Our bikepacking adventure towards Central Asia (and beyond!) continues through the Balkans! Un carrusel de ups and downs que esperamos que te entretenga mientras nos acompanyas en esta journey.
Content:
- 1. Leaving the Coast for Bosnia and Herzegovina
- 2. Mostar: a must-visit for many reasons
- 3. The Ciro Trail: great route, first down
- 4. Back to Croatia: Dubrovnik and some more downs
- 5. Montenegro: hospitality and positive feelings are back
1. Leaving the Coast for Bosnia and Herzegovina
Although we didn’t want to spend too much time in Europe and wanted to get to Asia as soon as possible, we decided to deviate a bit from the direct route to visit a new country we had heard both good and bad things about in equal measure: Bosnia and Herzegovina. For some, it’s a country to be discovered, with lovely people and off the beaten path; for others, it’s a dirty place, marked by conflict and with a lot of hype in recent years. I’d say everyone is a bit right and that it’s a country where your impression depends much more on personal experiences than on objective data itself.
The border wasn’t too far away, although with quite a bit of elevation gain to overcome, which, as you’ll see in the video, exhausted us quite a bit. Furthermore, at night the police came to our campsite to verify we weren’t illegal immigrants (avoid camping near a border whenever you can), so we started Bosnia and Herzegovina a bit worn out. The large amount of trash on the sides of the road and the bad weather starting didn’t help much either, but arriving that day in the magnificent Mostar lifted our spirits. You arrive, by the way, by crossing a region where you don’t see the country’s official flags, but many from Croatia and from the region itself, which look very similar because the majority of inhabitants consider themselves more Croatian than Bosnian, regardless of what it says on their passport. It’s a complicated country, very, very complicated.
2. Mostar: a must-visit for many reasons
Mostar is, with Sarajevo, by far the most visited city in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The main reason for that is its famous medieval bridge over the river Neretva, which by the way was destroyed during the war in the 1990s and later reconstructed. But Mostar is much more than its bridge, and there are many other reasons why you should visit it if you have the chance.
First, Mostar is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its complete center, which is not only the bridge and includes cobblestone streets on both sides of the river with typical buildings and slate roofs, plus a mix of temples from different religions like churches and mosques separated by only a few meters, sometimes sharing the same street. This introduces another attraction: the cultural factor in a city where different religions and ethnic groups coexist, sometimes mixed, sometimes separated even administratively. Mostar is divided into sections that correspond to where the Croat (mainly Catholic and who largely do not feel part of the country they reside in) and Bosniak (mainly Muslim) majorities live. So much so that, as our host told us, many administrative procedures are carried out in the section one belongs to, and not at the level of the city as an administrative unit.
Of course, this ethnic-religious distinction played a big (negative, of course) role in the last war that affected Mostar, from which many signs still remain throughout the city, and which are a sad but interesting aspect from a historical point of view. For us, it was curious to visit for the first time a city where you could hear the church bells and the call to prayer almost at the same time.
The city, although touristy, isn’t so much in March, and we only saw a few tourists in the center, but nothing crowded. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were very different in summer, and tourism in the country is growing as the war and subsequent conflicts are being forgotten. We spent two nights in a small apartment inside a local’s house who told us many stories about the last three decades in Mostar. If you have the chance, try to talk to locals from different backgrounds to get a complete picture of the city’s recent history.
3. The Ciro Trail: great route, first down
From Mostar we continued south along the famous Ciro Trail, a mostly paved cycle path, except towards the end approaching Croatia, sometimes shared with cars but with generally very little traffic. The route begins practically within Mostar and takes you along rivers and through green, sparsely populated valleys.
I thought it was a very well-designed and well-marked route, in many cases infinitely better than the (sometimes overrated) Eurovelos. At some point, it’s interesting to leave the route to visit towns like the beautiful Počitelj, and sometimes more or less adventurous alternatives are offered for those who want a bit more dirt road. In the video, I mention one, the most off-road of all, which we didn’t take because due to the rains the path was in very bad condition and in this still initial stage of the trip we weren’t always going for the most complicated routes 😂. A cyclist we met later did it in good weather and although some sections were a bit of bike-a-hike, he thought it was very beautiful.
