GPS did not work where the road was under renovation!
I was staying in Mepas Hotel, Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
and decided to drive to Kravica waterfall one afternoon. The receptionst told me the drive would be less than an hour so I presumed it would
be sensible to also combine it with another tourist site enroute. Checked the tourist guide book once again and zeroed down on Medjugorje, which
is a small diversion off Route 425 from Mostar. Miklos, our driver strongly recommended to visit this, especially to see the Apparition Hill and
the Risen Christ statue. We enjoyed the walk in the open courtyard and garden of the Catholic Church uptill the statue of the Risen Christ.
Water was dripping from near the knee of the bronze copper statue and after clicking a few photographs, I went around the statue a few times,
hoping to find some clues. We then tried to judge the trekking time to the Apparition Hill staring majestically at us from some distance and arrived at a quick decision that it was better to
skip the climb uphill. Headed back to the car and moved on to Kravica. A thought came that instead of driving back to the highway, we should keep moving on to route 425a
towards Prcavci which would save time. But it was not to be.
We had to keep looking at our
Google maps and the car GPS so often. Some sections of the road mapped by Google went through
small villages, and some were under renovation. Faced with the difficult choice of going back to the highway and losing time or continuing on the unknown route
we opted to keep moving. We had to navigate some small stretches on the dirt track offroad. This was because there
was road construction going on and the road roller operator was working as if he had all the time for himself. From Prcavci, we took the M6 and then the journey to Kravica was fine. By
the time we reached Kravica, we felt a bit exhausted though. There were not many people and the booking office thankfully allowed our car to go inside till the waterfall. So we were saved from walking
our way down and coming up the hill on foot. Kept admiring the slender and beautyfull Trebižat River for some time, with water going around the stones and small trees at the top level, and
tumbling down with abandon. Just the sound of water falling in the pool below gave so much calmness. As we approached the park closure time, headed back up in our car to the parking place at the entrance
where we heard the sound of waterfall for some time before bidding goodbye. Kravica is no match to Victoria Falls or the
Niagra, but still worth a trip from Mostar.
We never imagined we would see so much snow in Bosnia and Herzegovina It was early February in 2020 and the weather forecast was for some snow in Sarajevo. As our car crossed Doboj on E73, Some 70-80 kms before Zenica, everything suddenly turned white. And when we reached Zenica, already everything around us was already covered in a few inches of snow. We decided to take advantage of this beautiful welcome given to us by the city, and decided to drive up to jahorina. The Jahorina ski resort is among the largest and most popular in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was also the proud host of the Winter Olympics in 1984. I was not sufficiently attired for this cold temperature, but despite my feet becoming numb and the cold winds piercing through my jacket, I still did not let go of the opportunity to walk up to the ski lift, and of course take a picture of myself clicked with the Olympic rings.
Trebevic is Sarajevo's own mountain with a beautiful chairlift.
