Adriatic Rollercoaster extreme (4SC2401)
So we have quite a program ahead of us today, but in return we have plenty of beautiful motorcycle routes with many different roads and landscapes from the Austrian mountains to the Mediterranean landscape of Istria. The plan for our first day is to cross Slovenia completely and ride to Motovun in the center of Croatia's beautiful Istrian peninsula. After our morning briefing, we leave Klagenfurt heading south and make our way towards the Loibl Pass. Although this is not a very high pass, it is very nice to ride and therefore an ideal start to our tour. We make our first stop on the pass and, barely an hour from our starting hotel, we have already crossed the border into Slovenia. Slovenia may only be a small country, but it has a lot to offer. With its hilly landscapes and long valleys, Slovenia is known as an outdoor paradise for hikers and climbers, but the many small side roads are also perfect for exploring this unknown country on our motorcycles. Our destination today is Motovun, a small town built in the Middle Ages, which is situated on a hill and offers a beautiful 360-degree view of the surrounding landscape.
We arrived safely in Istria yesterday and everyone is already looking forward to the opportunity to explore more of Croatia today. Croatia is a very popular travel destination in Europe and many vacationers from Austria and Germany come here to swim and hike, especially in summer. With its many small, little-used side roads and the fantastic Mediterranean landscape, Croatia is also a perfect destination to be explored by motorcycle. As we already got very close to the Mediterranean yesterday, we naturally want to see it today too, which is why the two largest of Croatia's more than 1000 islands with the melodious names "Cres" and "Krk" are our destination today.
Today we leave the beautiful Istrian peninsula and head to the Croatian mainland. Our destination today is the famous Plitvicka National Park. With its unique lake landscape, the park is one of Croatia's main attractions and is visited by a million people every year. To get there, we follow the beautiful Croatian coastline with its offshore islands for most of the day. As a special highlight today, we have the pleasure of driving parts of the legendary Jadranska Magistrala, one of the most beautiful coastal roads in the world. Unfortunately, the weather didn't quite cooperate today, as it rained quite heavily until lunch. We therefore changed our plan at short notice and mainly stayed on the main roads in the morning. It wasn't until the afternoon that the weather slowly improved and even the sun came out again. As we were early, we took a short detour to Željava airfield on the Bosnian-Croatian border before arriving at our hotel.
After the weather threw a spanner in the works yesterday, it's back to its best today. As we skipped part of the legendary Croatian coastal road yesterday due to the rain, we decide to split up the groups today. Part of the group makes up for what we lost yesterday, while the rest of the group decides to visit Plitvička National Park and then cross the border into Bosnia. For once, we leave our motorcycles behind this morning and set off on foot to explore. After all, we arrived in Plitvička Jezera yesterday and are just a few minutes away from Plitvice Lakes National Park. This was founded back in 1949 and is therefore not only the oldest national park in south-eastern Europe, but was also one of the first natural monuments in the world to be included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979. After our visit there, it is also clear to us why the park with its unique lake landscape is visited by a million people every year. Of course, we don't want to do without our motorcycles completely today and so we set off towards Bosnia-Herzegovina in the afternoon. This small country in the Balkans is still a blank spot on the map, even for most Europeans, so we take the opportunity to make a detour there. The border between Croatia and Bosnia is still a "real" border crossing with passport controls etc., which is quite unusual in Europe these days, but everyone made it to Bosnia without any problems. Small roads with hardly any traffic and a wonderful hilly landscape that is perfect for our motorcycles await us there. The little detour was definitely worth it.
We had a great time in Croatia and so it's hard to say goodbye this morning, but it's time to leave this wonderful country on the Adriatic and start our journey back north. Our destination today is Novo Mesto, in the south-eastern part of Slovenia, and there are still many exciting kilometers of road ahead of us, because today we are exploring the northern part of Croatia on mostly very narrow, little-used side roads that bring us closer to the landscape in this part of Croatia. However, the highlight of the day was not the driving, but our lunch stop. For this, we chose a 12th century castle on a hill near the town of Karlovac with a fantastic 360 degree view.
It's already our last day of driving on this tour and, as always, time passed far too quickly. But at least today, on our way back to Klagenfurt, we had another great day. As befits a country like Slovenia, today we were mainly on small, winding roads before heading back to Austria via the Paulitschsattel. Thank you all for a great tour and a wonderfull group. Hope to see you all on another tour. Harald & Daniel