BALKAN Part 1/4 - CROATIA & BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA // KTM 1290 Super Adventure R

Six degrees up on top. Still the same. I am in Croatia right now just about eight kilometers south of Split in the middle of to another video. Yes I am in Croatia now. I've been looking forward to this day for a very long time. For those of you guys that are familiar with the channel you know I've been out for three and a half months with an injury due to a mountain bike accident and this is the first time I'm touring again and it's very very late in the season. It's the end of October and you can tell by most places around here the season has ramped down a long time ago and that's usually not the time when people travel in October. I'm smack in the middle of one of the what is considered one of the top coastal roads in the world. This is day number five for me. So before we get started of today's ride let's recap the first four days because they were met with some really surprising weather. Surprising good weather and surprisingly bad weather that I had in the first four days. Now the first day I was just all around ride was just going from Berlin all the way down to Bavaria very close to the Austrian border. I was just trying to make as many kilometers as I can in a day. It was 700 kilometer ride to get me to Bavaria. Then on day two I had a surprisingly beautiful day. I was going into Austria and I had two major roads planned. One was the Großglockner High Alpine Road and the Nordalm Road was the second one. Now the Großglockner High Alpine Road goes up to an elevation of two and a half thousand meters and it was already closed for motorcycle traffic and that's the issue when going so late in the season. I did go to the Nordalm Road. That road has a special meaning for me because it was the very first alpine road that I was traveling on any adventure bike. At the time it was a 1200 GS from BMW and that was still the first high alpine road that I got to travel. So I go back every once in a while just to revisit the place. Last time I was there it was overcast awesome. The entire ride is really really nice. Then on day number two going from Austria all the way down to Croatia and traveling through a majority of through Slovenia I had one of my worst riding days in the rain. Seven hours of riding and six hours of that was rain. Heavy heavy rain. It was a real test to all of my gear, the luggage and especially the clothing. Not all of the stuff kept me dry in the end. It was really a heavy rain ride. Beautiful roads, curvy roads. I have to come back and check out the roads again but it was torrential downpour at some point and it was an incredibly wet ride. Only after sort of half an hour before I got to my destination in Senja. Senja, I don't know if I pronounced that right, which is a town in Croatia. The rain stopped and the last half hour I had some riding in the dry and it was a beautiful ride along a mountain ridge road and you can see the Adriatic Sea, Mediterranean Sea and as I was descending down to Senja I had this amazing view. Now Senja is where I spent the night and this time I spent the night in an apartment because I was in the old town so I didn't need a restaurant in the place or didn't need any included breakfast and it was a beautiful place. Incredible how it looks. I'll show you a few images of that. That's the apartment that I stayed at and then I left for the next day and was hoping for dry weather but again it was another rain ride. So the majority of the top coastal road and the nice parts of it were all in the rain and it was heavy, heavy rain again. I just kept going because it was that wet. I didn't feel like stopping. There was a sub plant in the city of Zardar and I just kept going. Just as the day before, right before I arrived in Split, this time it was about 70-80 kilometers before I got to Split, the rain stopped. That's not the exciting part of the road anymore but at least the rain stopped and got really warm so most of my clothes actually dried by the time I went to Split and I didn't want to stay in Split. Split is the second largest city in Croatia and I didn't want to stay in a large city so I chose a place that's just outside Split, about eight kilometers outside of Split, so past Split. That's where I spent the night and I got there so early, you know, I picked a place that's really close to the ocean that's usually very popular with summer vacationers because they have beautiful beaches here in Croatia, seaside view and I was there so early that I even had time to jump into the water. Really cool. Well guys, this is the place for tonight. It looks really cool from the back end of it and you can see there are beaches both ways actually. Just tons of beaches. I mean, Croatia has tons of beaches and I'm staying right at the beach with the sea view. Pretty cool. There isn't much going on at the hotel at the moment. The season is pretty much over here so everything's calmed down and the water looks pretty tempting. It's just over 20 degrees. I might just hop in the water for a little bit. Why not? But first, first, first I'm gonna have one of these. Cheers guys. That's always the best thing, a beer after a ride. Especially when you're still in full gear. Leda beer. Here we go. This is the start of day five. The weather forecast is very similar to what it was the past two days. I'm just happy for every moment I can ride in the dry. Right now it's dry. I'm wearing the rain gloves already. I'm getting ready for rain. It's relatively warm. It's 22 degrees at the moment so I took the mid-layer off because I would be too warm. Yesterday I had to put it on in the middle of the ride because it was I was getting really cold in the rain. I'm enjoying this at the moment. It's a beautiful view. It's 9 30 in the morning. So this section of the coast road is called the Jarkanska Vagastrala. So the coast road goes all the way from the northern tip of Croatia all the way down to the southern part of Croatia. Most of it is in