Story of Dominik and Emanuel - Trip that went from easy mode to survival mode

One day Emanuel and I went on road trip with bicycles. We had plan, it would be two days riding to river Mrežnica, then we would meet with our friends and swim with them in the river. The water is very clean and its not polluted so its perfect to refresh after long ride, but that plan did not work out well... I will write how it really went.

So, first day went according to plan. We met around 5 pm then we checked our map to see which is the best path to go and to find place where we will camp for one night. We started cycling, first we hit a store to buy ourselves water and supplies for camping. Then we were cycling for about 30 km (18.16 miles) until we reached three lakes where we put our tent for sleeping overnight.

The lake was beautiful with all its creatures and plants, there were also a couple of swans. The night went pretty well, without much of waking up.

This is our campfire.

The next morning we woke up and headed to city Karlovac. We found bakery very fast and had coffee and breakfast early in the morning, about 8 am. After breakfast we arrived in Karlovac, where we rested about 15 minutes or so. After this city we went for river Mrežnica to meet with our friends.

And this is where our story begins. On the map we had about 50 km (31 miles) but truth was something else. We accidentally write down wrong address on map, because on this river there are two camps with similar name.

After about 30 km riding a bike we stopped near river to have a little break from cycling.

This is my friend @dedababa who will start blogging soon.

My friend Emanuel walks on water. 😂

Then we went for another 20 km ride and hit some unknown road, which was macadam. We thought that we were really close. In this moment we were out of water, we were hungry because we only ate in 8 am breakfast and it was already 1 pm and 30 degrees outside on sun.

We were riding on that relentless macadam for about 20 km long and the road was hilly the hole time. Little bit up, little bit down, little bit up, little bit down and so on for 20 long kilometers.

This picture was taken on that macadam, sign that we don't give up.

When we finally got out for that long and tiring road. We were so happy for about a half a minute. And the reason why, it was because we realized we were 30 km further than where we supposed to be. The camp we arrived was Robinzonski camp LESKAR and the one we needed was Robinzonski camp Mrežnica. 😥
We didn't even knew there were two of them until then.

I wont lie to you, I was pretty pissed, hungry, thirsty and tired. My hole body was at its limitation. We had two options. First is to go down the mountain and second was up the mountain. When we left macadam we were on road that goes down or up.

My throat was soo dry. We went down to river and drink perfectly cold water. We even find some people with kayaks, they were just heading home. So we asked the man who drive them if they could help us and drive us to our friends. He said no problem, they would come back for us in half hour. We were so relieved and happy. I even asked him twice will they really come after us and help us , and told him I would pay them money, just to transport us 30 km farther. And he said yes, we will certainly come for us.

That was around 4 pm. Oh and yes, I almost forgot, we did not have signals on our mobile phone when we went down the mountain. So that was also a problem, big. After one and a half hours we realized that he wont be coming back for us. We felt betrayed, hungry ,sad...We waited until 6 pm so maybe he comes back, but he never did.

We decided to climb the mountain and push our bikes because we have not any power left in us. It was sheer will that make us move to higher place. After climbing for about 45 minutes we reached a place where we could find signal on our phones. We immediately called our friends to come and pick us , we shared out our location. After 1 hour they were here with plenty food and drinks. When they came I hugged them. I could not move my smile off the face while eating every possible thing they brought us. Rice,meat, spinach strudels, fruits, vegetables, water, beer and even beer with lemon. They saved us.

After 30 minutes of eating and drinking we put two bikes in car in trunk and 7 people in car and went straight home, in Zagreb.

After this trip i needed two hole days to recover. It was beautiful and painful in the same time. I will always remember it, the road trip with one wrong turn that led us from easy mode to hardcore mode of surviving. It was hard and painful, but in the end it was irreplaceable and spectacular experience in my life that i am grateful that it happened the way it did.

Our little friend says hello!

The photos were taken by Emanuel aka @dedabaka and me.