Sirocco Breezes on the Croatian Islands

Welcome back!

We have begun the next phase of our trip - our little sojourn along the Croatian Islands. We're going to be here for a few weeks, but we'll be ducking out at one stage to catch up with the cousins in Greece.

The three of us, John, myself and Bruce the Bike, arrived in Dubrovnik. We carted Bruce up the narrow stairs to our hotel room and John assembled him in the room. It was a bit squishy having three of us in a room for two but we managed!

We had been in Dubrovnik last year with the kids so we just visited our favourite places plus one or two new ones. Of course we had to walk the city walls again. This is such an awesome thing to do. I just love the mass of orange-tiled roofs.

Last time we stayed in an apartment that was accessed by seemingly hundreds of steep stairs up a hill so this time we thought we'd stay really close to the main drag. Big mistake. It was the weekend and they had house music playing in the square right near us til late each night. Luckily the double glazing in our room was very good!

We noticed that Dubrovnik seems to be even more crowded than we remembered. We took a walking tour one day and asked about this. The guide said that on one day in August last year, 20,000 tourists came into Dubrovnik  - just from cruise ships! So you can add plenty more that arrived by other means. Omg - it must have been a nightmare!

We caught the gondola up to a mountain above Dubrovnik. The views were sensational! We could see right across to the first island we'd be going to as well as the stunning old city.

It was really hot but for some reason we still didn't get around to having a swim. The food here was amazing but Croatia is so expensive after the cheaper countries we've been in for so long. We're paying close to the same prices as home here, although Dubrovnik is apparently the most expensive place in Croatia. I sure hope it gets cheaper soon!

At last it was time to catch our ferry to Mljet, (pronounced Mil-yet) our first island. John rode Bruce to the ferry while I took the bags in a taxi. The ferry ride was fun. We found our apartment and it was fabulous! It was clean, spacious and had a small balcony. It even had a clothes line and pegs! We get exited about things like this, hehe.

Our first full day on the island was a truly wonderful day. The island is partly covered by a National Park. The thing to do here is to walk or ride around some beautiful lakes in the park. There are plenty of bikes for hire so I hired one and John and I rode around the big lake. I was hesitant at first because I don't enjoy long-distance bike riding much but it was fantastic!

The road wasn't difficult. When we got hot we would just find a nice place to stop and we'd go for a swim! Yes - we finally got in the water! The water was crystal clear and we shared a pair of swimming goggles and checked out all the fish underwater.

It was really hot here but riding in wet swimming gear kept us cool. We stopped for lunch at a lakeside cafe and I had the best grilled vegies, straight out the garden. They were fantastic! John said his freshly caught fish was one of the best he's ever tasted. Nearby, butterflies went crazy over some flowering lavender.

That night we had a wonderful meal in a restaurant next to the water while the sun set, followed soon after by a crescent moon. What a perfect day!

The next couple of mornings I went for lovely walks while John went for bike rides. We have to get up early to do this as it's really starting to get hot now. We were told the sirocco winds are here which bring hot air up from the south.

The ferry to our next island didn't leave until early the next evening so we packed our bags, left them with our apartment owner, and hired a car to explore the island. After our last car rental experience where we had a big argument over one scratch on the car, this rental company was a breath of fresh air when they told us not to worry about scratches!

I drove for a change and we set off. The roads weren't busy and it was fairly easy driving. After about 15 minutes, a car was coming in the other direction and there was a rock on the road on my side. I misjudged the width of the car wheels and ran over the rock. There was a huge bang as the rock shattered and blew the tyre! The tyre was completely stuffed. The lovely car hire people came out and replaced the tyre but we had to pay for a new one. I'm getting very scared to hire another car!

Anyway, we did have a lovely drive. We found a gorgeous little fishing village with one solitary restaurant and had lunch on the water there.

Our main target though was this cave that you can swim into. It's supposed to be amazing. We slogged 30 minutes down the side of a hill in the stinking heat to get to it only to find that the wind had made the water really rough and it wasn't swimmable unless you really knew what you were doing. A local couple did it ok but a tourist tried and got cuts all over his chest from the sharp rocks. Apparently the water's usually as smooth as glass. We sadly just watched for a while then slogged back up the hill again in a puddle of sweat.

Our apartment owner was a lovely guy. He worked at a restaurant as well and kept shouting John free coffees.

We only had three days in Mljet but it was such a wonderful place. There were heaps of yachts there - I think all the Croatian islands are popular stopovers for the yachties. There are also week-long tourist cruises from Split to Dubrovnik on small cruise ships which stop at many islands along the way and bring quite a few people to Mljet. Its a lovely green island, dominated by the National Park which suits us just fine!

Even the place to wait for the next ferry is very pleasant!

