What to see in Bosnia in a day

Hello again everyone!

Today I am going to talk to you about my trip through Bosnia.

Our stay in this country was quite brief and a little rushed. One day, one of my Erasmus friends and I realised that our stay in Pula was coming to an end and our chances to go to Bosnia and Montenegro (I will talk about the latter in the next post) would reduce once we had left Pula. And the journey there wasn't exactly short from Pula, it took us 7 hours driving to Mostar, our first stop. The good thing is that we were taking it in turns and making stops so it wasn't as hard.

A lot of our friends decided not to come with us because it was quite a trek and we had to get up early every day to make the most of our time, not stop off at restaurants, etc. However, today I am really glad that we went even though we did it this way, rather than not being able to get to know, even if it was just a bit, these two amazing countries. The most usual thing to do is fly to Dubrovnik, the nearest Croatian city, and rent a car so you can travel around through Bosnia and Mostar, since they are not too far away.

Interesting facts

I recommend renting a car to get around Bosnia. This trip would be impossible to carry out without having your own vehicle since by visiting so many sites in one day, bus timetables don't allow this kind of flexibility and freedom.

An important fact if you do this trip by car from Dubrovnik or a different nearby country, is that sometimes at the border control you can come across a traffic jam. In my experience, I had read that sometimes there are huge queues there, that you have to show your passport and even sometimes your luggage, etc; but we crossed the border several times, in fact, you have to cross the border no matter what to get from Croatia to Dubrovnik, so we were able to cross around 4 times or more. Only one of these times did we come across a bit of a traffic jam, but in half an hour we were able to continue on with our route. They didn't even care much about passports, sometimes they didn't even stop to see it and let you go through directly. It depends a lot on what area you cross the border.

Saying that, once we crossed the border we noticed that Bosnia is a very different kind of country to Croatia, even though both of them had gone through the Yugoslava war. Visiting Bosnia lets you remember the war, whose wounds can still be seen in the streets themselves.

As we went on, we focused on the buildings and we could see that a lot of them still had bullet holes, as if they had been kept there on purpose. But for me, it seemed to be a way of making us reflect and know that even though these places nowadays are quite touristy and have managed to rebuild themselves in a brutal way, they had not suffered the damages of the war too long ago that in a certain way, it is still present today. It is incredible that a lot of places had been completely destroyed, to then rise from the ashes and become what they are today.

A perfect example of this is our visit, the Stari Most bridge over the Neretva river, which fell during the bombings and was rebuilt in stone in 2004. It has become a kind of symbol. I will talk more about this later.

Bosnia Itinerary

Mostar

As I said, Mostar was our first stop, to see its famous bridge. The best thing to do to park is to go a little bit further out from the centre, although don't park really near since it is all quite full, and if you go there in high season it probably will be an impossible mission to try and find a free space. We left it in a car park in a quite big area, and with the directions from Google Maps we got there in around 20 minutes. But be careful, I know a couple that also went to Mostrar and who parked in exactly the same spot as us, but their experience wasn't as good; they broke the windows of the car to rob them. Maybe this is why I will not explicitly recommend you this car park, but I will recommend this area which isn't as central.

As we neared the bridge, the number of restaurants, bars, souvenir shops, etc on the streets increased. Right in the bridge area we came across lots of charming stalls where they sold souvenirs and local artisan products, from costume jewellery to lamps, leather bags and other objects.

This area itself is quite busy. We went there the first week of June, so in July and August it must be quite a lot worse. Saying that, the place is incredible. Not just for the famous bridge Stari Most (old bridge) itself and all of the street stalls which were full of charm, but also the views both sides of the bridge are beautiful. The whole area has a big Muslim influence which you can appreciate through the shops, the artisan products... The shops which most caught my attention were those full of beautiful lanterns.

We decided to eat something quickly to not waste time, and get on the road towards our next stop: the Kravica Waterfalls.

Kravica Waterfalls

The journey takes around an hour, more or less. You can't miss it by using Google Maps. We came across a free car park right at the entrance. To enter to see the waterfalls you have to pay, I can't remember the exact price but it was no more that 5 euros entry.

Once we entered, we walked a bit until we came across the waterfalls that we were looking for. I have to say that there were other waterfalls to visit inside the area, but we didn't have time to see any more than this. The Kravica Waterfall is incredible, it reminded me a little of the National Park of Krka in Croatia and its waterfalls, which I spoke about in my previous post:

Discoving the Krka National Park

In this area, there are a couple of beach bars and toilets. I have to say that the place was full of people, but basically nobody went for a dip, even though it was allowed in the whole area, except for a certain area right next to the big waterfall. The place is often frequented by the Bosnian locals in summer when they wanted to escape from the heat, in fact, most of the people that we saw in the area didn't seem like tourists, but local families on a trip to the lake.

To cross the beach bar area to get to the area in front which is a lot closer to the waterfalls, you have to swim or pay to go on a small boat which fits around 6 people, which takes you from one side to the other. The boat is quite expensive, considering that the distance from one side to another is very small. We didn't do either option since as I said before, the boat wasn't worth it and we couldn't swim there either, since we had all of our things with us and leaving them there with the amount of people that were there was too risky.

Maybe it will have caught your attention that we didn't visit the capital Sarajevo, but the truth is that Mostar and its waterfalls caught our attention more, and we didn't want to miss out on visiting either of these places. Anyway, from what I understand it is also worth visiting if you have more time to spare than we did.

And that is everything! In the next post I will tell you about the second part of our trip going around Montenegro. Thank you all for reading!

Lucía

Photo gallery