Andy left his heart and the urchin spines in Split. The evening before we left he went to a \"pediker\" (foot specialist) to have his pickled foot treated. Biting on a towel he sat back while the twenty-or-so black needles were removed. On our last night a nearly total eclipse of the full moon cast an eerie red glow upon the old city. Most of the locals didn't even notice because they were fascinated by the World Cup Finals. Before we left we found from a local homo that there was no gay life as we know it in Croatia. \"There could be no gay bar in Croatia,\"
said the Dalmatian. Not surprising when you consider that the Croats can't even tolerate their brethren who are ethnically identical but have a different religion. It does seem odd when you consider that the average Croatian seems pretty laid-back. On our last day at breakfast we joked about how funny it would be to have sex with a local just to be able to tell everyone we'd \"done it with a Dalmatian\" and watch their subsequent facial expression. Remarkably Andy navigated us out of town on an extra quiet route. The only downsides were that we had to walk the bikes a bit on a footpath and the formidable ascent we had to make to finally rejoin the main road.
On the main road we decided we'd come upon the absolute worst drivers of the trip. Driving too close to us, speeding by all coupled with a honk just as they are about to pass win them the title. We opted to suffer the high road along the coast to escape the drivers after a beachside lunch/swim/nap triathlon by the mesmerizingly blue and clear Adriatic. Even on the high road the few drivers there were managed to get close to us on the nearly vacant road. They still honked as though we couldn't hear their cars straining to make the grade.
Cypress tree smells filled the air. Frequently the fresh tree smells were eclipsed by the smell of forest fires present and past. From high above the water we watched a tanker plane fight a fire. It made great circles in the air and through the water. First dipping into the sea to pick up its cargo and then dumping it on the hillside. Perplexed by the discrepancies between our map, roadsigns and terrain, we sought counsel from a dude and his family building a new residence. Antonio took a break from his labors to invite us for a beverage. A concentrated juice made from sugar and flowers was brought out with some cold water and served.
Andy nearly drank the undiluted concentrate but was saved by Antonio. An electronic engineer by trade, Antonio claimed that the fires were started by bad power lines. We viewed his opinion circumspectly having seen more unextinguished cigarettes thrown from cars than we care to mention. Adriatic Croats have no problem throwing butts or anything else along the road. I haven't seen some much debris on the shoulder since the southern United States. Everything went over the side from ice cream wrappers to old cars. We started counting discarded washing machines at some point to pass the time. Even with the trash I was completely floored by the physical beauty of this region.
I remember thinking to myself that this place is probably more beautiful than the coast of California. Certainly it is less spoiled by the population's crimes against it. We paused to ogle the blue water and staggering views after a white knuckle descent to the main highway. We had a new BikeBrats snack consisting of ½ liter of beer and four scoops of ice cream. The beer made for a hazy entry into Makarska. By the bay in Makarska we stopped at the tourist office where a room in a private house was arranged. The clerk's prepubescent daughter was assigned the task of leading us to our accommodation and did so very reluctantly.
We pushed our bikes after her up the steepest hills of the day, leaving us out of breath and dripping with sweat when we reached Maria's house. There we were welcomed by her warm smile and a glass of deadly resin-impregnated white wine that left both of us woozy. We somehow staggered into town for dinner where I treated myself to the biggest meatiest meal I could find -- the Gypsy Brochette. Sausage, lamb, veal and bacon came drowned in roasted onions, tomatoes and potatoes. Somehow we made it back up to our room and rolled into bed, drowned in the light of the moon.
(a)** Our hostess Maria told us that the road to [Medjugorje](../../mnt/user-data/uploads/glmed.htm) would be easy and flat, but by nine this morning we were 600 meters up the side of a massive rock, sweat dripping off our bodies. I guess spending your whole life on a steep hill can makes \"flat\" a relative concept. The view of the azure sea directly below us was exhilarating, and would have been more so had we had any food in our bellies. Breakfast was not part of the package offered by Maria, though I did manage to beg some coffee out of her. We drank it while she slurped down yogurt and cereal.