We're off to the island of Korcula next.

Hooroo!

Heather and John

The Delights and Tragedies of Bosnia and Herzegovina

It was time to leave the gorgeous mountains of northern Montenegro and head into Bosnia and Herzegovina. We had a stunning drive down through the Montenegrin mountains to a huge reservoir at the bottom. The road along the reservoir was an engineering feat - there were oodles of tunnels as the road snaked its way along the steep gorge.

Crossing from Montenegro to Bosnia was interesting. The Montenegrin side was smooth sailing but the Bosnian border post was located immediately after a one-lane bridge. Traffic was bottled up everywhere as people blocked the bridge then nobody could go anywhere. What a mess!

We had sussed out how to use maps.me on John's phone and it was great to have such easy directions to follow. The voice was Australian and we decided that it was probably the same Aussie voice we had in the US years ago when we were travelling with the kids. That voice came with a name, Karen, so we called this one Karen too. (It helps to have a name to abuse when they give bad directions!) I was the navigator and I had to laugh when we sometimes didn't go the way she suggested and the arrow locator icon would spin round and round trying to get us to do a u-turn. It reminded me of the robot from "Lost in Space" waving his arms madly around saying "Danger Will Robinson!". Karen soon became Mad Karen and it stuck. (Sorry Pos!)

We confidently typed in our hotel address in Sarajevo and set off. The road was great to start with but we soon found ourselves on a far less busy road which wound its way up the side of a mountain. After a while we realised this didn't look like the main road to Sarajevo but we had come so far we decided to keep going. The road kept deteriorating until we were finally on a rough dirt road with not another car in sight. The road kept climbing with a sheer drop on the driver's side. It was spectacular but definitely not for the faint-hearted - and ideally not for our low-clearance car either! For an hour or so we crawled along the road, hoping that no car would come the other way because we had no idea how two cars could pass. Finally we hit bitumen and it was all smooth sailing from there.

It took a few more trips to work out that Karen just picks the route that looks the most direct on a map - which is not always the best option. Oh well - it was an adventure!

We saw a few of these road signs along the way and they had us puzzled - we still don't know what a dot on a sign means!

We parked at our hotel (which involved the car going up and down in a lift!) and set out to explore the town. It was a surprisingly interesting and exotic place. The oldest section dates from the Ottoman times and is full of domed-roofed, timber buildings. There were mosques (oh no - we thought we had finished with 5am wake-up calls!), cobblestoned streets and ancient caravanserais (inns where Ottoman traders would stable their horses and get a meal and a bed).

There was then a clear line (it was literally painted on the road) where the Austro-Hungarian section started. After that were the drab, boring buildings of the communist era. The Austro-Hungarian buildings were pretty amazing.

We saw this sign when we were out exploring and it was just after the Tiges lost to the Swans after leading through most of the game. John felt the Tigers must have been blind to lose that one!

We found a fantastic bar - it was full of antiques and funky things like lamps that rolled up and down on wheels and menus that were printed on packs of cards or old-fashioned books. It was very cool!

Heavy rains hit the town that night and we got absolutely drenched! It was fun though.

We don't often take tours but we only had 2 nights here and we knew there was a lot to learn so we joined in on a free walking tour of the city. We immediately met 3 Aussies which was a surprise - we had only met one Aussie so far in 2 1/2 months.

We had a very enthusiastic guide (he worked for tips) and we learned a lot. Apart from its beautiful buildings, Sarajevo is famous for its two big war stories. The first happened in 1914 when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated on a street in Sarajevo. The assassination triggered World War 1. We were shown the spot where he was assassinated. In one of those cruel twists of fate, the assassin had initially failed in his attempt to kill the Archduke and had wandered into a suburban street in Sarajevo to buy a sandwich. Meanwhile, the Archduke was on his way to an appointment but decided at the last minute to visit a sick friend. He told the driver to turn down a street. The car pulled over and the Archduke got out - right outside the sandwich shop where the assassin was eating his lunch. The assassin saw his opportunity, walked out of the shop and gunned down the Archduke and his wife in broad daylight. And the rest is history.

The second story is the one many of you would have heard of - the Balkan war of the early 1990's. There was a lot of unrest in the Balkan countries and the Serbs attacked Sarajevo, assuming they would take over the city in a couple of days. They had the town completely surrounded - they had some form of weapon every 30 or 40 metres, pointing at the town. The Bosnians fought back and the subsequent war continued for an incredible four years. Thousands of people were killed - many were shot while trying to get water or trying to help others. On the streets of Sarajevo they have left some places where bombs were dropped, painting the damaged footpaths with red paint to symbolise the loss of life that occurred there.

