11. – 15.5.13
Croatia is THE dream country for biker: wonderful coasts, beautiful landscapes in the backland and the most important – excellent streets. All you need!
But before we got to know this biker’s heaven we had to go through water first.
When we started that morning in Lipica it was raining a tiny bit. No problem, we just put our rain jackets and trousers on and off we went. After the boarder to Croatia it started raining more heavily. The sky became really dark and opened its gates. Ok, we decided to take the highway and drive directly to the next stop – Rabac.
Good decision, we made some Kilometers quite fast and the rain was getting less heavy. Then we had to leave the highway and our hotel was only two ridges away.
When we climbed the first ridge it rained heavier again, cats and dogs, and on the street we had quite a bit of water, little rivers left and right. The color of the earth there is dark red, so we saw these red mud rivers. So far still everything manageable. Then we tackled the second hill. The rain became even more heavy, the torrent bigger and wherever the street had a little dip, it resulted immediately in little lakes. Driving down the hill, we couldn’t see the street anymore, only water, everywhere. I started getting a bit nervous, because swimming with the motorbike wasn’t something I’ve ever dreamt of!
Then the entire traffic stopped. A crossing in such a dip was totally flooded and 4 young people tried to move their car out of the floods. My heart dropped in my boots. But Peter didn’t bother and drove just through this enormous lake. The water splattered up to his shoulders and the wheels were covered in the water nearly up to the exhaust pipe. I wasn’t sure what to do, but there wasn’t really an alternativ so I closed my eyes and just followed him (guess one call that trust J). But hey it worked out well despite the fact that my hands were trembling. At the other side a big car had waited until we crossed the dip – we were extremely thankful, because he would have caused waves, which we might not had been able to cope with. The last few kilometres we pure chaos. Everywhere little creeks which changed into big rivers and waterfalls which normally would only bee small brooks. And fire service cars all over the place to help cleaning up. I was never so happy before to reach our hotel. There the water entered even the lobby, so much rain in such a short time!
And we couldn’t believe it: one hour later the entire spook was over.
The other day – we had to take a bit the same roads back – nothing. The streets were dry and everything was normal again, you couldn’t see anything from the former flooding.
That was it with rain in Croatia. From this day on we had only sunshine. Which was great as the coastline is definitely one of the most beautiful you can find around the mediterranean see. And they are not – yet – overbuilt like in Spain or Italy. And the thousands of islands along the coast add to the beautiful picture. A dream not only for biker but certainly also for sailors.
From all the cute and nice cities/villages we have seen Trogir and Dubrovnik left a strong impression. The historic part of Dubrovnik is absolutely a must to see. It’s completely free of cars and the city walls are restored exstensively, which makes it a unique holistic acient city. One can imagine how people lived here in acient times.
Ana from the tourist Office made our stay really easy. She welcomed us at the first day and put together a lot of information material and gave some recommendation what we should visit. She gave us also the contact details of Ivo, who told us a lot about the country during lunch. Was a very interesting trip into history but also to learn more about how Croatians feel about Europe and them being part of the EU soon. And Ivo helped us organising changing Peter’s tires.
