Words by Alex Crevar Photos by Tamás Varga
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IN THE NOW A tour from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina highlights the Western Balkans as the next adventure travel powerhouse WORDS BY ALEX CREVAR PHOTOS BY TAMÁS VARGA 20 ADVENTURE CYCLIST FEBRUARY 2018 ADVENTURECYCLING.ORG 21 e pedaled from Croatia’s southern remain in the now. We were conditioned Still, our desires — on a tour billed as tip, on the Adriatic Coast, north to keep our collective eye on the fresh equal parts culture and cycling — did not Wto the mountains and into Bosnia landscape, the path ahead of our front lean on the pith-helmeted need to chart and Herzegovina. After crossing the tires, and each new dawn as we rode into virgin territory. Instead, our goal was to border, a curtain of charcoal gray clouds the future and the heart of the Balkans. see this complex region with new eyes. and rain gathered and began to creep As with any cycling tour, each For millennia here in Europe’s behind us, swallowing up blue sky as it new dawn meant our posse was busy southeastern corner, kingdoms have went. Over the next few days, the storm gobbling down breakfast, drinking expanded and contracted, cultures have would reappear at intervals in our rear copious amounts of coffee, and stuffing fused, and the art of hospitality has been view. It was, however, polite — like a jerseys with energy bars. From the perfected. Winston Churchill once said, shy stray dog. It played hide-and-seek outset, however, there was something “The Balkans produce more history than between bluffs and across plateaus. It different about this journey. We were they can consume.” It is more accurate sniffed at our group. It even mustered the to say the region was forced to consume courage to lick our legs a time or two. “The Balkans produce more history than it would prefer. For the most part, the storm The Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman remained at a safe distance from our more history than they empires all staked claims to chunks of gaggle of six cyclists during the five-day, can consume.” the peninsula. The Venetians snatched 260-kilometer (161-mile) cycling tour swathes of the coast. Napoleon set up from seaside Dubrovnik to the ancient riding across one of the continent’s rare shop for a while. The Austro-Hungarians Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. All the undeveloped and unsullied multiborder colonized the area until World War I. same, the weather system’s existence regions. Gardens and fruit trees aproned “Beautiful mountains and isolated was important; it provided both a siren solitary stone houses at the base of valleys contributed to the hardiness of song and a Pavlovian reminder. The the Dinaric Alps that cut across the the inhabitants and enabled a patchwork deep mauve clouds were mesmerizing — Western Balkans. Free-roaming goats of microcultures to take root across these swirling above craggy hills and sweeping in meadows of wild yellow lilies and countries,” said Vjeran Pavlaković, a through green river valleys — but blue anemones didn’t bother looking historian and cultural studies professor the lesson was clear: stay focused and up from their nibbling as we passed. In at the University of Rijeka in Croatia, roll forward. Stay ahead of the squalls many places, we could have been riding when I contacted him about the region’s enveloping the immediate past and through the 19th century. misperceived identity. “The dominant 22 ADVENTURE CYCLIST FEBRUARY 2018 Riders tackle a climb on Bjelašnica Mountain to the village of Umoljani. The tour took six riders — from the U.S., Bosnia, and Holland — over multiple mountain ranges. narratives of war, so often manipulated by Olympic Games outside Sarajevo. “For in the sea. There was the smell of both local politicians and foreign rulers, cycle tourists,” said Johnson, “the plan is honeysuckle and trees plump with obscure the fact that the diversity of the to mix low traffic and rural routes that will figs. Cicadas chirped in a metronomic Balkans actually resulted in a vibrant yield breathtaking views that likely haven’t rhythm that reverberated in the heat as exchange of ideas, traditions, rituals, changed much for a millennium or two.” we passed crumbling, waist-high rock cuisines, and arts, revealing a fascinating The group flew into and gathered walls — constructed and reconstructed palimpsest of cultures and entangled in Dubrovnik. The famously walled histories waiting to be properly discovered.” city (of recent Game of Thrones fame) “The same forces that “The same forces that impeded so- dangles over the sea and acts as a mass called ‘modern development’ for most of tourism magnet for Croatia’s Dalmatian impeded so-called ‘modern the past century in the Western Balkans coast. However, we quickly escaped the