The market was also bombed and a lot of innocent people were killed. There is now a large red wall with the names of those who were killed recorded on it. You can see the red wall in the background here.

Even though a lot of buildings had been repaired or renovated, there were still plenty around that were bombed or had bullet holes in them. We had dinner both nights at a fantastic restaurant where you just tell them what sort of food you like and they bring out a surprise sensational meal. Directly apposite us was an empty building with bullet holes all over the walls.

The Bosnians dug a famous tunnel underneath Sarajevo that allowed them to bring in essential supplies. It's now a museum and it was pretty amazing.

I guess the war was well over 20 years ago now, but it's great that the people have picked themselves up and carried on with life. The town was very alive, very beautiful and absolutely full of tourists. Our guide was at pains to stress that Sarajevo is now a very multicultural city. He showed us churches - both Catholic and Orthodox - plus mosques and Synagogues. He wanted to send the message that Sarejevo welcomes all people from all religions or beliefs.

From Sarajevo we headed to Mostar, famous for its 'old' stone bridge. The ancient bridge was bombed during the war, which was devastating to so many people. After the war finished, the bridge was faithfully reconstructed, stone by stone. It's now the thing for young people, (ie, only slightly younger than us!) to jump off the bridge. It's about 24 metres to the water and the water is only about 5 metres deep. Not for me I'm afraid!

The river was gorgeous although it wasn't too clean in places.

Many parts of the old town were stunning. Tourism may have its bad side (the town was very crowded) but the money tourism brings in certainly helps to maintain the gorgeous old buildings.

There were still signs of the war though - bullet holes still pock-marked some buildings.

Our hotel here was awesome! Bosnia was really cheap so our budget let us have a pretty fancy room. We loved it!

All of a sudden, the temperature got hotter and we were suddenly getting a taste of what summer is going to be like. We did a bit of a drive around the area and found another gorgeous old village. We sweated our way to the top of the old fort there.

Apart from a very brief dip in the ocean in Turkey once, I had not had a swim on this entire trip. We had read about a fabulous waterfall where people can swim so we headed out to it. It was beautiful (very much like those at Plitvice Courtney, Connor and Alanna) but again the water didn't look too  clean. We ate an ice-cream instead!

Sometimes things just can't be explained. We had no idea what this sign at the waterfalls was about!

We then crossed the border back into Montenegro and explored the gorgeous coast before heading back to our favourite apartment in Kotor. Zoja, the owner, treated us like long-lost friends and we caught up with both the toothless grill guy across the road and the happy cheese and prosciutto guy up the hill. It was like coming home!

It was great timing when we actually saw the cheese being made at the cheese and prosciutto guy's place.

We walked up a gorge where the river was drying up and found oodles of frogs in the stagnant water. I know this isn't terribly exciting but I love the photo!

Our last night view from our balcony....

We headed back to Podgorica where we had to return the car. We took the long and windy road option. The views were amazing, as were the hairpin bends on the GPS. I think Mad Karen was getting a bit of a headache continually showing us screens like this.

We then returned the car to Podgorica (with a scratch - costly but not surprising considering where we'd been) and checked back into our old hotel there as well. We're starting to feel at home in this country!

We did a wine tour the next day. The vineyard is the largest single-block vineyard in Europe. The wine is all stored in a huge cellar that used to be an underground aircraft hangar during the war! It was massive. Planes used to taxi out of the tunnel and drive straight onto an airstrip. The airstrip is now a very long, very straight road between the vines.

We then had to work out how to get John's bike to Croatia. We worked out that it wasn't much dearer to hire a private taxi to take us than it was to pay for two tickets plus the bike on a bus. All went well until we hit the border. "You want to take that brand new bike out of the country? That will cost you 100 euros in duties." Oh no! We hadn't even thought of this! John eventually negotiated a price of 20 euros. There was definitely a bit of scamming going on here but our lovely driver was quite concerned about it all so we didn't argue much. We then still had to get into Croatia which would probably be much harder. We sat in no-man's-land waiting in a queue to cross the border. We had plenty of time to work out how to approach the situation. Finally it was out turn. We handed over passports and waited. The guy eventually returned to our car, handed us our documents back and sent us on our way! He didn't even notice the enormous box in the back of the car! We all breathed a huge sigh of relief and had a lovely drive into Dubrovnik.

Two happy Aussies in Mostar....

 See you next time!

John and Heather xx

The wild mountains of Montenegro

Hello again from Montenegro! 

Picking up from my last blog post, we finished our walk through the parks of southern Montenegro and spent a night just relaxing on the lake. It was a nice enough place, although it was quite touristy. We could see across to the mountains of Albania.

