A (dirt) road trip in the Bosnian mountains
Updated: Jan 23, 2020
"It's not a complete dirt road", The Boyfriend quips as our little hire car bumps and grinds over potholes that lead to Australia.
On the way to the Jajce waterfalls, we took what seemed like a shortcut on GoogleMaps but what turned out to be a phantom road, ie. a tractor lane connecting the handful of hermit houses hidden in the mountains.
After staggering along the lane for a bit, we met Branco also staggering along to his house. He was eager to help us but he only spoke Bosnian and couldn't see our map because he'd forgotten his glasses.
It was clearly rush hour on Hermit Lane because two of his friends soon arrived and laughed at us for taking this path. Using international sign language, they said 'turn around you stupid foreigners and go back'.
We had a quick snap with our new friend Branco and sheepishly bumbled our way back to the main road.
Half an hour later, another opportunity for a short cut appeared but this time there was a sign (of sorts) posting us to Jajce.
This gave us some confidence so we dragged our bemused car up the steep, gravelly mountain path. We lurched uphill for what seemed like an eternity but, as we were only moving at 10mph, it was not far in reality.
What could loosely be termed a junction suddenly appeared which flummoxed us as there were no more signs. Fortuitously, a car came the other way which I flagged down. The occupants were two Germans who must be the only Deutsche people who don't speak any English.
Having lived in Bavaria a long time ago, I strained my mind back to how to ask for directions and... gute fahrt... we were off! Happily, 1km later we found ourselves on a road less likely to cause a puncture and, eventually, we arrived at Jayce.
Unfortunately, it was too dark to see the waterfalls but we did eat a Bosnian feast as a reward for keeping all 4 tyres intact.