Fred, unable to function before his morning meal, looked at her with frank envy. Not feeling up to braving the hill down into town, we figured we'd stop at the first place along the way --a near fatal mistake. When we finally rolled into Ivan's café and goatisserie in the middle of nowhere, high up in the mountains which divide Croatia and Bosnia, we were ready to kill for food. The innkeeper made us sandwiches, which we scarfed down as we watched a man pull a skewered goat our of his car and hand it to Ivan to put in on the spit of his open-air oven.
The shiny mass of red tendons and eyeballs looked tasty enough to eat raw. A little further on we stocked up on more food. It was the last town before the Bosnian border and Fred was afraid we wouldn't find anything to eat in the war-torn country we were about to enter. His hoarding instinct kicked in, and soon we were weighted down with enough fruit, water, and chocolate to be mistaken for an envoy of the Red Cross. The operations at the Bosnian border are an exercise in cynicism, since Croats run the show. A guy with a gun and a uniform briefly looks at your passport and lets you by.
There is no Bosnian side to the border, no \"Welcome to Bosnia\" sign, no real indication that you've left Croatia --which is of course precisely how the land-hungry Croats want it. Nevertheless, we did notice some differences. Firstly we felt an increased presence of IFOR and SFOR (which stupidly stands for \"Stabilization FORce\", I later learned from an American who worked for them). At one point I nearly fell off my bike from the shock of seeing a trio of tanks cruise down the road towards us. Like all the other traffic, the tanks were traveling at far too high a speed to be considered safe.
Diesel-driven Mercedes skimmed our panniers, laying into their horns as they passed us. Buses hurtled towards Mostar and cement trucks announced Armageddon. Bosnians easily surpass their Croat brethren in the bad driving category. They made the last few kilometers into Medugorje interminable. I decided that making it there in one piece would qualify as a miracle. The possibility of a miracle is, after all, the reason pilgrims flock to Medugorje, a little village not far from Mostar. I had heard about the place from Peter in Copenhagen, who recently made a documentary on Medugorje for Danish television. In 1981 six local youngsters reported having visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary (or [BVM](../../mnt/user-data/uploads/glmed.htm) --an acronym we got from the Zagreb Historical Museum) on a daily or near-daily basis, usually just before dinnertime.
Some of these \"visionaries\" hold private audiences (for a fee, of course) or lead groups of pilgrims up to a hill outside of town where the first visions occurred. Neither of these activities figured into our plans, however. I thought we'd have lunch, check out the church and the scene in general, and then get the hell out and head 50 kilometers south to Neum, the only town on the minuscule Bosnian coast. It was blisteringly hot and I longed for another swim. Fred convinced me to change my mind on the day's itinerary. He said he was too tired to pedal and thought Medugorje might be worth spending a night.
Initially reluctant to spend so much as a penny in such a place, I finally capitulated. We ate in a place called Kathy's Katholic Kitchen or some such nonsense, run by an Irish girl (guess what her name is) and patronized chiefly by her Mary-mad compatriots. I quizzed her about the visionaries and she told me that the BVM normally appears to them at their homes at a predetermined moment, during which a silent vigil is observed by mass-goers in the church. It sounded pretty bogus to me, but I withheld the opinion, preferring not to have my sandwich poisoned. We checked into the Pax Hotel, an ugly concrete structure identical to every other building in this boomtown of religious tourism.
Gracing the walls were works of uninspired Katholic Kitsch; the receptionist quoted a rate in German marks. As far as we could tell, all the other guests were French, Italian and ...American. They all seemed to be devout elderly folks on package tours, and I wonder if anyone warned them that they had booked a trip to Bosnia. I suppose miracles know no boundaries. A sunset walk gave us an idea of the scale of the tourist industry in once-tiny Medugorje. Haphazard construction spread out in every direction, presumably for more hotels, more restaurants, more souvenir shops. Shiny new taxis and busloads of pilgrims clogged the narrow lane that comprises the town's only real thoroughfare.
