Coastal Croatia by Bicycle: Sea, Sun, Truffles
A British tour group cycles along a dirt road through the woods near Motovun in Istria.
THERE was an elegant simplicity to Zarko Bartolic’s beige 1982 Renault, a battered four-door that — if I succeeded in deciphering his Slav-accented Italian with my rusty Utah Spanish — was paid for entirely with money he earned finding truffles in the Croatian mountains and selling them to local restaurants.
The Istrian Peninsula We were speeding along through the mountains near Zarko’s home on the Istrian peninsula, and the cool morning air that came rushing in through his improvised and very direct cooling system (a large hole in the dashboard) was precious relief to our little party; our weeklong mountain-biking trip through this slice of northwestern Croatia last summer had coincided with a brutal heat wave.
But now we were rolling through the vineyards and hazel trees, and as the breeze circulated through the car, we all smiled at the half-suppressed yelps of Zarko’s dog, Nero — he could barely contain his eagerness to hunt some truffles. Even the body of the ancient Renault seemed to squirm with anticipation, doing a little shimmy as it resettled itself after each big turn.
In a way, it felt like cheating. Our original plan had been to ride mountain bikes through the peninsula, but we hadn’t counted on the 97-degree heat and high humidity, so we were limiting our bike rides to the early mornings and evenings, saving the middle of the day for auto-borne adventures like this one. (Spring, early summer and early fall are the best times for biking through Istria, when temperatures usually range from the 60s to the 80s; the place heats up in July and August, though that remains the busiest tourist period.)
When it broke off from Yugoslavia in 1991, Croatia took with it more than a thousand miles of coastline, and more than a thousand islands, the majority of which are uninhabited.
It also got Istria, a cone-shaped peninsula that juts off Slovenia and tapers to a point about 40 miles into the Adriatic Sea. It is a land that inspired James Joyce and Jules Verne, and was rediscovered by tourists only after the Croatian war for independence ended in 1995.
Most visitors stick to the coast, where villages teeter on limestone peninsulas, the pastel walls of the outermost buildings dropping straight down to the surf. But there is an overlooked magnetism to Istria’s uncrowded interior, with its diverse cultural influences and medieval villages perched on fortified hilltops.
One good way to appreciate hauntingly beautiful villages is to link them together in a mountain bike tour, traversing Istria one village each night. On a bicycle, one can cover the same roads the Romans, Hapsburgs and Napoleon used. There is an entire network of red-dirt paths through fallow hayfields and stands of scrub oak reminiscent of Southern California. Carry only a trail map, water and tire repair kits; it isn’t hard to find locals willing to transport luggage from hotel to hotel.
The terrain is easy enough. For us, in fact, the most technical part was picking our way through the maze of beach resorts and mega-campsites outside Umag, the gaudy town where most Istria trips begin. There, nude Germans were smoking cigarettes in the blazing sun while their children went wild out in the lagoon, climbing up and throwing their peers off massive inflatable rafts designed to look like icebergs.
But as soon as we turned inland, we were surrounded by peaceful Mediterranean pine forests and cornfields. The trail followed every type of lane, from narrow paved roads to smooth dirt paths along the edge of hayfields. Soon we were on the network of official bike routes that crisscross the peninsula — scenic loops that are marked by unobtrusive painted signs.
There is a monastic silence in the small, ancient towns of inland Istria, where shards of dusty white limestone crunched under our tires and echoed down the narrow alleyways. Black-clad old women made their glacial way home from spare Catholic churches, and no matter how much we slowed our pace, it still felt rowdy and uncouth to roll by on our 18-speed, mechanized contraptions, tricked out with shock-absorbers and garish paint.
In this way, we immersed ourselves for several days in the haunting isolation of inland towns like Grascice, Groznjan and Oprtalj. These towns often seemed utterly deserted as we arrived. Riding under an archway through Grascice’s crumbling walls, for instance, it seemed that the bed-and-breakfast where we planned to stay that night was the only game in town. But during our patio dinner of veal cutlets and honey-flavored grappa, we noticed ghostly murmurs coming from the courtyards behind the walls: the town was inhabited after all.
Such evenings were the best time for getting on our bicycles and taking short tours of the area, looping through the vineyards outside town as the days cooled off. There were silent old men sitting by the roadside, watching the world go by. Each traveler on the road got a long, poker-faced study from the old men, whether it was a carload of teenagers with Italian hip-hop blaring from their hatchback, or a Lamborghini tractor hauling a load of corn.
admin :: May.05.2007 :: Cycling in Croatia Articles ::