Written by Brittany Haas
On Christmas Eve, we woke up and prepared the truck to drive. We often don’t drive more than an hour at a time, but today, we had a longer transit planned. We prepared our passports for our much anticipated border crossing into Bosnia and Herzegovina, our first non-EU country. Exiting the EU has an added level of adventure to it, and I had been looking forward to this for weeks now.
It was a rainy morning, with intermittent thunderstorms. The rain was so heavy that in places, it seemed the road would become a river. It was a miserable start to Christmas, but a rainy day isn’t always a bad driving day, so we pressed on. Before turning inland toward the border, we drove further along the Croatian Highway 8, winding along the dramatic coastline. We had been on this road for weeks now, and had settled into endless views of crystal clear water, shorelines of rocky wonderlands, and mountain views. We rounded a corner and found ourselves awestruck by what we saw. Croatia was delivering on a whole new level. We saw mountains rising 1400+ m. up away from a dramatic coastline.
We needed time to take this in. Luckily, there was a pause in the rainshowers, so we pulled over at a viewpoint and took a short walk down toward the sea to a small monument. We stood there and just absorbed the enormity of where we were. Despite the crummy weather, Croatia didn’t seem ready for us to leave yet, and we weren’t either. Standing right there, we decided to stay a few more weeks in Croatia, and to head to Bosnia and Herzegovina later in January, when I have a week of vacation planned. Luckily, we have time right now. And this is what overland travel is all about. You can’t plan or anticipate everything bad or everything wonderful, so you need to be ready to seize opportunities when they presented themselves. And here, we had some opportunity for mountain exploration.
The truth is, that we are both falling in love with Croatia. In particular, we are falling in love with winter in Croatia. We have both been to Croatia multiple times, Chris more than I. Croatia is a popular summer vacation destination with Germans. But what is different about this visit to Croatia, is that it is winter. Along the coastline, where almost every village is centered on tourism, everything is shut down, and we feel that we have the coastline all to ourselves. We have had countless sea-front parking locations, lonely walks along coastal trails and get to marvel at the character and simplicity of the small villages that are scattered up and down the coast. If we were here in summer, we probably would both be in a hurry to get out of here.
Now, don’t get too swept away by our reports of Croatia. We are still working at least 40 hours a week, so our activities are limited to weekends, and the Christmas week, when we both took vacation. Despite this, we have fit in several hikes, including a couple of bike and hikes, visits to Plitnice and Krka National Parks, a via ferrata south of Split, rock climbing above Brela, paddling, snorkeling in our thickets wetsuits, and a magnificent mountain tour in Biokovo National Park.
So, here we are, already falling in love with the very first country we are exploring on this route. We have at least 17 more countries to go. Will we fall in love with all of them? We will have to wait and see.