The Bike Tour Starts
Dubrovnik to Herceg Novi
We were told to meet in the lobby of the hotel at 8:00 am. What they didn’t tell us was that we had to load all our luggage into a van, then drive a bit to the start where we would be fitted on our bikes and that would take an other 90 minutes or so. By 10:30am, we were finally ready to go and the heat was already sweltering.
The ride to the border between Croatia and Bosnia had some really long, steep climbs. I wasn’t used to the high temperatures and humidity, so those climbs really did a number on me. Plus, the ride leader was riding at least 18 mph, which is a lot when it’s that hot outside.
We crossed the border into Bosnia and rode some more. I was feeling very overheated and decided to ride in the van for a bit to cool off. About 30 minutes later another rider joined me.
When we got to the lunch stop, we had a delicious lunch of salad, fresh baked bread and a bowl of some pork stew. I wasn’t interested in the pork, but loved dipping my bread into the salty broth. I guess I needed the sodium (even though I was drinking electrolytes in my water).
After lunch I got back on the bike since I was cooled off and feeling better. We had one more big climb for the day before a long decent into Herceg Novi. That climb just about killed me…or at least it felt like it! We also crossed the border into Montenegro, which took forever since a tour bus was in front of us.
The decent was such a blast! It was long and windy and I enjoyed every second of it!
In only a day I had made friends in our group of riders. I really connected with Lynneth, who was my age and from the Philadelphia area. I felt a bond with Holly who had been in the Air Force (like me) and now was living and working in Germany. And then there was Cleo from Brazil and one of only two of the nine Brazilians who spoke good English. For some reason she took a shine to me and she kept including me in her photos. I was already deciding that we had a rather good group for this tour.
We stayed at a rather nice hotel and were so exhausted from the heat and our ride that we napped for about two hours before having dinner at the hotel. We were asleep again by 9:30 pm!