Croatia but it goes through Bosnia Herzegovina and it goes through Montenegro. So it's a really long road. It just goes along the entire coastline here. So you can go here for a few days and just travel along the coast. So let's start riding see what the day brings and I'll tune in once I'm in the fastest sections of this road. So this is where I'm going all the way south. I don't even know if it comes across on video like this but it's beautiful. We're back in business after two days of riding. When the roads are actually dry it's exciting. Yes yes yes until you hit the next town. We have to pay for it I guess. Okay hi can I pay with card or electronically? I'm from Germany. Okay six degrees up on top and let's see. Check it out. Oh look at this. Yes yes yes yes very nice. Look at these guys. Looks like late breakfast. At least for a little bit. So guys I'm at the top of the Biokovo nature park. The drive that takes you all the way up here. It's a tall road and if you can see this is the road down there that you have to take up. It's a beautiful ride. Absolutely worth doing if you're in the area. So make sure you plan time for this because it's absolutely worth it. It's especially nice because it's the fall now so you have all these turning leaves and the rocks. It's beautiful. I'm up in the clouds here. I don't know what the elevation is. It must be at 1600-1700 meters at least. Okay that was awesome. I took my time up there on the peak and just kind of waited for some clouds to go by. I took a few photos and it just took real easy. I enjoyed the view which is fantastic up there. Look at the guardrails. I guess once they get hit they don't get fixed. Look at the road. I mean that gives you a very good idea of what the road's like from up here. Nice nice beautiful beautiful road. Okay let's go. Let's go down. Let's check out the platform, the skywalk or whatever that's called. I do wonder what that rope is for. I have no idea what that could be for. Maybe the snow gets so high that they can walk on the rope. So we're getting close to the skywalk platform. It looks like it's caught in a cloud right now. That's the skywalk that I passed earlier on the bike and you can see these guys are having a good time because they're scared of going out there. There's not much to see at the moment. We're in the middle of the clouds so I have to wait a little bit before we clear it up. This is what it looks like now. So if you're afraid of heights this isn't for you. Get a nice view down. It is a bit scary. I'm a little bit afraid of heights but here check it out. I'll let you look at it. This is what it looks like. But it gives you a really really cool view of the coastline. That's where it is. So I came from all the way down there and you see the coastal road making a left turn there. That's where I need to go. Good thing about descending a mountain is that you get a really good view of the valley and the coastline here. It's pretty cool. Wow. This is very very nice. So thank you. Perfect. Thank you. Okay. Have a great day. There's something I didn't know. A lot of the parts of the autobahn are actually toll roads in Persia. At least the ones that I tried to use. And I had this short piece of autobahn I was using on the way here and I think it calculated to something like 27 cents. So it's really cheap. I didn't have any cash and they can put a small amount like that on the card or next time. I'll try to use the phone so I don't have to fiddle around with my credit card. Let's see how it works. Oh this is awesome. Yes. Perfect. Nice and easy. Thank you. This is the border. Sweet. Looks like a toll station to me. When I see myself it's pretty cool. I mean it's huge and there's not much going on today. Let's see how long it takes. So normally in Germany we have these ID cards. They're just the size of a driver's license really. And they're usually enough to cross borders in Europe. But I do have a passport with me. It's actually in the back just in case. Hello. Do I need to take the helmet off? Yep. You are the same. I am the same. Thank you. Still the same. Yeah. Thank you very much. Okay. It's good to know. All right. I need to put these back in. Thank you. That was super easy. Nice. I was hoping it's going to be easy. Nice and easy border crossing because I will have to cross a few more times on this trip. Several times a day even. So it's good to know that this is relatively straightforward. I mean when I went to Croatia I didn't even have to take the helmet off. But hold on. I don't even. Maybe that was just the exit part. I don't have to do this again. You know the Europeans were not really used to this anymore. Hello. Oh it's slippery. Wow. Slippery. It's okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Wow. That was like a slippery surface there. So that was easy. I guess if they let me out they thought they could let me back in. Okay. Cool. That's the way it has to be. Off to Mostar now. All right. Time to get some gas. I mean I've got another 120 on the clock but I'm not sure how good the network of gas stations is here. So that's cool. That's the way it should be. Okay. Here we are. City of Mostar. And a lot bigger than I thought. I had no idea what to expect from this place. Didn't know much about this place. And it's really interesting. You start to see mosques now here. I saw another one coming in alongside Christian churches right here and there. So this seems to have a good mix of both. It's nice. Look at these old trees. Pretty cool. So let's see where the old town is. Because that's the only pictures you ever see. So you know a lot of times you think that's what the entire place is like. But it's usually not. There's more to it than this. Honestly. Yeah. Driving right through it. That's probably it here. To the left and right. Wow. Oh yeah. Very cool. So this is it. That is the place. I read about this place. The parking is kind of funny. People that are right in the car. It's actually a steep incline. Otherwise I wouldn't have dared to go up here.