bok

Day 6 – Lake Bled (Slovenia) to Krk Island (Croatia)

Travelled: 217km

Debbie: After a breakfast of Maltabela porridge and coffee we hit the roads and crossed a small part of the Julian Alps before making our way down to sea level and entering Croatia. The border post was very easy – we just flashed our passports and were waved through. We headed for the island Krk which is reachable by vehicle by crossing a huge bridge which connects the island to the mainland. We were allocated a super cool campsite right on the sea with our own private little rocky beach. We wandered round the harbour and small ally’s before having a delicious lunch of calamari and a half a litre of beer seeing as though it was cheaper than the coke or water! After that we hit our private beach and spent the afternoon lazing about. Once again we have had numerous people stop passed and ask us questions. Today we met a retired German who works for a Swiss company which has a base in Johannesburg and he supplied machinery for the mines in the Copperbelt (Zambia) so we had a long chat to him and he gave us some tips on where is nice to camp in Croatia.

Camped at:
Camping Jezevac, Krk
http://www.camping-adriatic.com/


Day 7 – Krk Island to Drage

Travelled: 256km

Andrew: Well we’re away from the inland mountain passes but it didn’t make the going any easier today down at the coast. It’s a very rocky barren landscape and after the 700th hairpin bend and the 1400th gear change from 4th to 3rd then 3rd to 4th it grew a bit tiresome and when you can’t see more than 50 yards of straight road to overtake the motor that’s struggling to make the corners at 15km/h it gets a bit frustrating. I had to change mode and kick back and relax and enjoy the drive. This place really is motor home centrale they are everywhere. This afternoon I went for a swim in front of our campsite then caught a bit of sun on my pasty English skin. We see the few landrovers passing, none kitted out for an overland trip but the odd one gives us the secret landrover owner’s wave. The Croatians seem to have plenty naturist camping sites so when we passed a campsite called “Pinus” Debs quickly remarked I don’t think we’ll be chancing that one, let’s press on a bit further down the road!

Camped at:
Autocamp Oaza Mira, Drage
http://www.oaza-mira.hroazamira@globalnet.hroazamira@globalnet.hr


Day 8 (01/06/08) – Drage (Croatia) to Blagaj (Bosnia Herzegovina)

Travelled: 301km

Debbie: Started off early today and hit Split hoping to mill around the shops for the morning. We were surprised that they were all closed – especially on a Saturday... We wandered round nevertheless and bought some fruit, bread and vegetables from the market. We decided to stay away from the meat market when I told Andrew that the last time I was there they were selling horse ...!! After we had walked passed a few shoe shops and Andrew had seen my eyes light up I think he was grateful that all the shops were closed. We only later discovered that today is a Sunday and not a Saturday which explained why everything was closed. After a few hours in Split we decided to continue our meander down the Croatian coastline and look for a camp site close to the road we needed to take to get to go to BIH. Well the closer we got to the turn off the more and more dodge the area became so we soon found ourselves going through the BIH boarder. We had heard of a water fall we needed to go see which was the start of the Buna river and was a huge bit of water bursting out the rock - we decided to go and see it. We were very disappointed as there was NO gushing of water out of anywhere and we happened to arrive in front of 3 bus’s full of school kids on tour – needless to say they had no interest in the site and stood all over the place and the girls giggled and shouted as the boys threw water on them ... we didn’t stick around that site for long. Near Mostar we found a delightful little campsite where they have created a mini Wimbledon and are in the process of creating a mini Wembley! It reached 30 degrees today so we were quite happy when it cooled down a lot in the evening – we are glad for the heat as we hope it helps prepare us for the desert. Tomorrow we are up early and we aim to do a big drive across BIH into Serbia and hope to reach the Bulgaria border tomorrow afternoon. We are not going to spend time in BIH and Serbia as from what we have read and seen there is not much to see other than very barren landscape and lots and lots and lots of rocks and monastery’s! Andrew has a friend on the Black sea in Bulgaria so we will spend 2 or 3 nights with them before heading into Turkey.