The next day we did a convoluted mix of buses and a taxi to get back to the town where we left our bag then up to the capital city, Podgorica. We got to know one particular stretch of coast quite well as we travelled along it a number of times. We passed the island below which looks gorgeous but it's an exclusive place. You have to book (very expensive) accommodation there to be allowed onto the island. We mere plebs have to just take photos from the mainland.

At the end of a long day we arrived in Podgorica. We had booked a rather fancy hotel there and it was very cool. Here's John looking suitably posh next to the bookcase-wallpapered wall in our room.....

Even though it's the capital city, Podgorica has less than 200,000 people. With only 600,000 people in the whole country, it's a large city by their standards! Our hotel was on a great car-free (sort of) road and it was the place to hang out in the evening. On our first night there there was a lot of excitement happening and we worked out that Montenegro was playing in a big soccer competition. The stadium was at the end of our road. People were singing, lighting flares and getting very worked up - and that was before the game even started!

The riot police were on standby but we didn't see anything untoward happen. It turns out that Montenegro won 4-0 so the locals were very happy.

We had one big job to do in Podgorica -  we had to buy a bike for John! We are heading to the Croatian islands in a couple of weeks and John wants to ride a bike around them. From our online research, it seemed to be easier to buy a bike in Montenegro than Croatia so that's what we did. We found a great shop and probably made their day because we had to buy everything - bike, helmet, pump, tubes etc. We then left the whole lot with them while we rented a car for 10 days and headed off on the next stage of our journey - exploring areas further afield.

Day one with the car saw us heading up the Tara Canyon, a canyon that is only supposed to be 200 metres shallower than the Grand Canyon in the US. I think that comparison is a big stretch of the truth but it's a beautiful canyon nonetheless. We wound our way through beautiful green forests with ever-growing mountains beside us, passing though a multitude of tunnels on the way.

The houses suddenly changed to look very much like those you would see in the Swiss Alps or ski resorts around the world. They must get a lot of snow here. The roofs are all steeply pitched and the walls are often wooden. The temperature dropped 9 degrees from our start to our finish points but it was still lovely weather.

To get to our accommodation we had to drive up a lovely valley. It reminded us so much of a valley we walked up in Romania with Courtney, Connor, Alana and Mads. Hay was being cut with a scythe and was being stooked and stacked into beehive haystacks by hand. 

The valley was lush and green and the houses were gorgeous. We went for a short walk and saw another snake - although we think it might have been a legless lizard again.

On day two we continued up the canyon, checking out the somewhat famous Tara Bridge along the way.

The Tara River is pretty spectacular. The thing to do here is to take a rafting trip. We saw some people heading off and their gear looked pretty shoddy plus the water was quite low so we decided to give the rafting a miss.

We arrived at our town and spent the next few days exploring Durmitor National Park. Oh my goodness - what a spectacular place it turned out to be! 

Our plan on the first day was to walk for a couple of hours or so but we got just a little bit lost - twice! We've walked hundreds of kilometres on this trip and never have we been lost before. We resorted for the first time to using our compass and found that it wasn't working properly. It had been stored next to our phones which have magnetic clips on them and they must have upset the magnetism balance. To add to our frustration we were literally attacked by flies and mosquitoes - at the same time! - during most of the walk. We were pretty pleased to get home and jump in the shower!

The scenery around us while we were getting lost was pretty gorgeous though......

At this stage we gave up trying to follow paths and just headed towards where we knew we had to go. What a wonderful place to go bush! 

The squirrels around here are very dark but very cute. Check out their funny ears!

We spent the next couple of days doing a series of short walks to mountain viewpoints and were absolutely blown away by the spectacular views. We were now high up in the mountains and, oh boy, were they amazing! I had no idea that such a small country with a lovely coastline could have such amazingly big mountains!

Forgive the multitude of photos here - I got a bit excited about it all!

The vastness of the views was incredible. To give you an idea of space, see if you can find John in the photo below.....

Again, we found heaps of beautiful wildflowers. On some tracks we saw flowers that we had never seen anywhere else before. 

We also saw a number of butterflies on one gorgeous walk. Some landed on me and stayed for a while, even though we were walking. When one left, it was replaced by another. So cool! 

One was on my pants.....

One was on my backpack.....

And one was on my finger!

Of course, there were plenty on the flowers....

I think the reason there were so many butterflies on this walk is because there were so many wildflowers. We were literally walking through fields of them in places.

I love the pine trees too - they're so European!

On one of the walks, we caught two chairlifts to reach the starting point for the walk. The mountains are so high that it took about 20 minutes just to ride the chairlifts up!

Some of the drives to get to these walks were also spectacular - long, windy roads cutting through the mountains, pretty villages nestled in rolling green hills and paddocks of wildflowers kept me constantly oohing and ahhing.

Next stop - Bosnia!

So long for now.

Heather and John xx