Behind the new church (we never did find the old one, nor the original village for that matter) some sort of prayer meeting was underway under a canopied structure reminiscent of a big top, and the countless rows of empty benches on the perimeter of this showed us that Medugorje is equipped to handle even more mass-going masses. On another side of the church priests loitered around under signs indicating their linguistic capabilities, waiting to take confession or to perform layings on of hands upon invalids. Most of the Americans we came across were buried in the gift shops, pricing useless objects sporting images of the BVM and wondering aloud which rosary would be appropriate for cousin Eileen back in Baltimore.
As the bells began to toll, more and more pilgrims flocked towards the church. The time had apparently come for the special evening mass-plus-silent-visionary-vigil. We took this as our cue to position ourselves in a deserted pizzeria directly across from the church. Munching hungrily and noting the rapid onset of dusk, I asked myself if the BVM observes daylight savings time in her apparitions. Does she always show up at precisely the same time of day? Our waiter and his colleagues appeared distinctly unimpressed by the miraculous moment, and I asked him if he was a believer. He pretended not to understand.
I asked the same question of the trendy-looking girl who sold us one of the cheesier postcard albums I've ever seen. It took a while for my message to get through, but she nodded her head: \"Of course I believe.\" We got the same response from the girl who sold Fred a BVM tee shirt. We tried to bargain her down, asking for a nonbeliever's discount, which caused her to feign shock and jokingly ask for double the price. I guess it's never a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you. While the BVM apparitions remain open to skepticism (not even the Vatican has authenticated them yet), the economic miracle in Medugorje is indisputable.
km (f)** I didn't dream about the BVM this night; instead I had a strange one that involved a tiger chasing Andy and me on our bikes. Somehow I managed to have a great night's sleep despite the very loud and late arrival of 34 American Catholics from Indianapolis. We were a little disappointed that none of them were with us at breakfast at the crack of dawn. Andy had been especially keen on quizzing them on the subject of their trip to Bosnia. We ran into a couple as we checked out of the Hotel and loaded the bikes. Harold and his wife wanted to \"check things out.\"
Harold indicated that he was a skeptic so I quizzed him to clarify his comment. Less than diplomatically I queried, \"So you think that all of this is a hoax?\" I watched Andy cringe across the parking lot, he only heard that question and thought I began the conversation that way. Harold answered, \"no, I mean that it just seems that you shouldn't have to cross the oceans to find such a thing, perhaps you should look in your own backyard....\" We made an early start, exiting the splendor of Medugorje by eight. Even at this hour the sun was already hot.
Within a few kilometers we passed the SFOR (the international peacekeeping force) outpost. I stopped to take a photo of the enclave, but was prohibited from doing so. The Spanish sentry didn't speak English but did speak \"no\" and had the hardware to enforce his wishes. Even without a photo it is pretty easy to imagine: think of a million miles of razor wire, hundreds of dudes with big guns and more tanks and armored personnel carriers than you can wave a rosary at. The encampment was very intimidating, even for the Bosnian drivers. They seemed to take a break from their normal irresponsible driving to slow down and drive carefully in front of the place.
(I learned why everyone seemed especially nervous on this day only after reaching [Dubrovnik](../../mnt/user-data/uploads/glspl.htm). A bomb went off in front of the Croatian controlled police station in Mostar the night before, only 15 kilometers from where we were, injuring over 50 people.) Riding through a broad and wide river valley we passed back into Croatia thanking the BVM that some nutty Bosnian driver didn't run us over. Trying to find the small road to Dubrovnik we sought council from a pump jockey at a gas station. Though the jack-o-lantern toothed dude was convinced we should take the busy highway, Andy got him to relent and tell us how to find the small road.
A good thing too. Just a few kilometers down the pike a roadworks project blocked passage for cars and we had the road to ourselves until lunch. We even had our very own border crossing where three friendly (not) Croats sent us back into Bosnia. A steep ascent greeted us there. We re-climbed the coastal mountains entering back into Dalmatia. For the next several kilometers we climbed a grade that ranged from 9 to12%. Tough, but it afforded us a great perspective of where we'd been earlier this day. Reaching the top we revisited the familiar coastal landscape. A quick lunch of risotto and salad and we were on our way.
