If the bus ride from Beograd to Sarajevo had been pretty, the train trip from Sarajevo to Mostar was beautiful (mostly… Despite appearing from nothing out of a narrow gorge at its East end, modern Sarajevo does sprawl a fair bit to the west).
Mostar is absolutely gorgeous as well. The "old town" and the Stari Most (old bridge) in particular are almost dreamy medieval wonders. Except, of course, for the fact that they aren't medieval at all. I fact they're mostly less than 20 years old. When the wars in the former Yugoslavia started, Mostar was one of the most highly mixed communities. Which, of course, meant that it had the most potential foes living in close quarters and making claims on the same place. So it experienced some of the heaviest fighting of all, and the old town and its glorious old Ottoman bridge were destroyed.
Since the end of the war, however, the city has been rebuilt and the tourism industry has boomed. It's close enough to Sarajevo and (more importantly) the cruise ship ports on the Adriatic coast, that it's an easy trip for large numbers of visitors to those places. I'm curious to know how the properties were allocated when they were rebuilt and who bore the cost for the rebuilding, as the ones right near the Stari Most are now humming with tourist activity and probably worth a fair chunk.
While in Mostar we took a day trip out to Blagaj. The main attraction there was the Teke, a sort of a Hermitage/monastery for Sufi mystics. It's sited at the base of a cliff right beside the cave mouth where the brilliant blue Buna river comes pouring out of the mountains.
The Teke was pleasant enough, and even just sitting near the river was enough to cool you down in the very hot early summer afternoon. But I think the very best part of Blagaj was Duke Stephen's Castle high, high above the river. Somehow we'd forgotten to bring sunscreen so Sarah didn't get to climb up with me.
It wasn't quite Krak des Chevaliers, but the castle, and especially the views from it, were pretty amazing. And save for two people who I saw on the trail back down as I neared the top, there wasn't another soul there.
A few other Mostar memories:
The town seemed to be in the middle of a garbage strike or something.
The old town was full of ice cream shops selling very good gelato for 2 Lei (about 78 cents).
We had a really wonderful meal in a courtyard restaurant next to the Bey Karađoz Mosque. I officially declare Bosnia to be the winner in the grilled cylinders of spiced meat (called variously Cevapcici, Mici, Cevapi, in most of the Balkans) competition.
The bus ride down to the coast from Mostar was okay, but when it hit the estuary of the Neretva River, surrounded by steep, Rocky coastal mountains, it was gorgeous. We took the fastest route down to the coast, through the river valley. This meant that we crossed the border into Croatia just before we got to the sea. At this point every male under 30, and quite a few of the women too, were taken off the bus for thorough inspection of their luggage. After we finally got past the border, we crossed BACK into Bosnia at Neum, the small arm of land that cuts the southernmost bit of Croatia off from the rest and gives Bosnia access to the Adriatic. Then back into Croatia again. Then finally, about four hours after leaving, we finished the 170km (76km as the crow flies) journey to Dubrovnik.
We'd been hesitant about visiting Dubrovnik in summer, as it's reputation as a morass of inescapable tourist hordes long preceded it. We'd been considering bypassing it entirely, heading straight from Mostar to Montenegro.
In the end we decided to pop in for an afternoon in Dubrovnik along the way. We left our backpacks at the bus station's left luggage office, caught the city bus to the old town and had a good explore.
I'm happy we decided not to stay in (very pricey) Dubrovnik, but also very happy we visited. The walled city, maybe 500m on a side, backed by towering grey mountains, really is beautiful. And while there were lots of fellow tourists there in mid June, it hadn't yet reached the dizzying heights of busyness it would in a month or so. In fact, I reckon the main drag of old Dubronik wasn't much busier than Lambton Quay in Wellington on a day when there's a big cruise ship in town.
I was also surprised to discover that in a few areas (mainly to the extreme north and south, right near the city walls) old Dubrovnik still contains quite a few residential buildings occupied by Croatian families. You could even, if you waited a few minutes for the right moment, get photos of many parts of Dubrovnik with no other tourists in them!
While we were meandering around town, listening to guides doing Game of Thrones tours in much the same way that tour guides in NZ do Lord of the Rings tours, we ran into our friend Amy, her daughter Ngaia and her brother Justin.
This wasn't completely a surprise, as we'd learned a week or so previously that they'd be on holiday in Cavtat (pronounced Sav-tat), just down the coast from Dubrovnik. Indeed, their presence was one of the things that had sealed the plan to stop on the area. But it was still very fun to just stumble across them in a Piazza in (what I think must surely be) the most visited city in Eastern Europe. Ngaia needed a bit of a sleep, so we made plans to meet them all for dinner in Cavtat where (not at all coincidentally) Sarah and I would be spending the night too.
Dubrovnik and Cavtat are separated by just about 10km of water, but the road climbs high, high up the marine mountains and has spectacular views all up and down the coast before descending again.
We met our mates for dinner at a restaurant on the Cavtat shore. This was (I think?) our one seafood meal on the Adriatic. Shrimp pasta with a creamy, garlicky sauce was yummy. We took a chance with our other dish, an octopus burger. Fortunately it was astonishingly good! Big hunks of tentacle, not soft but not rubbery, curled around one another in the bun.
Sunset came and went during dinner and afterwards we decamped to the apartment Amy had rented for their holiday. We sat out on the balcony after Ngaia had gone to sleep, til after midnight drinking more Croatian wine (probably more like western European style than any other we'd had, including the fact that the cheap ones were sometimes better than the pricier). When the wine ran out we had a few beers as well. And throughout, of course lots of talk and laughter. Amy lives in China (we'd last caught up with her in Beijing in April 2018) so some of it was about that. And about life with her (still relatively new) daughter. And lots about each of our travels in Europe.
Despite the fact that we'd just said goodbye to Steven it was just a joy to spend a joyous, cheerful evening with familiar friends (as well as the lovely Justin, who we were meeting for the first time). Hopefully we'll see Amy and Ngaia again (who knows where?!) before too much longer.
Before departing Cavtat the following morning we had just enough time to have a wee explore. Though seen by many as an alternative base for visiting Dubrovnik, it's pretty pleasant in its own right. We were staying in one of the many (many) modern apartments up the hill looking down over the bay. Down in the lower town, the old village sits on a hilltop peninsula.
And down in the harbour are private sailboats, motor launches shuttling visitors back and forth to Dubrovnik and… A watetpolo pool (can you call it a pool of it's just a set of ropes and nets in the ocean? If not, what do you call it?)
Sarah and I each went for a swim in the crystal clear water of the harbour across from the pool, carefully avoiding the areas with sea urchins/kina. We showered off, then headed back up the hill to prepare for out day's travel.
No comments:
Post a Comment