After our marathon of yesterday……we had a bit of time up our sleeve today! So it was a slow start….with breakfast provided!!
I had selected our inland route from Sarajevo….to avoid Dubrovnik, Split…Zadar etc. And our border crossing from Bosnia to Croatia was thus tantalisingly close to Plitvice National Park. After Dubrovnik and Split…possibly Croatia’s best known tourist attraction. I had passed by before…but never visited! Hence the circuitous route today!!
From our overnight stop…it was a wonderful start to the day with a lovely 20km descent to Bihac….for coffee and cigarettes.
And a nice ride up to the border….
A combined border post here…and the busiest crossing of the whole trip!
And back into the Shengen area (so this is probably our last crossing really..until we get to the UK!)….and no more currency conversions!
I always have a chuckle when I see the real name of Croatia. I went to watch Croatia playing water polo during the London Olympics….(don’t ask!)….& could not understand why the very loud crowd was not shouting for Croatia! Not sure why or how the anglicised version of the name is so very different!!
The first photo in Croatia….(or should that be Hrvatska…!?)
And then to Plitvice. Actually this is not an easy park to visit. You get tantalising glimpses from the road around the park….
….but you cannot easily just ‘walk in’. You have to pay nearly $50….which includes an electric train ride…and electric boat ride to take to you the ‘big’ waterfall!! Along with thousands of others……
This is it….sort of….from afar…….
After cycling through the most splendid scenery for the past seven weeks…..for free……including plenty of spectacular waterfalls etc just yesterday….we could not bring ourselves to fork out the cash to waste half a day rubbing shoulders with just too many people!
Indeed….it was only in retrospect that we discovered that our accommodation last night was on the edge of the Una National Park in Bosnia. And they too have wonderful waterfalls etc. Have a look at these pictures nicked off the web:
And….the entry cost is less than a quarter of Plitvice’s…you can wander around at leisure…..and there really was no-one around!!! So if you want to visit waterfalls….Una is the way to go!!
…reminds me a bit of Band-e Amir in Afghanistan…which I visited back in ‘76! (…nearly 50 years ago…surely not!)
From the park…it was a bit of a grind up to our accommodation in the small town of Korenica. Google took us there. But it was not there!
Two girls were playing nearby…and one of them saw the lost looks in our eyes…and at 10 or 11 years old, one of them asked us in perfect English …”Can I help you”. So I showed her the address of where we were supposed to be. And – amazingly – said…”Oh, that is my house”!! Hahaha! What are the chances!? (It was not THAT tiny a place!).
We were only one street wrong! And her mother was waiting for us outside one of the very best apartments! Brand new!!
At the end of the road was a classic restaurant! So very different from everywhere we have been prior. A road-house catering to passing bus loads (…think Plitvice!)…huge!! And quirky!
But they provided great service and the food was good! Andrew tucking into the classic Cevapi…!
Tomorrow……we are heading for the coast!! And a few days off!!
PS….all this talk of haircuts…my brother John just sent me through this photo. Iain and a mate getting the full treatment in aid of charity….some years ago! Hahaha….my cut was just a modest trim by comparison!!
Stunning waterfalls!
Didn’t you go to Plitvice Robyn?
Yes we stayed a night there and had full day wandering… was spectacular!