me he could make either a burger or a "stick". I thought he meant a shashlik (or skewers), but it turned out to be a large, and rather tasty, steak (so much for Italian pronunciation of English). While he was busy in the kitchen, I went in for the fourth dip of the day. The stick, I mean the steak, was washed off by some good Croatian beer.

Even though there was a campground right next to us, they told me I was welcome to pitch my tent right next to their small wooden bar - and that is what I ended up doing.

Here is the approximate map of the day - I am no longer able to reconstruct the exact route - it was quite wild...was about 80 kilometers, with roughly 1,000 meters of altitude gain - and loss, with four different places that I swam at...