16 | MONDAY, JULY 29, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
trav e l
My four friends and I rolled our bikes to
a bar one sunny afternoon near the town
of Zitomislici on the banks of the emer-
ald green Neretva River in rural Bosnia.
We stopped at Neretvansky Gusar, as
the bar is called, to restock our water
supply. There was only one problem: “I
only have ice-cold beer,” apologized the
longhaired proprietor, Nikola Bevanda,
who prefers the nickname Svabo, slang
for “the German.”
We looked at one another, and simul-
taneously dropped our bikes. A few min-
utes later, cans of cold beer in front of us
on the outdoor picnic table, Svabo ap-
peared, a half-empty bottle of off-brand
Canadian whisky in hand, and the im-
promptu party was officially on. “It’s all
rock ’n’ roll,” he said. “That’s my life’s
motto.”
Little did we know at the time that
“rock ’n’ roll” would be our motto, too —
only much more literally — for this bike
ride. It was the beginning of a three-day,
two-wheeled journey through Bosnia.
My four friends and I were pedaling the
Ciro Trail, a two-year-old bike path that
follows an old railway line from Mostar
in Bosnia and Herzegovina down to Du-
brovnik in Croatia. When I’d heard the
100-mile trail is flanked by fields still lit-
tered with land mines, runs past villages
abandoned since the Balkan conflict of
the early 1990s, and includes old railway
stations converted into hotels and
restaurants, I knew I had to do it.
The combination of recent history and
Bosnia’s stunning natural beauty was
appealing. As I told people about the
coming trip, some friends were so in-
trigued they invited themselves along:
Kim Barker, a reporter for The New
York Times; Caroline Trefler, a guide-
book editor; and the brothers Vedran
and Darko Perojevic, owners and chefs
of the Dubrovnik restaurant Azur. Kim
and Caroline arrived fully prepared for
the ride with proper equipment. The
brothers Perojevic, having lugged fold-
up electric bikes to Mostar for the ride,
were decidedly less so. And I, the organ-
izer of the trip, could have packed more
than a few T-shirts, a baseball cap and
swimming trunks. One aspect that
helped, though, is that Kim, Caroline
and I rented bikes from the Dubrovnik-based tour operator Epic Croatia, which
offers reasonably priced mountain bike
rentals and a transfer (with the bikes) to
Mostar so we could do the trail just one
way.
And so there we were, one hour into
the ride and already off the bikes, imbib-
ing Svabo’s ice-cold beer and taking
turns wading into the cold Neretva
River. It may have appeared counter-
productive, but not racing through the
trail was the point: We’d hop off the
bikes when the spirit, or a beer-selling
bar owner, inspired us to do so.
After a tour of the interior of the bar —
the walls were crammed with images of
everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Marilyn
Monroe to the Virgin Mary to the musta-
chioed Croatian crooner Miso Kovac —
we were ready to recommence the ride.
As we rode off, Svabo yelled, “Remem-
ber: It’s all rock ’n’ roll.”
We were cruising through the town of
Surmanci when we hit the brakes for an
outdoor market. We were about four
miles from Medjugorje, where in 1981
six children claimed to have had a visionof the Virgin Mary; the town has since
been a major pilgrimage stop. Surmanci
was close enough to the holy village to
get into the act of selling pilgrimage sou-
venirs. Women called to us to part with
our money for beaded bracelets, images
of the Virgin, and wooden crosses.
“Lady!” they yelled repeatedly at our fe-
male companions. “Lady!” Kim bought
a few knickknacks to give to friends
back home. And she also acquired the
nickname “Lady” for the rest of the trip.
After sleeping in the comfortable but
no-frills Motel Jelcic in the unremark-
able town of Capljina that night, we be-
gan Day 2 by pedaling past sleepy vil-
lages and across rusty iron-lattice train
bridges. The path would often gently
curve along a mountainside, revealing
its former self as a train line.
The first train chugged out of Dubrov-
nik toward Mostar on July 15, 1901, with
dignitaries seated in carriages as the
train was met by cheering crowds. In
1976, the rail line was deemed no longer
financially feasible by the then-ruling
Yugoslav government and shut down.These days it’s mostly foot-powered ve-
hicles that chug along the trail, thanks to
an effort by local bicycling clubs on both
sides of the border to do something with
this unused stretch of trail, and to help
bring tourists to a part of Europe few
outsiders see.
About five miles into the day’s ride,
we came to a fork. The signposts indi-
cated we could take the easier paved
route or power through the uphill gravel
trail that directly follows the old rail line.
We opted for the latter and were re-
warded with views of Hutovo Blato, a
nature reserve that is mostly made up of
marshland and tall, dark green, pyra-
mid-shape mountains, part of the Di-
naric Alps. Pedaling mostly uphill and
on tennis-ball-size chunks of white lime-
stone was the “rock” portion to the pre-
vious day’s “roll.” It wasn’t easy, but we
stopped frequently to admire the sur-
roundings.
At one point, we encountered 20-foot-
tall walls of white limestone. Someone
had spray-painted on the stone “Beware
of bloody vampires” in Bosnian. Vedran
translated it, and we all chuckled and
shrugged. But then a few miles later, we
got the joke. As we turned a corner, an
ominous black passageway awaited us.
