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After some shocking weather in Slovenia and some wild camping in the Forest we stayed in a Hotel for our second night in Slovenia.. The first for our trip so far.. How nice was it to have a real bed to sleep in finally.. We didn’t realise at the time though that our wild camping experience the previous night was actually in a bear area. oops.. maybe wild camping is not such a great idea in the mountains around the Balkans… after all heather thought she heard noises in the night.. maybe it was some bear trying to sniff around the tent.. Maybe it was the central heating system that kept it away after all.. Who will ever know.. one thing we do know for sure is that we are not going to be wild camping so much any more until we know there are no more bears.. ohh.. maybe the odd koala then.. After we camped  near the  Plitvice Lakes National Park. From there we went to see the baracs caves and the lakes. On the way to the National Park we came across a town called Slunj where we got our first glimps of what we should expect in the national park.

One of the many waterfalls in this village

Just before the town in the middle of the forest we saw this beautiful little setting.

Oasis in the Forests of Croatia

It was good to have a day off and relax while the really bad weather passed. Unfortunately our plan to let the weather pass was not so  great.. looking at the weather forecast its going to be crap weather for 5-7 days.. depending on who you believe (the bbc or weather.com). The caves looked pretty cool but they have nothing on many of the caves I’ve seen in Australia (Jenolan for example). It was still a nice suprise and the tour guide was excellent. I would recommend anyone going to the lakes to make the small detour (10km) to see the caves.

One of the cambers in Baracs caves croatia

One of the stark differences between Croatia has been the number of buildings in a terrible state. Many of them pitted with bullet holes, shell’s or with little memorials of families that have died there during the conflict. It was very depressing seeing all these comunities of just ruined buildings all over the area. There are so many ruined buildings they probably out number inhabited buildings 5 to 1.

One of the many buildings showing the signs of war in Croatia

Its crazy but its a real reminder of how shit war must really be. Now we have seen the lakes and the caves we had planned to go down to the coast and travel for a while. With the shit weather we are going to head north instead to Hungary and then east to Romania missing the Dalmatian Coast. Maybe next time if there is one we will make it down there.. or if the weather improves in the next 30 minutes our route will be back on track…

Well well what can I say, yesterday was very hot at ‘only’ 34 degrees (Celcius), I was sweating by the time we got into Slovenia, after only 2 hours ride from where we camped in Italy. We went to the petrol station and was surprised to see that the Unleaded petrol was less than 1.10 Euro/ litre which when we were paying 1.33 Euro per litre 5 miles away in Italy was a lovely surprise.And even more lovely when you think that in France some places wanted 1.429 Euro/Litre.We had to pay road tax on our bikes which was 17.50 Euro for 6 months (Bugger)..We got to a forest which we had lunch on the side of the road, I threw off my jacket as I was baking hot! My shirt was wet it was so hot though the blow flies and mossies made me pay for it whilst biting my Naive arse. We saw a great camping site so decided to get some water and camp there the night. Went into “town” which was a couple of houses and a few shacks for Slovenia, there was the castle in the rock face/cave which we had planned to see it this afternoon though we put it off until tomorrow because it was late and the “town” resembled a western movie ghost town. The only missing part was the tumbleweed and the tune. We were going to take photos though thought there would be plenty of time… not to mention heather had not charged the battery for the camera since we left the UK and we had no power captain!!!.

Morning sunshine! I think not, I was awoken during the night to some “showers” and what I thought was a bear (heather), though I thought it would pass.. a little morning shower. By 7am it was raining hard and thunder and lighting was seriously above us cracking away, was quite scary at first thinking we may be struck… fried aussies in a tent.. what could be worse… thinking of the bikes. James said we should wait until 10am until it passes, though the only thing he was passing was his so called “central heating” which I could have done without whilst stuck in a tent. We played some cards while hearing the massive cracking of lightning overhead which wasn’t appearing to be moving on like any other storm. I decided that I wanted out… I wanted out now.. ASAP.. I was over James’ so called central heating which frankly I was almost passing out and playing cards was hard whilst you couldn’t actually sit up. James seemed to be Hypo on the electricity storm (and central heating) as he was jumping around like a jelly bean and hiding under the covers (read sleeping bag and liner)!! (I think he was actually sniffing the glue) I finally got him to emerge from the tent. We packed up quickly in the pouring rain, which was the fat hard rain by the way. Everything was packed, though where we were wild camped was down a hill in the forest. It was seriously slippery though we finally without any drops got the bikes out (Thanks to James’ mastery of offroad skills and central heating aka Turbo’s). We decided to forget about the castle in the rock under such seriously shit weather and carry on to Croatia. To give you an idea we had to travel 36km on a clay dirt road down what most people would call a cliff.. However the Slovenians call it a road… however interpretation is what travelling is all about.. or lack there of.

We got out of the “campsitte” and started down the mountain… every kilometre was getting more and more windy… which we did not appear to be affected by in the forest. By the time we got back to the main town it was a serious gale wind with debris all over the roads (whole tree’s and Slovenian Drivers). We decided to move on anyway. We got onto the motorway which just getting on to was a struggle. I almost stopped before merging as I felt I was getting blown off the bike and road. Going 30kms per hour I had my hazards on, seeing all the debris in my path trying to avoid while still not being blown off the bike. At one point I stopped, went to the guard rail while the wind was pushing so hard that my bike was getting banged against it. I stopped to cry for my mummy… it didn’t help. I have never ever felt such gale force winds and we were far away from the 34 degrees C of yesterday. It was 11 degrees and the wind chill factor was freezing fingers. James was literally blue. I literally almost felt like crying a couple of times as I thought I was going to get blown off my bike. Whilst I called for my mummy and prayed to god. It finally calmed down (read there was some wind protection on the road). and we exited the motorway. On the other road the wind decided to push us the other direction into incoming traffic, ok so we have had to deal with guard rail winds, oncoming traffic winds, frontal winds and from my prospective James’ winds! (read turbo) I have had almost enough and am exhausted whilst only riding 2 hours. Taking into account the wind speed indicator said the wind was going 100km/hour..,

p.s… I’m now in a hotel drinking beer very drunk writing post.. oops me drunk who would have guessed… ha ha.. heather inc.