Barbarac – Bac 67.33km 🚴🏼♀️ 4.38.18 ⏱14.5km/hr ⬆️1060 ⬇️530m 🌡27C
So this time we did manage to leave early. The alarm 🚨went off at five to leave an hour later. We are really fast with the packing, it’s just the breakfast … It took us even longer this time since the nice host kept on giving us more food for breakfast. Not knowing we were already struggling with our own. We left the place at 6.23, almost half an hour later than planned but still early enough.
The first hour was not great. We had to cross all these highways 🛣, meaning traffic 🚗🚎🚛🛵🏍. We were also cycling really slow as the first 10km were almost only up. The speed difference makes the passing traffic even worse. Just as we were approaching our exit to a secondary road Suuz saw a car approaching and missing Mas by an inch.
Suuz finally had her first mental breakdown and yelled she hates Croatia and all the stupid @$#% traffic with completely disregard for our safety. Since Suuz cycles behind, and has a mirror, she sees all the upcoming traffic and also sees cars attacking Mas. Mas has no problem, positive as she is, she never looks back.
We had coffee ☕️in Cavle to calm down a bit. Back on the bikes we made a left turn to take a smaller road towards Drazice and all of a sudden out of nowhere the landscape opened up, the busy city was gone and everything was calm and pretty again. The road was quiet except for Mas singing: 🎶 ‘The hills are alive, in the Sound of Music 🎶’, oh the joy.
Just after Trnovica our second big climb of the day started. Lots of hair pin turns, but the parts in between were short. We cycled in the woods for most of the climb so it was nice and cool in the shade. The climb itself was pretty smooth, not too steep and once we were out of the trees the view was amazing. We could even see the ocean 🌊for one last time. We won’t be seeing that lovely thing again this trip. He gave us good comfort and joy, beautiful views and a great cool, thanks for being all your shades of blue.
climb
We went for lunch just before the Slovenian border in Rupa. Only there was no food so just a cold drink and we ate our own bread 🍞. Not a good way to get rid of our leftover kunas. We tried to buy sun lotion 🧴and tampons, since that is expensive, but after two mini markets, we gave up. We did buy croissants 🥐, score!
Anyway, we cycled on and after one or two kilometres we passed the Slovenian 🇸🇮border, nice and easy, just the way we like it. Luckily there was a money exchange office so we got some good euros for our kunas.
The first big city we passed after the border was Llirska Bistrica, or ‘Leren Biefstuk’ if you like. We kind of cycled around it. Although it was a bigger city traffic wasn’t bad at all. We did go off the road a little before 🥩 into the farmland, good choice 👌🏻. We cycled through some really cute little villages, although we did almost get bumped off the road by a bail of hay on a tractor 🚜.
After our escape into Slovenian farmland we had to get back on ‘the 6’ quite fast, but it was a nice change. Just after Llirska Bistrica our third big climb of the day started. Again, pretty smooth and not so steep. But just before we started the climb we noticed we had almost run out of water. Mas is really anal about this cause she drinks liters of water💧every day so we always get new water as soon as a bottle is empty. Anyway, she thought she had one left but that one appeared to be empty as well. Luckily Suuz is really slow when it comes to drinking water so we shared the half liter Suuz had left and tried to make it all the way up sip by sip.
Once up there was this little village and we saw a bar! We ordered a Coke Zero, a Schweppes, and a liter of cold water. From there it was less than five kilometres and hardly any incline to the bear farm in Bac where we had booked a room.
50% of Slovenia is covered with trees 🌲🌳 so naturally there is a bear 🐻 population, and there are wolves 🐺 too. The farm we had booked a room at organizes bear 🐻 observation tours in the forest only 1km away from the farm. Pretty close by.
Once we arrived at the farm (no bears seen) we unpacked, took a shower and a nap. We had a rude awakening when out of nowhere this insane thunderstorm ⛈ started. Hardly ever heard it this loud. It was accompanied with a lot of rainfall, this maybe explains why everything is so green around here. We have been in Slovenia for only a few hours but love it already. It is completely different from its Southern neighbor. And the temperature drop was actually really nice after the thunderstorm passed.
Our room in the old farm is nice as well. Good shower 🚿, clean 🧼and enough space. Bac itself is nothing more than this tiny village but it’s cute and all we want is peace and quiet right now. We went for a little stroll when it stopped raining and were the only tourists around, which is kind of a relief after all the tourists along the Balkan coastline, particularly Croatia.
Back at the farm we enjoyed a Slovenian beer and a home-cooked meal. Slovenian food is all about meat 🍖, so that might be a struggle for Mas the coming few days. Suuz ordered roast lamb, Mas had homemade gnocchi with some creamy cheese sauce. Afterwards she was gnocchi (nokkie) full. Not a lot later we passed out on our comfy beds. With the biggest climbing day of our trip so far in our legs, and the early mornings of the past few days, we were pretty beat.
