Kravica Waterfalls

We had 3 places to visit today but not far out of Mostar we had to stop for 45 minutes at a service station as the bus had broken down. Another one took us to the old town of Pocitelj, a UNESCO site of towers and battlements from the Ottoman era. Its Kula is a silo-shaped fort that dominates the skyline from a hill above the town. It once housed watchmen and military guarding against possible invaders from the Neretva Valley. It was a climb up - some didn’t bother.

Once down we found our replacement bus had gone on another job so we waited in a cafe and had a very refreshing cool fresh lemon juice till the next replacement came. This was quite small but got us to our next destination was Blagaj. The highlights were the Buna Spring and the adjacent Dervish house. This religion had been banned after WW2 so the house was now a museum. We took off shoes and put on scarves to enter. The house was beautifully situated under a high cliff wall of 200m from where the spring, actually a river, now flows, exiting through a cave.

We had an indifferent lunch - I shared the veggie platter with another person. It was boiled potatoes, rice, chips, fried courgette slices and a fried green pepper. There were some bits of cheese (of course) with no flavour, one and a half slices of tomato and one lettuce leaf. The glass of wine was the best bit, though we did have a beautiful view of the river and some little waterfalls as well as the dervish house on the opposite side.

Some of the others decided they wanted to go in the rubber boat into the cave. While we waited for them Mr C and I had a pleasant chat with a young Argentinian footballer who played for one of the Bosnian teams.

When we got back to the bus we found we Samir, our original driver, waiting with yet another bus. Because of the original delay Fatima had changed the order of things so we had to go back to the outskirts of Mostar, drive by the tower and battlements we’d been to in the morning as we needed so see the famous waterfalls of Kravica. There was a huge car park and lots of people climbing their way up from the falls, it being around 5pm. Its height is around 28m and the length along the various falls was around 120m. Iguazi Falls it is not but it was very pretty nonetheless, a green oasis in the rocky Herzogovinian landscape. We had a wander then climbed back up, waiting for those who’d decided to take the little train to save the knees on the steps.

It’s been a long but interesting day, arriving back in Mostar at 7 instead of 4. However some are moaning about the broken bus. Poor Fatima did well sorting it all on a Sunday.