The Great Escape

Sometimes you just know, and when our ferry from Italy landed in Dubrovnik and we drove out into the streets of Croatia we knew.

We knew that the chaos, the noise and the demands of Italy were behind us at last.

It was 7:30pm when we arrived – far later than we would normally be driving unfamiliar roads – and it was dark. But as we followed the wide, calm, well-lit and smooth tarmac from the port to the campsite it was as though the world we had been living in for the last few months had melted away.

The ferry itself had been a good omen

We had booked premier seats thinking it would make the 8.5 hour crossing slightly less painful but needn’t have worried. As BigMog joined the queue we started to think that maybe it wasn’t going to be that busy

In fact there was hardly anyone on board at all and in our entire seating area there was no-one but us

We slid across the Adriatic in seats like cosy beds, ate all the junk food we’d brought with us, read our books and dozed

By the time we docked we were a little disappointed to be leaving.

We arrived at the campsite to a warm welcome, the person on reception spoke good English and the campsite itself was spacious and clean. After a peaceful night’s sleep we jumped on a bus and headed into Dubrovnik old town.

James had been before but I hadn’t so I didn’t really know what to expect. As we walked from the bus stop towards the city walls I got my first view of the town

I was surprised how small it was, but that was no bad thing. We only had one day here so small and compact meant we could relax and enjoy it rather than being on a mission to see everything.

We entered through Pile Gate and found Onofrio’s Large Fountain

We wandered up the Stradun, a pretty, cobbled street with historic buildings either side

At the other end was a statue of Marin Drzic, a Croatian musician and poet. The nose is shiny as tourists keep rubbing it for good luck – much to the annoyance of the local population

The Rector’s Palace looked impressive from the outside but we didn’t go in

And next to it was the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary

From there it was a short walk to the harbour

The walls of Dubrovnik are full of forts and this one was St Johns Fort which I heard rumours was used in the filming of Game of Thrones

The town was very calm and peaceful with lovely buildings around every corner

We stopped off for lunch at a restaurant just off the main square. It was nice enough for a tourist place but we were still talking about the £13.50 price tag for 500ml of coke many days later!

Just outside the city walls was the old quarantine hospital known as Lazaretto but it seemed to have been converted into restaurants and craft shops.

By this time we had pretty much done the whole town, it really is not very large. We wandered back to Pile Gate but before we left we found the old Franciscan monastery famed for establishing the world’s first ever pharmacy

The next morning we were planning to drive across the border into Bosnia and Herzegovina, finally leaving the EU behind us. We were excited to be getting further out into the world, but with it came two less convenient matters.

Firstly, our vehicle insurance only covered us in the EU so from now on we would only have third-party insurance bought at each border. So, like Henry in Africa, BigMog himself would be completely uninsured.

Secondly, our mobile phones only worked in the EU so we would be back to using our wifi hotspot and buying local SIM cards every time we crossed into a different country. This had previously meant we could be offline for a couple of days as we searched for a mobile phone shop and with only one hotspot between us it meant that if we were apart only one of us could be on-line.

So we had made a big decision – we had installed a Star Link dish onto BigMog’s roof during the build and planned to sign up to their global unlimited data package as soon as we left the EU. That would allow us to do all the data-intensive things that we had struggled with up to now – downloading books and movies, installing updates on our phones etc. But it also had limitations – it meant that we only had wifi when we were with the truck, as soon as we went more than a few metres away we would be cut off.

Back to local SIM cards? We had initially thought so but on the morning that we were packing up ready to go, we activated our Star Link subscription with great excitement only to find that it didn’t work. There was a technical hitch that needed Star Link to intervene and they are famous for possibly the worst customer service in the world – it can take anywhere from 3 days to over a month for them to respond to any customer service request.

So we sent in the request and tried to decide what to do whilst we waited for them to deal with it. Whilst researching options I discovered eSIMs. Welcome to the 21^st Century Jennifer, turns out it has some benefits afterall!

We installed an eSIM on each of our phones and headed for the border

Much of the world knows Bosnia and Herzegovina simply as Bosnia. However, not long into our trip we discovered that this is not only inaccurate but also quite upsetting to the people living in the Herzegovina region. The country refers to itself as BiH so that is how I will write it from now on to save a bit of typing.

