Day 23: Island hopping from Peljesac to Korcula

Prapratno – Korcula 61.58km 🚴‍♀️ 4.12.27 ⏱ 14.6km/hr ⬆️ 865m ⬇️ 840m

Oh my god what a terrible night it was 😖. On a good note, the stars were plenty and pretty when Mas got out of the tent for a pee-break and just to get out of that sauna. On a bitter note, the tent ⛺️ sucks! Really, we love that thing, it’s great, it saved us many times, but it’s too small!! And too hot!! Anyway, after a crappy night we got up bright and shiny (not so much), packed our stuff back on the bike and had breakfast. Some bread 🥖 with cream cheese 🧀 we bought at the campsite market. Later we would find that this wasn’t the best breakfast since we were hungry the whole day.

We went down on a 10% hill yesterday just before hitting the campground, so we had to go up that thing first thing in the morning. It was not good. It seemed the climb only ended after like 8km. The road went slightly up and up and up and drove us insane. We had no speed and we had only cycled about 11km in the first hour. It felt like we weren’t getting anywhere. Also, the road was just kind of boring. Except for the dead dog 🐕 on the side of the road, so sad. We have been so spoiled with nice back roads and great views that a well paved not too busy main road surrounded with trees and a great Christmassy🎄 smell just doesn’t do it anymore.

About 20km in we had a great espresso and a snelle jelle at a winery (really, how pathetic are we, coffee ☕️ instead of wine 🍷). We were surrounded by vineyards for almost the entire day. Peljesac island produces wine, olive oil and liquors 😍.

Things got better once we got off the main road. Real climbs, real downhills, stunning views, sharp turns, a little town every now and then with some bars and a grocery store. Zuljana was the first one, very cute little town. We had a sultana in Zuljana, no we didn’t cause we didn’t bring them. Trestenik was the second one. A very beautiful and peaceful coastal town. No tourists around and surrounded by hills with grape 🍇 vines. We stopped at a local shop to get shome chocolate muffins and watch three cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 fight each other until a very old lady 👵 with a stick came to break them up.

From here we had to go up this huge hill on a path that looked like a hikers trail, but it ended up to be an absolute treat. It was so amazingly beautiful. There were some other day cyclists 🚴‍♀️ going the other way, but other than that it was pretty much quiet. Except from a Polish family giving us thumbs up 👍🏻 .

After a lot of up and downhill we reached the tunnel we had to take to cross the mountain. At that point we were ready set up camp ⛺️ in the tunnel since it was so nice and cool. But yeah, smart as we are we didn’t. From there we had another bit of a climb before it was mostly downhill into Orebic.

The view of Orebic on the right and Korcula island on the left

We cycled towards the ferry, had a little chat with a Dutch couple on bikes about our trip and cycled onto the ferry after. A horrible dude from Austria with his cranky sour 🐱 wife almost almost drove over Suuz’s foot and instead of apologizing he screamed at us. We gave him some angry looks, Mas wanted to punch him in the face, but what the hell, we are on a holiday! People get really cranky when it’s hot ☀️.

We got off the ferry on the other side, in Korcula, where we took the fast route (dirt and gravel) to the apartment we booked. Suuz phoned the lady 👱🏻‍♀️just before we went down to the boulevard. Smart decision since the apartment was up the hill. The lovely host Helena advised us to take the higher road saving us a big climb!

Since we were at the ocean we went for our daily swim. The ocean was awesome! Little cold but not shivering cold. Just the way we like it. In the meantime Helena did our laundry and even hung it out to dry (she insisted). It was a good afternoon. We spent the rest of the day figuring out where to go after we get to Split, but we did not make a decision yet. Once we got hungry we ventured into the cozy old town of Korcula, where we tried to satisfy our food cravings at an Asian place. It was unexpectedly great 🦐 🍜 🍛. We really miss Asian food! We were still hungry afterwards so decided to go to a little wine bar next door to try the local vintage 👌🏻.