For several kilometers the route crosses completely depopulated areas that still contain undetonated land mines, with signs indicating it on both sides of the road alongside ruins of villages that had to be abandoned. Nature hasn’t taken long to reclaim its place and in these areas we saw more wildlife and flora than in the rest of the country.
When everything seemed perfect and we were still in our wonderful world of cycle touring, which the dirtiness of the Bosnian roads couldn’t tarnish, a storm quickly began to form near a small village called Ravno. Our idea was to camp under some roof, and we asked several people in the village where we could do it. The responses were all negative, generally in the form of excuses and in one case rude. We thought it was a bit strange, so we waited a bit for the rain to stop for a while to ask in another neighborhood a bit further up from the main road if someone could let us camp under a roof (it’s a village with quite large houses, most with a porch and garage). The first house gave an excuse, and to our surprise, when the storm started getting worse again, the others didn’t even open the door for us even though there were people inside and they could see us. We certainly didn’t expect these responses in our imaginary world of cycle touring without drawbacks. In the center of the village we found a roof that seemed to be from an unused open-air garage, judging by the plants that had grown, and we decided to camp underneath. Unfortunately, the roof was very high, and when THE BIG STORM broke out, it hardly protected us from the rain and especially from the wind, which almost broke the tent and forced us to tie it to the bikes, barely sleeping a wink all night.
The next morning the weather improved, and we continued on our way with mixed feelings between how wonderful the trip had been until now and what had happened to us in that village. We thought it would be an isolated case and we set off for Dubrovnik, back in Croatia and the Adriatic coast.
4. Back to Croatia: Dubrovnik and some more downs
I’m not going to criticize Dubrovnik more because I already said in the previous chapter that I like other less touristy cities more. Dubrovnik is beautiful and worth visiting, especially in the low season. From the border, the whole way is downhill to Dubrovnik, enjoying great views of the sea and the city that the typical tourist doesn’t see from below. Part of this descent has to be climbed again when leaving Dubrovnik, so have as much fun as you can on the way down!
We also didn’t spend much time there because we saw it in one day and avoided its inflated prices by following the coast south. Unfortunately, the weather worsened again and the strong wind forced us to look for shelter again. And again we found all doors closed with excuses and at best pointing us to horrible places to camp.
In the low season most hotels and apartments are closed, so there aren’t too many options for a reasonably priced stay either. After a few more kilometers we asked at a building of apartments on the coast, still closed, if we could pitch the tent under the empty porch and they said no, that they would open an apartment for us that night at the normal high season price, but unprepared, without hot water yet. We had no choice but to accept (€60 per night) and wait a few hours until the hot water arrived (at first they said it wasn’t worth it for one apartment before the season, but to charge us instead of letting us camp, it apparently was worth it). Croatia is beautiful, but especially on the coast, the tourist is a cow to be milked and little more.
5. Montenegro: hospitality and positive feelings are back
When things don’t go well on a trip, the best thing is to go to another place and try your luck. And so we left Croatia to enter Montenegro. And everything got better!
Through Instagram I had spoken with two Colombian cycle tourists who offered to host us by Lake Kotor, and their hospitality and the great time we had with them lifted our spirits. The weather wasn’t improving, but through them a Ukrainian guy hosted us the next day in Budva and everything was wonderful again. We were back on the cycle touring cloud where everything was wonderful, albeit with the lesson learned that (as we should have foreseen) not everything is always perfect, and you won’t always be well received. Luckily, once we left these experiences behind, we have always encountered positive gestures. I’m sorry not to leave Bosnia and Croatia in the best light, but there are more friendly and hospitable countries in the world, and in the next chapters I will show you some of them 😉
Even though we only spent a few days in Montenegro, we noticed that the local people were friendlier than in the previous countries, and that we weren’t just seen as tourists to be squeezed. Furthermore, the weather improved again and storing the rain gear at the bottom of the panniers always lifts the spirits. Montenegro is a country we will surely return to because it has a lot of potential: mountains we didn’t have time to visit, beautiful towns (not just Kotor, which we did see and liked a lot, although you have to go in the low season!) and a coastline on par with its neighbors but with fewer crowds. But we had to continue south to get to Asia as soon as possible, so after spending a night with a very kind Couchsurfer known to one of the Colombians, we did a long stretch to cross the border and enter Albania, a country I will tell you about in the next chapter 😊