Croatia is one of the newest members of the European Union, famous the world over for what it offers tourists — especially its beaches.
During our Balkans cycling tour we passed through Croatia twice. The first time crossing central Croatia, from Slovenia into Bosnia; the second time from Bosnia into Montenegro along the coast, with a stop in Dubrovnik.
Pedalling through the front line
When we decided to cycle through central Croatia in an attempt to reach the Bosnian border as quickly as possible, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.
I'd found a series of back roads winding through forests, bypassing every town, and was confident there'd be very little traffic. And there was — so little that we went hours without passing a single car.
Those old roads took us somewhere completely different from the Croatia we'd seen during our hitchhiking days. They dropped us right into one of the front lines of the Croatian War.
Forests in every direction, and more forests. Not particularly inviting ones either — warning signs at the roadside kept reminding us of the landmine danger.
Every now and then we came across ruined buildings, bombed and riddled with holes and craters. Signs of a recent war that has left its scars on the Croatian people.
Despite the unease, we found a clear stretch of road and a reasonably well-trodden field where we figured it would be moderately safe to wild camp.
Croatian hospitality
The next morning, minutes after loading up the panniers and getting back on the bikes, the sky closed in and it started to rain.
We pedalled through the downpour for the next few hours, the deluge building steadily, our clothes soaking through at an exponential rate.
Eventually we spotted a larger village, saw a porch on one of the houses, and decided to stop and shelter under it, trusting that nobody would be cruel enough to send us back out into the rain.
It was around midday and the house looked empty. An hour later a woman appeared and asked what we were doing there. Using a mix of Russian, German and sign language, we explained that we were travelling by bike, it was pouring, and we were sheltering under the overhang.
She told us her son lived there and would be home from work soon.
The owner arrived back, saw us standing in the cold next to our bikes, and without much delay invited us inside — where he treated us to conversation, home-cooked food and a hot shower.
Chatting with him we learnt that this large village had been a town before the war, but the people who fled during those dark years never came back. We listened, fascinated, to his life story, and settled into the warmth of his home and the hospitality he offered.
Well into the afternoon we decided to push on for a couple more hours. Everything was sodden, night fell, and we couldn't find anywhere to pitch the tent. We kept pedalling, uphill, sweeping our torches across the hillside looking for a half-decent patch of ground.
After a long search we spotted a small settlement and made straight for the first house, asking whether we could camp in the garden. The young woman who lived there welcomed us warmly and gave us a patch of lawn for the tent, fretting gently over whether we'd be too cold out there.
Unfortunately her dog didn't share the welcome, and it barked the entire night without letting us sleep. By morning it was so exhausted from the night's performance it didn't even stir as we spent a few hours drying out the tent, sorting our kit and cooking.
Tourist Croatia: Dubrovnik
After several weeks cycling through Bosnia we returned to Croatia. Unlike our previous crossing, this time we were riding out of a danger zone rather than into one.
This sliver of Croatia squeezed between Bosnia and Montenegro is so thoroughly developed for tourism that the forests are clear and mine-free — the polar opposite of Bosnia, where we'd just ridden a path riddled with landmines and blast craters half a metre from our route.
After a long descent we rolled into the old town of Dubrovnik, though navigating the city with loaded bikes is pretty limited given the sheer number of steps and stairways that fill the place.
Dubrovnik is, without question, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. A few hours wandering its streets and it went straight into my European top tier alongside Prague, Kraków, Budapest, Edinburgh and Venice.
Hotels, restaurants, bars, souvenir shops — Dubrovnik runs on tourism. Unfortunately for us, the kind of tourism on offer wasn't aimed at people like us, and the only free thing in town was 20 minutes of free Wi-Fi at the tourist office.
We needed to upload photographs for a post. Needs must, so when the first 20 minutes ran out I changed my laptop's MAC address and helped myself to another 20 minutes. And another. Meanwhile we took full advantage of the tourist office's plug sockets to recharge our phones, laptop and battery packs.
After that, with no free accommodation to speak of, we found a couple of benches on one of the back roads leading up to the main highway and spent the night there, sleeping with a view over Dubrovnik from the heights.
Warmshowers at a Croatian campsite
It had been a month since our last Warmshowers stay, so we woke up delighted simply at the prospect of a hot shower at the end of the day.
Our route took us towards Montenegro through villages, forests and mountains. In the middle of nowhere I heard "Hello", then "wait!" — and the next thing I saw was a pomegranate flying in my direction, then another.
One of the neighbours was giving us pomegranates, lobbing them across the road for us to catch mid-ride. "Thank you!" And what pomegranates they were — the sweetest we've eaten to this day.
We finally arrived at the Warmshowers member's campsite: a retired Croatian man who'd spent much of his life in Canada. He greeted us in his underpants and pointed out where we could pitch the tent and where to find the garden hose for a shower.
For a split second we couldn't hide our faces falling. We'd spent four days pedalling through Bosnia and Croatia with this shower in mind. And our Warmshowers host turned out not to have a hot shower. Ironic. Still, we enjoyed the hose and gave ourselves a thorough soaking, even if it was pretty chilly by that time of day.
Saying goodbye to Croatia
And that was our last day in Croatia: in the middle of a forest, watching a gorgeous sunset, chatting with our Croatian-Canadian host in his underpants, sharing a local wine, and getting drenched by a garden hose.