Day 21: Neum-Dubrovnik (63 km, 930 m ↑)
Day 22: Dubrovnik-Budva (94 km, 1193 m ↑)

After the rainy and stormy rest day in Neum, the sun came back on Monday. We had three nights in Neum in total. As the tourist season was over there, there was not much to do. Therefore, coming back to a tourist town, Dubrovnik, was nice.

The ride to Dubrovnik was great. We were cycling along the coast most of the time – either directly by the coast, or on an elevated road with amazing views.

The old town in Dubrovnik is beautiful, but also very touristy and expensive. We had an apartment on the hill, also with a great view, but located a bit away from the old town.

On Tuesday, when we reached Dubrovnik, we delivered our bikes to a local bicycle repair shop. I had some issues with my back tire and got a new one. The mechanic/magician also fixed my dynamo. All together cost 50 €, which was a fair deal.

Today, Friday, we left Dubrovnik and Croatia behind us and continued to Budva. We cycled along the coast first on a road which, unfortunately, had quite some traffic. Then we left the main road and continued on a more quiet road towards the border to Montenegro. We reached the border after forty kilometres. We thought first that the border control went smoothly, but that was just the Croatian control. After another two kilometres, we reached the Montenegrin control, and there was a massive queue, which took us approximately half an hour although we passed a lot of cars before we eventually sneaked into the queue.

We also took a ferry on the way today. And we made one detour because there was construction work and a lot of traffic on the main road we were supposed to take. The detour was not long, but involved some extra climbing, but it was much nicer to cycle than the dusty road we were on initially. Due to this detour and a later start today, we first reached Budva after six o’clock when dusk had already set in.

In Budva, we strolled through the old town and visited the citadel. It’s a tourist destination, but with significantly fewer tourists than in Dubrovnik. Tomorrow, we will leave Montenegro again and reach the sixth country on this trip, Albania. We met two English cyclists outside a supermarket today who are also on their way to Istanbul. So we might meet them again in Tirana in a few days.

Day 20: Imotski-Neum (95 km, 901 m ↑)

After many days in Croatia, we have reached our fourth country on this trip now, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The original plan was to cycle to Mostar yesterday, but when we studied the weather report the night before in Imotski and saw the storm warning with strong winds and heavy rainfall for Sunday, we decided to skip Mostar, go directly to Neum on Saturday and take a rest day there on Sunday to sit out the storm. Neum is located at the small spot on the map, where Bosnia has access to the Adriatic coast. We thought, it would be a touristy town, but it seems like the tourist season is all over, and the town is pretty dead.

The ride here was very beautiful though. We got up early in the morning, and it was chilly six degrees in Imotski. Therefore, we had a longer coffee break to start the day with and left when the sun had started to warm the air.

We reached the border to Bosnia already after six kilometres, leaving not only Croatia, but also the EU for the first time. We are going to go through four more non-EU-countries on our way – Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, and Turkey – in addition to Greece. Yesterday, our route crossed the border three times: Croatia to Bosnia, back to Croatia, and finally back to Bosnia again.

The scenery was beautiful. In the beginning, we crossed many small towns. At some point, we went through a village with a big wedding party. Later, we went passed the Kuti lake in the river Neretva delta, which is surrounded by mountains on all sides. One of these mountain passes, we had to pass to cross the border to Bosnia for the second time. Here, we made a little mistake: On the map, it looked like there was a shorter way to Neum than the one that Komoot (the app we use to plan our routes) suggested. After climbing up that pass (I reached it a bit before Udo), I met a semi-friendly officer at the border station explaining to me that this border crossing was only allowed for locals. So, we had to turn around, cycle down again, cycle up the other way and make the detour to take the other crossing.

As mentioned before, we can rest our legs today. I have cycled more than 1600 kilometres now, which is more than half the distance we need to cover to go to Istanbul. Our planned next tour goes to Dubrovnik, which is going to be our last stop in Croatia before continuing to Montenegro.

Day 19: Split-Imotski (83 km, 1477 m ↑)

We woke up this morning and thought that the wind we’ve had the last few days should have become less by this morning, but it was still blowing very strongly when we left Split. As we learned later in a café, this wind is call bura in Serbo-Croation or bora in English, and is typical for this region. While it was difficult to cycle against the wind at times today, it was not impossible. So we just took it a bit more slowly today and reached Imotski after three coffee breaks and five and a half hours of cycling.

The landscape was pretty nice today, but the weather was chilly and the sky mostly grey. So we did appreciate the coffee breaks extra much today to warm up in between and chat with the locals in the cafés. From the grandpa in café number two we learned that slivovitz is bad for your heart, while cognac is good. In café number three, in contrast, the barista was convinced that slivovitz is good, but you should have only three per day – one after breakfast, one after lunch, and one when you’re done with work or your bike trip.

Tomorrow, we were going to go to Mostar. But studying the weather forecast, we changed our plans today. On Sunday, they expect very strong winds and rain. Therefore, we will skip Mostar and go directly to Neum tomorrow and rest on Sunday.

Day 18: Knin-Split (110 km, 1168 m ↑)

After two days in the small town of Knin, it was nice to leave towards a bigger city again. Two days ago, on Tuesday, we left Knin and cycled back to the coast towards Split. This time, we had planned our route to follow the Trans Dinarica Cycle Route for parts of the stretch to Split, which was nice because we could cycle on small roads with very little traffic. The other side of the coin, of course, was that for several kilometres, there was no road at all. After following a gravel or dirt road for some kilometres, we reached a crossroad and could either go left or right, and then the two ways would meet again after some kilometres. We decided to take each our way – I went left and took the shorter way, which was unpaved, and Udo took the longer asphalt road. The result was that we arrived almost at the same time at the meeting point.

Later that day, we had to stop again due to the professional cycle race Cro Race. They had closed the road, and we had to wait 45 minutes until the race had passed.

Split is very nice, with a beautiful old town, but also very touristy and rather expensive. We have spent two days here now. Tomorrow, we will have our last night in Croatia before we cross the border to Bosnia.