First, back to last night. Off to bed I went and as I lay there trying to sleep it all started…in a big way. The biggest electrical storm I think I’ve ever experienced. You just can’t imagine…. this house perched on a cliff over the ocean and across the bay came lightning and thunder like the apocalypse. The thunder was scary as the whole house shook and the lightning lit up the sky and the water in a surreal and amazing sky-filling light, the normally beautiful, calm sea threw her waves onto the shore in a fury. It is one of those things you just can’t describe, at least you’d need better literacy skills than I have.
I was upstairs and Christine was downstairs. At one stage I called out to her and got no answer. I thought, nobody could possibly sleep through this so I called out ‘are you alive’. No answer. The choice was to check by climbing down the stairs in the pitch dark (electricity had gone out) or, as I did, think, if she’s dead there’s not much I can do!!.
So up this morning and off we headed, later than I would have liked. It was supposed to be about a 6 hour drive to a town in the Bosnian mountains called Jajce where we had a hotel booked for the night. Well, with one thing and the other…getting stuck in long queues at the borders, getting petrol, getting lost and the main one was getting stuck at the Bosnian border where they didn’t want to let us in because we didn’t have the ‘green card’ for the car, rather a photocopy of it. So after much negotiation they made us pay 22Eu…about $40 to get extra insurance. A scam if ever there was one.
Entering Bosnia was like entering another world. Suddenly my phone told me BiH wasn’t one of the countries covered under roaming…bing, off with our dear friend Mrs Google Maps. It was definitely poorer, signage less English friendly, and altogether a bit more puzzling. By this stage we had no money and hadn’t sorted out the exchange rate properly, adding to our sense of ‘of my god’. On and on we went, Christine at the end of her tether after driving for some 9 hrs without a break, without food and precious little water.
Anyway long story short, we reached this heavenly little town perched on the river and up a hill. Not that we have walked around. We have a room in a lovely hotel with a gorgeous restaurant. We dumped our bags, headed for the restaurant, ordered our beer (Chris) and our wine and had a most delicious meal of local trout. It really did make the rest of the day pale into insignificance. We still haven’t seen the town, that will have to wait until tomorrow.
Now it’s off to bed to get ready for the final part of this marathon journey down to Sarajevo tomorrow.
Please note no roaming in Bosnia. WiFi in the hotel but have to be in a WiFi zone to connect. May miss a blog or two along the way…we’ll see!!