Pula to Zadar

Tents turn into saunas when the sun hits them and I woke up up sweating like the proverbial pig. I am not complaining about the sun though, 24C is just dandy to get you going in the morning. I went to see the amphitheatre on the way out of town. It is amazing that it is here at all….so many people have been carting off chunks of the stone to make everything from forts to the foundations of venetian palaces. These days, the arena is used to stage opera, concerts and film festivals. Funny to how entertainment tastes have evolved in 2000 years. You can check out the real story of the place here.

The big draw for bikers round here is the coast road that runs down as far as Dubrovnik. A lovely sinuous ribbon of asphalt that makes you want to let rip. The only thing spoiling the party is the traffic ( very heavy) and the ridiculous speed limits they have put on every corner. I'm not kidding, they put 40 kph on any sort of bend at all. The police only seem to be checking on the straight sections though. I had my collar ticked by one lot but they let me pass though I was clearly over the limit.

Life is full of compromises so I left the coast road and headed inland to see the Plitvice lakes, a Uesco world heritage site. On the way there, I saw plenty of evidence of the 1990s war with bullet and shrapnel scars on many of the houses on the villages. And these are houses that people were living in….Outside in the countryside, there were quite a few burned out and pock marked where their former occupants clearly are not coming back. I saw a security van arrive to take cash from a shop and the 4 guards were all armed, wearing ballistic vests and looked like they could take on a small army. All this for a local shop? Clearly, something is different here.



I arrived late i the afternoon to discover that you need to allow a good 6 hours to see the park. I got chatting to a german guy who was leaving and he gave me some advice about what I could see with my 2.5 hours…. and his ticket. Result. The park is famous for its series cascading lakes separated by dams of travertine. The biggest fall is 110m high and is pretty impressive. If you get here, this is definitely one to see and allow yourself more time than I did.





At 7pm, I decided I had to get back on the road when a gap appeared in the thunderstorms that were drenching the park. I headed south running from a dirty big black cloud which rumbled away. I figured the furthest I could get would be Zadar back on the coast and hauled ass. I have a rule not to drive at night in foreign climes but I figured that I needed to forget that one if I was to stay dry. Arrived at 930pm and stopped at the first open restaurant with rooms to rent and waved the visa card. Beer never tasted so good.