We had one of the easiest border crossings we have ever done. Croatia/the EU glanced at our passports and stamped us out looking rather bored. BiH glanced at our passports, handed them back and waved us away without even stamping them. At customs, I jumped out with all our paperwork and asked the lady what she needed to see only to be told we could just carry on.

Sadly, it was all so easy that we entirely forgot to get the insurance and instead sped off with big grins on our faces before remembering two minutes later when we were on a dual carriageway and couldn’t get back!

Once you’re out of the EU, entering a new country is never as straight forward as you would like it to be, regardless of how well you try to plan. We had our eSIMs but there was no signal near the border so we had no idea how to find the campsite we had planned to stay in – nor anywhere else for that matter. There had also been no cash machine at the border and we were heading towards a toll gate with no local currency in our pockets.

But, as we have discovered many time since, BiH and its people have a habit of making life easy for visitors. We stopped at a fuel station where we were warmly invited to use their wifi to find our campsite on google maps and told that the toll gate would take euros.

Feeling rather more in control, and with our route plotted on google, we thanked the guys and headed off into the big unknown.

To a very large extent, all these difficulties – from being uninsured to having no internet access to not knowing where we are or where we’re going to not being able to get local currency – are a form of bliss to me. Facing all of this after so many months of not having to struggle to do anything was like coming home. It’s not that I want my life to be hard for the sake of it, far from it. It’s something far less easy to put into words.

There is definitely something in it about having to be self-sufficient, living on your wits and solving problems. There is also something about being somewhere new, somewhere where everything is different. But it is also about being lost, off the radar, having a sense of freedom that comes only from being anonymous. When you’re in a country where you know no-one there is no safety net and that is doubly true when you also don’t speak the language, have no money and no internet access. It is a wonderfully liberating experience and one which we were ridiculously pleased to have back in our lives.

We drove on to our chosen campsite – an out-of-the-way, basic place by the river where the owner doesn’t like to charge and is rather surprised and pleased if guests decide to make a donation at the end of their stay.

The roads were smooth, wide and practically empty, the few other drivers polite and easy going. We drove along with the metaphorical wind in our hair

The last couple of miles took us along smaller, dirt roads and the locals in the village we passed through looked at us in amazement as we went by. And when we arrived at the campsite we felt as though we had just dropped into a small corner of heaven

The owner was in town but there was a Belgian couple staying in a tent who told us he would be back soon and suggested we just chose a spot and parked up. So that’s exactly what we did

And for three days we didn’t move!

We met the owner and found he was as lovely as everyone had said.

We were invited for dinner by the Belgian couple and had the best vegetarian curry we’d ever tasted

Our eSIMs had sprung into life a few miles from the border and the campsite, surprisingly, had wifi so we were back online and able to download books to read and films to watch.

I sat outside working on plans, sorting out a few admin problems and writing this blog whilst James tinkered with the Mog.

We had warm days and cold nights

And we had no desire to go anywhere else or do anything else at all. We just soaked up the peace and quiet, the beautiful surroundings, the kind and friendly people and the knowledge that we were in a wonderful and exciting new country with no timescales, no pressure to be anywhere, no expectations

We woke up on our fourth day feeling rested, calm and energised. We were ready to strike out into our new country and start exploring again.

The owner had a friend visiting who spoke perfect English and we sat and chatted with them both for an hour or more. They gave us a lot of recommendations about where to go and what to see, including where we could find wild horses further north. They also recommended somewhere where we could buy our third party vehicle insurance.

When we finally dragged ourselves away, we drove a few miles up the road to the Bijaca Necropolis. The whole of the Balkan area is full of mediaeval stecci, monumental tombstones dating from between the 12^th and 16^th centuries, most of which are UNESCO sites. This was only a small one but as it was so close we decided to start our new adventure there.

We had to park in a layby just down the road from the stecci and walk back, climbing over a wall to get in to the site. It had a rather abandoned feel but it was fascinating to imagine the history behind these stones and wonder whether there were still any bodies underneath

Our next stop was the historic town of Pocitelj, one of the few places barely touched by any of the 20^th century wars which devastated so much of this country. It is a real town with real people living there but also an incredibly well preserved heritage site, often described as an open-air museum.

