Driving a rental car to the lakes of Imotski, Croatia

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(the article below accompanies this video)

Today was a long-time dream fulfilled: we finally were able to rent a car, and I drove us around the Dalmatia section of Croatia all day. It was my first time driving a car outside of North America, and my first driving at all since a week in Hawaii a few months ago. (In Japan, where I live, I don’t drive.)

First, I woke up very early with low BG. I didn’t check, I just had juice and a cookie. Later at breakfast I didn’t bother to check, figuring I was probably doing pretty good.

After breakfast we walked back to the rent a car place. It is a single office that is both Thrifty and Dollar. (I don’t understand that.) They had a car, and the guy spoke English, and the price was what the internet said it would be, about €50 for the day. They even had an automatic transmission car, which made me relax a lot: I can drive a manual transmission, but haven’t in several years and never did regularly. I was glad I didn’t have to try it in a new country with unfamiliar rules. Plus, the internet said the price would be double but it was only €8 extra.

We set out in our little car up the road, and I settled into driving pretty quickly. Music is a big part of driving, and as I had no CDs or anything I had to rely on the radio, which played mostly dull, computer-y modern pop music. And a good one every now and then. But we were driving right down the coast of Croatia, and the views were spectacular as always. It was slightly chilly, and very sunny; a perfect day for driving.

First we arrived in the town of Omiš and saw an old-looking fortress on a hill, so we decided to park and climb to it. We walked up a narrow stone path and steps behind rows of houses until we got to an iron gate that was locked, despite a sign with open hours on it that suggested we were right in the middle of the opening times. But, closed is closed, and we had to turn around.

After a quick stroll around Omiš, another old-seeming stone town, we stopped in a Studenac supermarket for some picnic lunch food, and then went back to the car. We drove a little down a road behind town near a river, but then turned around to get back on the coast road.

At noon we stopped at one of the frequent picnic areas on the side of the road, looking out over the windy Adriatic Sea. I checked and was 134. Lunch was crackers and cheese, plus chocolate milk and some figs.

We continued down the coast and soon turned inland when I saw a sign for our destination, the town of Imotski and its weird lakes. We started seeing snow on the ground, which surprised us since we were so far south. By the time we got to Imotski, the snow was thick on the sides of the road, which was itself dry.

We followed the signs to the Blue Lake, which is a very scenic but small lake formed by the ancient collapsing of a cave. A walkway leads around the lake part of the way, and down to it, though it was covered in ice and snow and we didn’t go down. I checked my post-lunch BG here and it was 141.

We climbed then to a fortress called Topana Tvrđava on a hill overlooking Imotski, and were soon in the ruins of a place all by ourselves. It was very windy and cold, but a lot of fun to be in a place that must have been hundreds of years old, with nobody else around. We took some photos, and as we were leaving passed a guy with a nice-looking camera just entering.

We went back to the car, and drove to the Red Lake, which gets its name from the reflection of the reddish-orange rocks on the walls that go straight up from it. It was really cool.

Then we continued down the same road that the Red Lake is on. It wasn’t the way we got to town, but I hoped it would get us back to some main road. We had no GPS, only a small road map that this road wasn’t even on. But it seemed that we would either hit the Bosnian border or a main road pretty soon, so we kept at it.

Eventually, on a shadowy, very windy mountain road, I got freaked out by the snow and ice on the road and decided to turn around and go back the way we came before I regretted getting stuck in some dark holler where the sun refuse t’ shine. We were enjoying the driving anyway, so didn’t mind the extra time. The scenery was nice, anyway. I just didn’t want to get deeper and deeper into the steep, icy roads section, in our little rental car with no phone and no other people around.

(A later perusal of Google Maps seemed to indicate that we technically entered Bosnia and Herzegovina around one curve in the road.)

We ended up on a highway with signs leading us back to Split, but it was inland, not the way we came. So we were pleased to be seeing a different area than before. This was between some mountains, and the sun set quickly over them.

Back in Split, it was dark, and we had to return the car. But I quickly got lost, and we drove around and around. We looked at the map but it didn’t help because we didn’t know where we were. I had already filled up the tank with gas, as we rode into town, and I didn’t want to use up too much.

The most stressful thing was making left turns at traffic lights: the lights are on poles on the right side of the road, so if you pull out into the intersection a little to wait for your chance to turn, you can’t see the light anymore. I just waited for the oncoming cars to stop, and then I figured the light must be red so I went. I think I was also supposed to pay attention to pedestrians in crosswalks but that was one thing too many to worry about. Luckily, I didn’t run over anyone, but that was luck and not skill.

Eventually we found our way down to the marina next to the car rental place, and turned in the car. It was a clean and easy transaction.

Masayo made mushroom soup and ham and cheese crepes from the supermarket for dinner, and I didn’t look at the packaging to figure out my Humalog shot because I figured I could guess pretty well.

Well, I didn’t: at 11 pm I was a whopping 346. I suspected a lot of that was induced by stress when driving through Split in the evening; I hadn’t checked since the Blue Lake in Imotski, but it probably hadn’t held even all afternoon. So I took my Humalog and went to sleep. A great day, but diabetically, yet another high late-evening BG. Oh well.

Tomorrow is a big day too: crossing into Bosnia and Herzegovina!

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