Andy was decidedly energy free; the climb \"did him in\" he admitted later. Our coastal path treated us to yet another afternoon of sweeping views of the ocean and steep hillsides along the shore. Ancient abandoned terraced plots ran patchwork down the inclines where olive and cypress trees grew untended. We kept noticing blemishes on the road that looked distinctly ballistic in nature. The holes looked hastily patched and I wrote them off to falling rocks or geologic instability, not willing to succumb to the paranoid notion that they were caused by the war. We reached a little village that looked perfect from a distance.
Charming quiet streets, stately church tower, sunny swimming harbor, waterside residences and winding streets made it look like an archetypal seaside European town. The illusion of perfection diminished as we got closer. We began to notice that all was not right in [Slano](../../mnt/user-data/uploads/glwar.htm). Sure there were kids still playing in the water of the harbor, but the only operating business was a café which was situated in the only building that looked whole. Every other structure had some mortar inflicted scar or more severe damage. Roofs were blown off, residences seared by fire, tilted by ballistic concussion or vaporized by a direct hit.
Here many of the \"blemishes\" on the road were not patched and looked exactly as the ones on the main highway had. After Slano we rode quietly, the enormity of the war tragedy sinking in as we pedaled towards Dubrovnik. We stopped for a drink along the way and somehow settled on having a beer in a little town called Orsan. The cafe there had tables on the water from which you could dive into the crystal clear Adriatic. Andy and the other patrons took advantage of that facility. Our waitress treated us to some \"helpful\" advice on our route to Dubrovnik.
\"It is flat and only 16 kilometers,\" she said convincingly. We were cursing her as we made the 50 meter ascent out of Orsan. It may have been 16 kilometers \"as the crow flies\", or if they had finished the bridge that was to span the huge inlet just north Dubrovnik. Instead we had to travel inland for 4 kilometers and then back to the coast again making the remainder of the trip close to 30km. The distance wasn't as bothersome as the nasty hills within Dubrovnik that finally did Andy in. After Bosnia and two very tough riding days I was ready to have a relaxing and comfortable day or two in Dubrovnik.
We found a once-glamorous commie hotel called the Argentina could provide a suitable venue for our rest. The only room remaining with a sea view was the \"politburo suite\". It consisted of two seventies decorated rooms with ceilings which seemed higher than the mountains around the city. The reception room was painted puke green and had two tasteful white leather couches and four white leather bucket seats around a glass table. The only thing missing to make the 70's imagery complete was Bee Gees and Abba muzak. The bedroom was more tastefully furnished, but the decorated had his (or her) revenge by painting this room orange.
Looking past the flawed interior, our windows and balcony were portals to the Adriatic which we had come to know and love. After rolling our bikes into our glamorous accommodation and cleaning up we headed for town. From a distance the fortifications of Dubrovnik were more impressive than I'd ever imagined. There was no evidence of the shelling that pounded the town just a few years before. As we entered the walls I felt the streets seemed just a little too quiet, almost eerie. Suddenly we rounded a corner and the city's nightlife unfolded for us. The gleaming foot-traffic polished marble walkway of Dubrovnik's primary promenade lay before us.
It was packed with tourists and locals walking, gabbing, drinking and eating. Their voices bounced off the buildings. For us the social vortex was a little too much to handle. A bite and walk is all we could muster after our tough ride. Exploring Dubrovnik's fortifications and streets would be left for the next day. The next morning I found that our daylight view from the \"green\" room's balcony was even more spectacular than the evening view. The aquamarine shoreline framed the old harbor and city. We walked to town, mounted the wall and circumnavigated the city getting an aerial tour of the old town.
Only then did the evidences of reconstruction past and present make themselves known. The first suspicious \"tell\" was that nearly all of the city's roofs had been recently re-tiled. Later we came upon a map that detailed all of the bombardment damage. I was shocked to see that almost every block of the town had substantial damage. It was hard to imagine after having seen how pristine the city is now. Angry thoughts crept into my mind when I pondered what type of conflict could inspire the bombing of a place like Dubrovnik. The remainder of the day was reserved for a BikeBrats pentathlon, bathing (sea and sun), backgammon, imbibing and reading.
It was a most invigorating event. Andy was the victor in the swimming and backgammon events, the others too close to call.