We parked up on the main road below the hill town and stopped at a fruit stall to buy bags of amazing fruit that cost very little. We then went into a bakery for some pastries for lunch which also cost just a few pence. Everything seemed so cheap here. Everyone spoke English to some extent and everyone – even the lady at the fruit stall – accepted euros which was lucky as we still hadn’t managed to find a cash machine to get any Bosnian Marks.

Full of fruit and pastry we climbed the steep, wobbly steps into the old town

We wandered around the Shishman Ibrahim Pasha mosque which was beautiful

It also had an interesting story – originally built in the 16^th century, it had been damaged in the 1990s war and the building we now saw had been painstakingly rebuilt from the ruins.

Remnants of the old mosque were laid out in front as a reminder of the impact of war

Up even more steps, we found the Pocitelj Fortress built by the Ottoman empire in the 14^th century

Now abandoned although with signs of an attempted renovation many years ago

Looking inside the tower was quite impressive

There was no way I was going up the steps to the top

But James had no such worries

The views from the fortress were fabulous

After a long and rather perilous climb back down the centuries old steps, we jumped back into the Mog and headed for a park-up place next to the Neretva river just outside the town of Capljina

It wasn’t exactly remote, we could see a shopping centre and some industrial buildings across the river, but the views in the other direction were pretty

We were sitting outside taking advantage of the warm, dry weather, when a local man came over to say hello. He said he was impressed with the Mog and was keen to chat to visitors. We talked for over an hour about everything from housing costs and salaries to the police to life in general. Eventually an irate driver came and dragged him away – turns out he had been so excited to see us he’d left his car in the middle of the road to walk down to the river!

The next day was Monday and the first working day since we had left our lovely, remote campsite. We were acutely aware that we had been driving around with no insurance but understood that the police would be ok with that given that nowhere was open over the week-end. Today, however would be a different story and when we saw two sets of police pulling people over on the road we became even more concerned.

We headed straight for the insurance office recommended by the guys at the campsite but the lady we needed to speak to was in a meeting. The receptionist suggested we tried the office next door and an hour later we had our insurance certificate in our hands and relieved smiles on our faces.

We spent the rest of the wet and rainy day pottering around, filling up on fruit and veg from the roadside stalls and buying various bits for the Mog from autoparts shops

Before heading back to our riverside park-up place to keep warm and dry inside

The next day we planned to visit the Hutova Blato nature reserve but stopped off at the ruins of the Roman villa of Mogorjelo enroute

There was no one else there and we had to climb up a wall to get in which made it all the more fun

The villa must have been huge in its day but there is little left of it now

We pressed on to the nature reserve and another very friendly welcome.

Being the beginning of November there were few other tourists around. We started in the small museum learning all about the flora and fauna and one of the members of staff talked us through the history of the park and showed us a map of how the rivers and lake connected.

Most of the park is inaccessible as it is under preservation to allow nature to recover but they run boat trips along one of the rivers. We joined the next trip and were the only ones on it

As we chugged along looking out at the beautiful scenery and watching the birds flying between the trees, I started to feel homesick for Africa

On the short walk back to the Mog through the trees my eyes caught site of something lying on the path. I peered at it and realised it was a snake. It wasn’t moving so I guessed it was dead

I grabbed a stick and touched it just to be sure and was completely taken by surprise when it quickly writhed away

We watched it disappear around a tree smiling at our luck – we have seen few snakes on our travels

We carried on our walk and were amazed to see a second snake dash out in front of us a minute later

Our next stop was the Radimlja Stecak Tombstones, a larger and better preserved site of the medieval stecci

This one was really quite impressive

With beautifully carved stones looking remarkably well preserved for their age

The carvings on many of the stones showed men waving with very large hands. The guide told us that this was a sign to show that everyone was welcome

Very fitting in a country like BiH where the people clearly keep up this ancient tradition.

We drove on towards the remote town of Zavala. Only around 300 people live in the entire Zavala valley but there is one of the world’s most important cave systems there as well as an orthodox monastery.

