Day 34 - The weaker sex - Korčula, Croatia to Blaćina, Croatia

July 24, 2026 - biked 28 km (18 mi), ferry'd 18 km (11 mi) - biked 1364 km (848 mi) total

I learned once again why women are called the weaker sex.

Today we had one ferry, one island crossing by bike and then another ferry as we continued to island hop our way south.

On the island crossing there are two ways to go 1) the same road as cars but a bit longer or 2) over steep gravel (aka big rocks that you might see on train tracks) road with some sections 14% grade.

If you’re following us at all, you’ll know we do a lot of gravel/rock roads to avoid the traffic on the main roads. That would be great but we brought the wrong bikes for that kind of road. Our bikes have no suspension, so our bodies absorb every bump. It’s so difficult we can’t ride on it going uphill and sometimes not even downhill. So we pop off our bikes and hike.

One hand on the bar to steer and another hand on my seat to pull, it was hard to make progress especially since my feet would slip on the uneven ground.

I was falling behind so David took one of my back bags. And then another. He still managed to progress further up the hill faster than me with only two of my smallest, lightest bags.

I struggled on. It’s not like I’ve done more mileage than him in the past week.

I know I’m strong, but not strong in the way that I needed today. I was humbled.

It took us 1.5 hours to climb a little over half a mile with 600 ft evaluation gain.

Great views but we were beat. Definitely type two fun.

To further my weakness, on the way down, I fell off my bike on the loose rocks and hurt my wrist. It’s a pretty bad bruise on the palm of my hand which is where my hands steer while biking.

Nonetheless, we made it to our ferry after bike/hiking almost 5 hours to go 8.9 miles and jumped in the lake near our campsite.

I made David a simple sandwich with tomato and cheese and called us even.