Saturday, 1st

Sorry for the block of text, I have no picture for this entry.

This is very likely the last entry with using that formatting. It is a pain to write, and I guess it must be a pain to read then. More about that below. Anyway, last entry stopped somewhere around Ploče (say 'plotshey'), in Croatia:

• Left near a service station by my driver, I do a quick hitchhiking attempt, but I actualy want to walk so I quit the attemps after less than 20 minutes. Here, the landscape changes slowly: there are less and less cars, and the road leaves the shore to go visit some small villages in the countryside. Then, a bit after Opuzen, it stars climbing up the hills that make the bulk of the natural barrier between Croatia and Neum, the only Bosnian coastal town.
  The view is unbelievable. The delta of river Neretra unfolds its maze of mandarin oranges fields, and irigation channels nestled around small mounds. In the background, the only opening in the belt of mountains lets the Adriatic break through the mist. Scattered over the valley, the ??? cast their dark shadows like giant needles.
  The striking silence makes me feel like the whole nature wants to make a painting out of this landscape, and I might keep looking at it for hours if it was not for the sun, now playing with the edge of the mountains to remind me that twilight is coming and I better find a shelter before the night falls.
   
• The countryside also means dead villages. I spend the night in a small village with a handful of houses, out of which only one is still inhabited by two old people from another time.
• The next day will have me walk to Neum, Bosnia and Hercegovina. Quite a different feel, and I only leave it reluctantly. People are nice, too.
• After 40km more of walking in the middle of nowhere, I go for some more hitchhiking to cover the last 70km. This part of Croatia is pretty much empty anyway, all I have is a wall of rock on the left, the sea on the right and the road in between. Not to mention I am running low on food and money: about 2 days worth of food, and the local equivalent of €2.50.
• Dubrovnik! Nice town. Once I got past the few kilometers of walking through the industrial part of the town, I discover the old town down a steady slope. The only road suitble for vehicles winds down the hill, while other streets are actually made of stairs. I go down.
• I meet two couchsurfers, unlikely encounter in Dubrovnik with a girl from Montenegro, and a Spanish guy.
• Dubrovnik is freaking expensive, somewhere in between 2 and 5 times more expensive than other parts of Croatia. I'll only buy two coffees over the 24 hours I will stay there. The old town is really cool though. It is shaped as a funnel, with a central part featuring churhes, towers and narrow streets with lots of small coffee shops. Around that central part, a myriad of small houses are piled up against the city walls in an improbable kind of way. I sleep in one of those, as most don't even have a main door.
• Next day, convinced by Neum, I head towards Bosnia and Hercegovina. I cannot wait to get there, as this is a country I am really interested in. The initial plan was to - if I was to get there - take a bus because of the minefields and the constraints they put on the trip. But after those few months of travelling, I have enough confidence in my ability to cope with those additional constraints, and I go on foot.
   
• Unpleasant surprise while crossing the border: I ask whether the next town is far, as I have no map and Google maps is mostly useless here. More than 20km. This is bad news: I have already walked more than 10km today, and this road is a no-man's land. Actually, I would discover a few days later than almost no one knows about this checkpoint. Not to mention I am now out of food, as the lack of Croatian money did not allow me to buy anything in Dubrovnik. And did I say that those mountains are on the list of "maybe" minefields? Well I did now.
• Two Serbian guys. Or should I say Bosnian? Except in this country, Bosnian is only for the muslim guys, and here is Respublika Srbska, and most if not all people are of the Serbian ethny. But not Serbian as in Serbia, Serbian as in Serbian from the Serbian part of Bosnia and Hercegovina. Alright? I have to explain that in another post someday. Whatever, the give me a lift to Trebinje, which I accept gratefuly.
• For quite a bunch of reasons, I don't stay in Trebinje for the night, I would like to go to the next town, Ljubinje. People told me it was 'not far, maybe 15km'. No problem right?
• Wrong! Never trust people who travel by car when it comes to estimating distances. After several hours of walking, Ljubinje is nowhere to bee seen. I resign myself to sleep in the nearby monastery, and eat my last bit of food.
• A gray dawn greets me for a tiring day of walking. Ljubinje is still nowhere to be seen, and I am out of food now. The small villages there are mostly dead, and the occasional inhabitant is an old farmer living from his own fields. No bakery, no shop nothing, and I cannot really go through the villages and hope to meet inhabitants, as the road does not go in the villages, it goes about 500m to 1km away from them. Walking for half an hour only to see a bunch of ruins quickly gets boring.
• I finally make it to Ljubinke the next day, quite hungry, having covered more than 70km in two days without food. Actually, I take some pride for it, though I won't do it again if I can help it.
• Ljubinje is quite a nice little town. They seldom see tourists, if ever, and the news of a strange guy with a big backpack goes around at a striking speed. Great evening, though it is a bit strange that there is no one of my age. I will get the explantaion later: once out of high school, people go study in Mostar or Sarajevo, and more often than not, stay there to get a job after.
   
• The next day has me follow the only road - at least, I cannot loose myself. The landscapes of this country are amazing. Not very varied, only the big hill/low mountain kind. But they do it really well. It is a bit strange though, the road always follow the same template: it follows the edges, then suddenly dives into a vally to reach a town, and up the hills again. This makes the discovery of every town a unique time, as one first sees it from the above, nestled in the valley.
• After all those hide and seek games, the silent threat of landmines finally goes into the open. See the dedicated entry.
• Stolac! Yet another very nice town. Not much to see there, but it is the very first village I cross in the Bosnian part of Bosnia. Or is it Croatian? Anyway, the alternating sounds of bells and muezzin songs calling their respective fidels to pray. I like the mood it creates.
• Anyway, the people are really nice there. In Stolac, they even looked for a place where I could spend the night and not be too cold. Great!

And... this is it for this post. But next update will be real soon™. I don't really like this style for logbook entries though. I could write forever, but I have to cut down on it to have time to actually travel. And I feel like it is void of its very marrow, leaving only an empty shell enumerating raw facts. Give it a few more tries and I'll submit powerpoint slideshows...

I am thinking about a new way to write, that would allow me to get more of the actual feel through, without eating many hours a day (which is what it took me at the beginning). Maybe I will just cut down on facts a only talk about things that actually touch me on the road, like I did on the post about landmines.