As we drove, I gazed out of the window at the spectacular scenery

We saw abandoned houses scattered all over the landscape, possibly remnants of the war years

There were hardly any other cars on the road and it was so peaceful. I suddenly realised that I was actually enjoying driving in the Mog for the first time ever

When we arrived at our park-up place the views across the valley were fabulous

There was literally no-one else around

Even the nearby guest house was closed up

As the sun set behind the mountains we settled in for another peaceful night’s sleep

The next morning we woke up to big news! Overnight, Starlink had finally got to our service request, sorted out our subscription and we were online. I cannot put into words the excitement and the relief. We weren’t just online, we had superfast, unlimited data that would work even in remote places where normal internet couldn’t. It was a revelation.

As I trained that morning, I could see the sun rising over the hills but down here in the valley it was freezing cold. Just as I was finishing, the sun rose over the peaks and our car park was bathed in warmth. I spread my arms out, looked up at the sky and breathed it all in.

Later that morning we walked down the road to the Vjetrenica Caves. You can’t go into the caves without a guide as they are so extensive they’d have tourists going missing all over the place. Our guide was wonderful. She was a young biologist who is carrying out research at the caves and was so full of enthusiasm and passion for them it was infectious

I hadn’t been sure whether I could do these caves, especially when we found that the first 150 metres was through a tunnel about 1m high so crouching was required

But our guide encouraged me to try and I’m so glad I did. Before long the first cave opened out in front of us and it was incredible

It towered above us like a cathedral

With lakes all around

It was cool and airy with the crisp, clean air defying anyone to feel claustrophobic. I started to feel as though I secretly liked caves, maybe that’s why I keep putting them on our itinerary!

We walked along the well-kept pathway, winding through one cave after another

To make things even more exciting, there had been recent storms in the area that had taken out the power across the valley. So the floodlights that normally light the way were out and we had to find our way using torches

Once out of the caves we wandered up the hill to the monastery

But as we entered through the gates we encountered one of the monks who told us that we could not enter. He pointed at a sign which said they were only open to the public from 4-6:30pm

So we went back to the Mog and hung around for a couple of hours before returning. This time the same monk stopped us, pointed at me and said I could not enter without a skirt. I pointed to the long, thick walking trousers I was wearing and asked whether they were not covering me enough. He said no, I must wear a skirt to my ankles.

We were both annoyed, not least because he might have told us that first time round and saved us the wait. But it was too late to go anywhere else today so we grumpily sat in the Mog for the rest of the afternoon

We set off early the next morning and headed for the Tvrdos monastery hoping for better luck. This one, at least, had a shop selling wine so even if they didn’t let us into the monastery itself at least we could poke around in there.

The Tvrdos monastery is, however, very different from the deeply religious and orthodox Zavala monastery and it was busy with visitors happily wandering around

We entered through the gates and ambled around the small vineyard

There was a graveyard with various tombs and a beautiful memorial building

Inside the church were brightly coloured, very blue, frescoes and a large, low hanging chandelier. We came to realise that this is very typical of the style of churches across the country

Around the internal courtyard were a variety of monastic buildings

It was all very pretty but when we tried to visit the old cellars and find the winery it was all closed up.

We wandered back toward the shop outside the gates trying very hard to tell ourselves it had been a lovely visit but actually feeling a little disappointed.

When we had first arrived, James had started chatting to a guy on a little Bobcat, asking him about the machine and what work he was doing. As we walked back he called over to us to ask whether we had enjoyed our visit and had we tasted the wine. When we told him it was all closed he sent us back in to find a monk he described as ‘extremely tall with grey hair who speaks fluent English’. We searched around for a few minutes before a man who fitted the description perfectly appeared at the top of a flight of stairs. I went up, introduced myself and asked whether a cellar visit and tasting was possible.

With a smile, the lovely monk got out his keys and took us down into the old 15^th century cellars

We were then escorted to the ‘new’ cellar where there was a bar and an array of wines

We tried two reds and two whites and were then treated to a special red ‘on the house’. All were delicious and I could see our wallets were about to get rather lighter before we left here.

The monk was fascinating to talk to. His personal history of the 1990s war was very sad – he had been forced to leave his home in Mostar and now felt unable to go back as his old community had been displaced and he no longer felt welcome. He was a Bosnian Serb which brought home the fact that war devastates all sides.

We headed straight back to the shop and bought six bottles of wine, honeyed figs, fresh cherry juice and marinated cheese. I walked out carrying the bag with a big grin on my face. James walked out with one eyebrow raised, slightly shaking his head…