Vedran and Darko led the way, pushing
their bikes into the erstwhile train tun-
nel before completely disappearing into
the blackness.
About halfway through the 400-foot
tunnel, still completely black save for
Caroline’s flashlight, we began hearing
a cacophony of high-pitched, squeaky,
chirping noises. And it wasn’t our bicy-
cles. We all paused. I could feel my
heartbeat speeding up. What kind of
army of creatures was awaiting us?Caroline pointed her flashlight up to
the ceiling and we all screamed at the
sight: hundreds of bats swirling just
over our heads. We had roused them
from their sleep, and they didn’t seem
happy. Vedran was trying to play it cool,
as we pushed our bikes faster through
soft bat guano. My tire inadvertently
rubbed against his calf, and he let out a
loud, panicked scream. We all laughed,
which lightened the mood. After we
pushed through the tunnel, we took a
breather, relieved that none of us had
been converted to vampires. Or so we
hoped. Back on the bikes, we crossed the
iron Stangerova Cuprija bridge.
There were nine more bat-filled train
tunnels to go, but at least they offered a
relief from the overwhelming heat. Any
time clouds eclipsed the sun, offering a
brief respite from its rays, it felt like an
event. We encountered a German cy-
clist, fully decked out as if he was on the
Tour de France, going the opposite way,
and our ragtag group peppered him with
questions: How many more tunnels are
there? When does the trail become
paved again? And from Vedran: “When
is the next place we can get beer?” The
German looked at us a bit derisively and
said, “About 25 more miles, I guess.”
A couple of hours later, we cruised into
Ravno and checked in to our hotel, Stan-
ica Ravno, a former railway station that
opened as a hotel last year. The first
thing we did, naturally, was go to the out-
door restaurant and order a round of
beers.
That night, our last in Bosnia beforecrossing the border, we feasted on
grilled meat and sipped local wine at the
hotel restaurant, happy our adventure
with the bats was over. The next day we
began by having coffee at Gostinica
Zavala, a former train station that is now
a restaurant. Inside was a photo of the
day the Ciro Train first pulled through
the village of Zavala in 1901. The railwaywas flanked by hundreds of people
cheering as the train chugged by. We
cheered that the path in front of us was
mostly paved and relatively flat.
Darko would occasionally stop to pick
things off trees and plants on the side of
the trail — sour cherries, hibiscus, mul-
berries, oregano — and offer it to us: a
perk of traveling with a chef. We fol-lowed the long, gentle curve that
stretched along the side of Popova Polje,
one of the largest valleys in Bosnia.
Here the road signs began to change
from the Latin alphabet to the Cyrillic.
We were now entering Republika Srp-
ska, a quasi-autonomous strip of Bosni-
an-Serb land that was the result of a
compromise that ended the Bosnian
War in the Dayton accords of 1995.
Just after passing through the village
of Hum, a haunting hodgepodge of graz-
ing cows and abandoned 19th-century
buildings, many in a state of disrepair
(and where apparently about 10 people
still reside), we began seeing ominous
signs on the side of the trail brandished
with a skull and crossbones and the
word “MINE” in Cyrillic. Then we came
upon a group of guys, some wearing
what looked like bulletproof jackets,
standing around smoking and chatting.
They were part of a Bosnian team from
Norwegian People’s Aid, an N.G.O. that
locates and defuses land mines.
The group’s leader, Nerven Stonic,
said, “We’re trying to rid this area of
land mines with the hope to open it up to
tourism — making it better for people
like you to ride through.” That’s when
Vedran asked if they had any water. “If
we did,” Mr. Stonic said, “we’d certainly
offer it to you.” Vedran made an offer of
his own: “How about an ice-cold beer?”
Mr. Stonic laughed and said, “That
would be great, but in our line of work, it
would be seriously questionable if we
drank alcohol on the job.”
The guys picked up their metal detec-
tors and went back to work, and we
picked up our bikes and pedaled the last
five or so miles before reaching the Bos-
nian-Croatian border. In the now-aban-
doned town of Uskopje, we went by the
railway station, now populated by cows.
They watched us bike by, seemingly un-
fazed, and then, in the town of Ivanica,
we reached the border, experiencing
that odd feeling of being on a bike sand-
wiched by revving automobiles.
After a quick stamp of our passports,
we coasted down a steep, paved path
that delivered us right into Gruz Harbor
in Dubrovnik. We sailed past the former
railway station where the Ciro Train
first made its inaugural journey and
right into the bar at a new craft brewery,
the Dubrovnik Beer Company, where we
had one last celebratory ice-cold beer.
“It’s all rock ’n’ roll,” we said, and clinked
our pint glasses.Tour de Balkans: Bikes, beers and land mines
Traveling from Bosnia
to the coast of Croatia,
via an abandoned rail lineBY DAVID FARLEYAbove, cycling through the Popova Polje, one of the largest valleys in Bosnia and Herzegovina and part of the Ciro Trail. Below, the town of Capljina, reflected in a mirror.PHOTOGRAPHS BY LAURA BOUSHNAK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESAbove: Setting up for an overnight stay in the backyard of Stanica Ravno, a hotel that
was once a train station; top, the town of Pocitelj, which sits above the Neretva River.Not racing through the trail was
the point: We’d hop off the bikes
when the spirit, or a beer-selling
bar owner, inspired us to do so.How the news should sound.
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