TWO COUNTRIES — FOUR ISLANDS

October 10-11



First, REAL TALK.  To ride on this trip, you have to be able to:  ride on a two lane road/no shoulder with cars, large trucks and tour buses zooming past you on your left with walls or rails bordering water on your right; be able to quickly fix a chain that has dropped off your large chain ring; weave through traffic on both sides going both ways in a crowded town as  students pile out of a school bus and cross the street in front of you, laughing and oblivious; not complain when you are pulling up a hill and you just want to stop but can't; not complain when you are going downhill at 30 miles per hour with a tour bus on your left; enjoy the gorgeous scenery as you are coping with all of the above.  Unbelievably, I was able to handle  (and at points enjoy) everything up until the last 3 kilometers which occurred in that town.  As a car finally blocked our way amidst the mayhem and Joe continued to maneuver through it all looking for daylight to go forward, I pulled out my trump card, which is, "Joe, I want to get off!!!!"  Many other bikes were walking on the sidewalk at that point and I had hit my limit.  Literally took me and hour and a half to stop shaking.

Now the good stuff.  The Bay of Kotor in the country of Montenegro is technically a fjord.  So you go through the narrow mouth which opens up into a bay at least 26 miles around (that was our ride).  At one point we took a ferry to complete the circle. Half way around we looked over the water to mountains behind mountains and the typical fjord strips of fog striated up the hills. The weather has remained FANTASTIC.  Sunny and warm enough for short sleeves.  At about three-quarters of the way around, the McCreadys had arranged a stop at a uber-quaint village cafe for a beverage and the local specialty of walnut cake (yumyumyum).  Then, whether we wanted to or not, they shuffled us onto a ferry out to one of two islands in the middle of the fjord.  It was called the Lady of the Rocks, built by sailors dropping rocks into the ocean on which they built a church of the same name honoring the Virgin Mary who saved them from the dangers of the sea.  At a yearly festival now, men in flower-bedecked boats drop more rocks while the women, we are told, sit on shore drinking wine.  So the island gets a little bigger every year and the women a little happier.

Good stuff about the boat.  I LOVE it.  After my only other cruise experience (other than military transport to Hawaii when I was 11) which was a Carnival, I vowed never to go on another cruise.  My mind has changed.  This is a gorgeous Belgian-made ship, owned by a French company with an international crew.  One hundred staterooms, one lovely dining room and two lounges.  NO neon!  It feels like a tiny European boutique hotel.  The Adriatic is so calm, we have not needed the dramamine we bought in Dubrovnik.  Last night we had a dramatic "presentation of the crew," complete with custom music selections as each crew member was introduced and marched around the lounge to great applause.  The food is wonderful.  Some meals are buffet and others (mostly dinners) are sit-down.  

Good stuff about Santana tours:  If I can ever stop being startled by Bill McCready's voice coming into our room when we least expect it, sounding like he is right in the room with you (this morning it happened at 6:45AM--interesting wake-up call), it's a fascinating process to watch him, his wife Jan and their tour team work out incredibly detailed plans about how most efficiently to get bikes off and on the ship, vans to take non-riders to sights, and making surprising special arrangements with the ship's captain.  For example, this morning, the ride (which we skipped) had to start at 7:00 AM because for the first time, ever, this ship made a private deal (because of Bill's persistent and persuasive drive to fulfill his vision) with a ferry company to slip into the harbor for the short time the ferry was out on a run, with just enough time to get riders and bikes off the boat (at 6:57, Bill is on the loud speaker, "if you are going, you MUST get off the ship in 3 minutes....2 minutes....you have one minute to get off the boat!!!!")  Then we pulled away from the dock just in time for the ferry's scheduled return. Then we moved to a different location on the island to pick up riders and let others take off for a hike before lunch.  We are choosing to save our legs for the afternoon ride on the second island of the day.  Tonight during dinner we sail to the third island today, Korcula (Joe and I spent a wondrous moonlit night there when we vacationed on the Dalmation coast 5 years ago), then disembark for an 8:00 theater presentation in the heart of the old walled city.

Our fellow tandemers are another great thing about this tour.  Everyone is open and friendly, and we are developing a comfortable community feel among the 200 of us aboard.  Lots of people from California (the home of the Santana bike factory, owned by the McCreadys), then everywhere from Vancouver to Denver to Minnesota, to North Carolina and a couple from Hungary, one from Germany and Puerto Rico.  Most couples have been on multiple Santana tours.  Jan keeps Bill's hyper-driven, passionate craziness for biking and ultra-special historical sight-visiting under reasonable control while she patiently attends to the millions of details necessary to keep us all happy enough to keep coming back and back for these trips.