Hiking up Mount Srđ above Dubrovnik, Croatia

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If you’re lucky enough to be hiking up a mountain in southern Croatia with stunning views over the sunny Adriatic Sea, don’t be stupid and take insufficient low-BG food with you.

You’d think I’d know this by now. But sometimes excitement gets in the way of rational planning.

My friend Jelena, whom I’d met in Japan while we were extras on a TV show, just happened to be in Dubrovnik while Masayo and I were here — and she was studying to be a tour guide and wanted to show us around.

She suggested hiking Mount Srđ (pronounced like the word “surge”), a large hill that begins immediately outside of Dubrovnik’s Old Town. A cable car takes people up in 210 seconds for about $10 each, but we elected to walk.

My BG had been 91 when I woke up. Breakfast was big — sausages and eggs, plus chocolate muesli with yogurt and banana. We met up with Jelena beside Orlando’s Column; I hadn’t seen her in a couple years. What a nice surprise that she was here!

I had my shoulder bag with my regular snacks in it — a bottle of orange juice, a Mars bar, and a couple cookies Masayo and I each bought at a bakery before leaving Old Town.

After hiking up very steep stairs on people’s private property and dashing about one kilometer along a twisty mountain road with no shoulder, we began the actual trail. It switched back and forth up the mountain, a little monument to Jesus standing at every turn. My BG was now 83, so I ate my cookie and sipped my juice.

The upper part of the Srđ hike has no trees, just rosemary bushes, scrub brush, and honey bees, plus the vast blue sky and cheerful, bright sunshine. The views of Dubrovnik became ever-more dramatic, and further up the slope we could see to the summit and its buildings and tiny little cross on a stand.

We talked about taking the cable car back down. I especially was leaning this way — I only had my Mars bar left and it would be a couple hours of exercise yet.

Stopping to rest near the top, we were passed by two young Japanese girls who’d been hiking behind us. We all chatted in Japanese, and they casually mentioned that they were only hiking because the cable car wasn’t running today.

What?!

I started to become rather nervous, but we continued to the top where there is a museum dedicated to the 1990s Balkans war. Jelena somehow talked the guy at reception into letting us in for free.

The museum was pretty fascinating, its walls made of cold stone that dripped with water. The displays included guns and photos of snipers in the mountains and civilians running scared, while a map showed the damage to Dubrovnik by building. The structure that is now our guesthouse had suffered a direct mortar hit. Bullet holes marred some of the walls in the upper part of the museum.

The tiny cross we’d seen turned out to be gigantic, and as we stood near it we looked down on Dubrovnik. It is from here that the usual photos one sees of the city are taken — a motley little collection of tan, red-roofed buildings hemmed inside a circuitous town wall made of large, irregularly-shaped stones, all sitting beside an endless blue sea.

It’s unbelievable, and it was nice to be here today when the cable car isn’t running — there were no other people at all. (I wonder what became of the two Japanese girls?)

After a particularly scenic BG check — 101! — we looked further inland into Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the snowy mountains of Montenegro, both of which are easily visible from this very narrow part of Croatia.

Then it was time to hike back down.

The museum had no shop and no facilities whatsoever — there was no place to buy more juice. So I ate part of Masayo’s cookie (how generous she is!) and we started down. Before long we were back under the trees, and we made it back to town without incident.

But I was lucky. I should have taken a couple more bottles of juice and probably two or three more chocolate bars. Just in case. In this situation it’s always better to be over-prepared for low blood sugars.

We thanked Jelena, who hopped on a bus to her tour guide class, and decided to treat ourselves to an Italian meal in Old Town.

Halfway up one of the steep staircases in a side alley, we were the only customers and sat outside at a table on a little landing. A cat prowled shyly around our feet, being shooed away periodically from the gregarious and attentive staff.

We asked for olives with our octopus salad. They came, and the chef came out and explained that these olives were from a certain town in southern Italy, and were grown for eating only, not for making oil. They were the best we’d had on the trip — budget travel often means unhealthy food but sometimes it’s so worth it to go to a nice place sometimes.

My BG at the beginning of the meal was 172 (the mid-hike juice and cookies were enough after all) and I ordered a plate of fried shrimp and squid with vegetables, extremely tasty but tough to get through after the giant salad and the free bruschetta they’d given us. And the basket of bread. I took my Humalog shot, not imagining it would be enough.

Afterwards, Masayo tallied up the cost and said that even without our very generous tip, this was the most expensive meal we’d had on the trip.

But hey — the trip is winding down and we’d been hiking all day. Totally worth it!

Later we rested in the room, trying to figure out where to go after Dubrovnik. We considered Italy, or Austria, or Malta… somewhere to have a final blow-out before leaving Europe. Anyway I was in an expansive, happy mood; my BG at 9 pm was 178 which I was quite happy about, considering the day’s events.

I played with Google Flights all evening, which is great fun. We’re leaning towards spending our last week back north, in Norway. Maybe we can see the Northern Lights.

Anyway, wherever we go, it will be great!

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