development’ for most of have made it possible for us to experience UNESCO World Heritage Site’s medieval Europe much as it was centuries ago,” Jim fortifications and the cruise-ship, selfie- the past century in the Johnson, the founder and president of stick–waggling crowds jostling for elbow Western Balkans have biketours.com — and one of the excursion’s room. We started our ride south of town, two host companies — told me over the in the country’s Konavle region, which made it possible for us to phone from Chattanooga, Tennessee, runs to the Montenegrin border. Our experience Europe much before his arrival for our adventure. world went from ice cream and tchotchke Johnson has become a regular in the region shops to the classic Balkan experience of as it was centuries ago.” over the last few years, but he was making the sort the tour had promised: solitude his first trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina encapsulated by mountains to the as a matter of birthright since before the (henceforth referred to simply as Bosnia). northeast and the sea to the southwest. Slavs came to the Balkans in the sixth Our route, he said, would take us mostly We cycled through rolling hills, up century. Olive groves and vineyards on asphalt with stretches of dirt road. The gentle climbs, and down long, mild leapfrogged each other within these tour would be eight days total consisting of descents. Reaching a crest felt like flying. ancient plots, the chain broken by five days of riding with segmented stages Views soared across the Adriatic, where villages that had sprouted along the passing through the cities of Trebinje, the white wake lines from sailboats, undulating road. Catholic churches, with Mostar, and Konjic, on the way to the fishing skiffs, and ferries crisscrossed steeples and iron bells, punctuated the mountains that hosted the 1984 Winter and created fading tic-tac-toe boards stone-pile skyline. Outside of Popovići, a ADVENTURECYCLING.ORG 23 poster advertising a local soccer tournament was tacked go from having no expectations, to being surprised, to next to death notices on a public announcement board asking why more people don’t know about the Balkans — beside a chapel. especially since we’re a bus or boat ride from Italy.” “Konavle is great for cycling because it has all varieties To say something exceeds expectations when there of terrain: flats, ascents, and downhills,” said Tomi Ćorić, are none is, at best, a backhanded compliment. With the a tourism operator from Dubrovnik who cycled with us Western Balkans, which includes countries that were once for the day. Ćorić’s company, Epic Croatia (epiccroatia. part of Yugoslavia, plus Albania, success isn’t coincidental. com), leads bike trips throughout the region. As we Cosmically speaking, people who end up here were meant rode, he explained that this part of Dalmatia is a big to — tourism’s version of “preaching to the choir.” surprise for people, especially compared to Dubrovnik. The more logical explanation is that visitors who find “The valley and Ljuta River provides an escape from the their way here are typically more evolved travelers and crowds. Life here is focused on the farms. Fishermen have already seen the tourism spots in Western Europe. still work the waters in the old-fashioned ways. Even the They understand the inverse relationship between [folkloric] costumes and accents are different.” commodified, seven-day, 14-city bus tours and those For lunch at Konoba Vinica (konobavinica.com), we sat centered on authentic experiences. As Joubert would often at a wooden table on the bank of the Ljuta River and ate repeat, mantra-like, during the ride, “This is next-layer trout and vegetables baked in parchment paper. We drank tourism.” At nearly every curve along the road, our journey glasses of local, chilled red wine. It was our first post-ride bore this out — not with magical, once-in-a-lifetime meal as a group, and we were quickly adjusting to the moments, but with magical, everyday Balkan moments. embarrassment of unpretentious cultural riches. Villagers “It was the right time in my traveling career to come to sold honey, wine, oranges, and rakija (locally made the Balkans,” said Erica Bower, 25, a member of our group schnapps) by the side of the road. Old men walked next to from New York. Bower, a climate change specialist at the their donkeys loaded with hay and waved as we passed. UN Refugee Agency in Geneva, Switzerland, was making “The Western Balkans is an adventure travel her first visit to the region. “I’ve spent a fair amount of wonderland because the region’s strength is real time in Western Europe and sporadic periods of time experiences rather than packaged product,” said Thierry in the Middle East and in Asia, but each as discrete and Joubert, sitting on a stacked-stone wall next to his bike separate experiences.