Across the Bosnian Border With Bruno

For my second Eastern Trekker tour, the Balkan Trek, I already knew two people, Dave and Sheryl. The three of us met up in the morning and went to sit in the square, back to where we had dinner the night before. My pasta salad the night before was average, but the brekkie sandwich was incredible. A lot of the tour ended up there, as Carlos had said he'd be hanging out there in the morning. Around 9ish, after a sad goodbye to Carlos and Vlad, all of those doing further Eastern Trekkers headed to the meeting point. The only way to describe it is chaotic. The check in was done by one guide for three trips, and he was a bit of a tool... openly hungover and not just slightly rude. To add to the chaos, Radical Travel had managed to stuff up Dave's booking, putting him on the previous week's trip (even though he started another of their tours as the same time, duh...).

You'd think this wouldn't be a major problem, buuut it was. The Balkan trek tour is different from Eastern Trekker's other tours... very small group sizes, and it's handled by a Bosnian tour company. They had only brought a small van, big enough for the number registered (seven). The first suggestion was to stick Dave on a train to Mostar, Bosnia. He wasn't having any of that. So it was decided that he would take a taxi, which would follow the van's route. As we were about to set off, Armel (our guide) asked if anyone wanted to go with Dave in the cab to keep him company. Sheryl and I decided to head off with him and the cabdriver Bruno, since we already knew Dave. So, that is how I ended up driving 200 km from Croatia to Bosnia in a cab haha. Footed by Radical Travel. Our cabbie had loads of random classical type music, and a Bob Marley mix... so we listened to Bob most of the way haha.

On the way we stopped in a really lovely little beach town called Makarska. The drive from there through to Bosnia was really cool. The scenery is like no place I've ever been before. Very scrubby hills, deep turquoise rivers... very pretty in a totally different way. In Bosnia we stopped at Počitelj. Which was extremely hot... I'm not totally sure why we stopped there... there were some old buildings, a mosque, et cetera. Then finally, our last leg to Mostar. We were dropped at the hotel (yees, hotel, all accommodation on this tour were HOTELS) and sort of left to our own devices until that evening when our local guide would come and pick us up. For myself and Sheryl, that time was spent in our lovely air conditioned room doing pretty much nothing haha. Randomly, when we were checking in, this British couple went absolutely bananas at the incredibly lovely front desk staff. They had meant to book a different hotel apparently (that's uh, sort of your fault, idiots). I don't know what their problem was... the hotel was brand new and absolutely beautiful.

Later, we met up with our guide, Amela, who gave us a tour of the Old Town. Mostar was hit extremely hard during the wars here in the 90s. The destruction was still everywhere to be seen. Amela asked us to try to group our questions about the war together, because it was upsetting to talk about it all the time. Understandably so, she's only a year or so older than me, so she lived through the war as a kid. Mostar is famous for it's bridge, and it really is quite a beautiful landscape with the dark turquoise river, old buildings and the beautiful white bridge. The thing you can't tell from the pictures is that the bridge is extremely slippery haha. There's absolutely no grip on it, it's like sheer ice. And it's not flat. Getting up is reasonable, though not easy, but getting down is a real trick. Anyhow, we all had dinner at a beautiful place on the river, looking towards the bridge. I lucked out and got the last serving of cabbage rolls. That's not what they're called there, but that's what we call them. They were delicious. I also had a local wine, which was not as good. All the local wine I had in Eastern Europe had a very different taste to it... I'm not sure how to describe it. I love wine, but some of this stuff was a tough swallow.

After dinner we went to a youth club, which was a bit random. The place was pretty dead so we left after a couple of drinks. We then wandered towards a rave... nobody was that impressed (the people were really young) so we didn't go in. But it was an interesting walk... the entrance to get in was a path between the obliterated (by bombing) library and this massive hole that was to be the basement of a new building. There was absolutely no lighting, and no fencing around either the hole or the ruins. Safety first!

After leaving there, we walked along the street that was the “front line” during the war. This is where the most destruction still is. We were walking along and there was a massive old building. A complete wreck. It hit us all really hard when Armel casually said “Oh, yeah, this was my primary school.” I think it really hit us then how recent this war really was, and how young the people are that lived through it. To be talking to someone close to my age who walks pass the bombed wreckage of his elementary school every day... it hits home.

After making it back to the old town, half of us decided to head home. One thing to note about Mostar, it is incredibly hot. Even at 23:30, it was close to 30 degrees. During the day it's almost unbearable.