Jajce, Sarajevo, Mostar...
Getting along,
The third day we also managed to get up early, and we immediately got good news to start the day with: however this was only marked with a big question mark in our plans, finally, we had the chance to raft on the most beautiful river stretch in Europe, which we were not fools to skip! We could refute the commonly believed prejudice related to the people of the Balkans again, who were nothing, but nice – again. They came to pick us up at our accomodation, we got to the zero point, where we were provided by all the neccessary information and we took the water. Our journey went through the territory of the Una National Park, where we encountered 3-4 m high riffles as well. It was a fanatstic experience for all of us to raft, in addition in the meantime we could even have a bit of a swim too! After the 4 hours long (!) water trip, we were taken back to the car and we continued our trip to the town of Jajce.
We arrived in the early evening hours, tho we only planned to visit the rightly famous ”Pliva” waterfall. In the city we easily found what we were looking for, we could park the car quite close, and we didn’t even have to buy the parking-ticket. The waterfall is fascinating indeed, tho our thoughts were elsewehere, given nothing had been booked for us for that night.
Those, who follow our page, already know where we slept, for the rest of You I won’t even try to describe it with words, because I won’t manage anyway… The place where we put u pour tent was facing the waterfall, the castle was also visible, we slept exactly there, where Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka painted his famous painting, the ”Waterfall of Jajce” in 1903.
In the morning we continued our journey towards Sarajevo. Everything went smoothly, tho in the finishline, we did fight to get to our accomodation on the spiral roads of the mountain. There were places, where we had to clamber up in gear No 1 or 2 at 45 degrees (or even steeper) to the pass. In the evening we walked down to the city – of course we thoroughly came around the city, and visited the bridge, where Franz Ferdinand was assasinated. Besdies, it was a completely new experience to enter a Turkish mosque, where we were given some information about the religion, the building and the city itself – in Italian. It turned out, that in the city – which was founded by Ottoman conquerors – the religions get on well with each other without any kind of problems. For instance, in the most highly visited church, everybody is welcome, be a Christian, a Muslim or an Orthodox. We also got the pleasure to try out 2 of the local specialities: we tasted the best Ćevapčići in town, which was followed by some Baklawa. The last thing on our to do list for that day was the well not so far away from our accomodation, from where we could in fact view the whole city with the night lights, and i guess it is needless to say, it was beautiful.
Being true to ourselves, we didn’t spend a lot of time here either, the next day at 10 am we were on the road again, heading towards the city of Mostar. The car works without rebuke, even if we wanted so, we couldn’t highlight any malfunctions. Despite that, Tomi was truly convinced, that it’s got a 40 l fuel tank, but today it turned out that it was not really like that. The benzine level meter sometimes ”lied down”, but every time we refuled Biceps on time. Today we agreed upon the gas should be enough till Mostar, given it is a city, we might end up getting away with paying less. Roughly like 40 km away from our final destination, on a hilly part the rev started to decrease, and suddenly it converted to zero. We were lucky, that on the long, mountain roads we could pull off, because the 2 trucks behind us did not really understand the situation…
After examining some essential problem sources, Sziszi was picked up by a bunch of Hungarian (!!!) bikers, who we had waved at previously by the way, and they took him to the nearest gas station. Tomi and I were waiting for the gas laid back, but after a while, we started to hitch hike with cardboars saying ”FUEL” and ”HELP”.
Meanwhile Tomi was picked up by a very friendly guy – who only spoke Bosnian tho - thus 3 of us were trying to solve the problem literally in three different ways. After 1,5 hour of anticipation, the expected fuel supply arrived from both directions, and we filled up the tank, and after the third attempt we could finally start the engine and continue our journey towards Mostar. At the end of the long day an excellent place was waiting for us for in total of 10 euros – 2 bedroom apartment, AC and everything else! Moreover after we arrived, it turned out, that the owner is a local guide, so he was happy to help us about the local must sees (tho Sziszi had planned everything beforehand, so he couldn’t really tell us anything new). When it came to paying, there was a small misunderstanding between us: we booked the whole apartment for 10 euros, but he had wanted to advertise the place for 10 euros for each person. After a few minutes of querying, we checked the booking, and even tho we were right, we gave him some extra tips, so that nobody would feel bad after a mistake like that. By the way, we were the first guests of this place! This boldly cheap accmodation is just 10 minutes walk away from the old town, so most probably, we will check the bridge thoroughly out, which we are planning to jump from the next day and will have a feast from the local specialities.
According to the original plan, we are supposed to arrive to Dubrovnik tomorrow, but meanwhile we got to know, that due to a holiday, there are loads of tourist arriving to the already packed city, so most probably we will skip this destination, and the next one will be Kotor then!
Bring it on Yuppi, tally-ho LadaTour!