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Clare
Clare

Day 10: Kravica and Počitelj

Today got off to a strong start with a breakfast of burek in our apartment.

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Even better - it wasn't raining, or even forecast to rain today! After we'd finished enjoying the burek we set out towards our first destination for today: the Kravica waterfall.

This was a place which I was in two minds about visiting. On the one hand, the pictures I'd seen online made it look like an absolutely incredible location. On the other hand, a lot of the recent reviews I'd read suggested that it was a massively overcrowded destination (mainly because of tour buses coming from Croatia) and horribly commercialised. Reviews described a cramped beach area with paid sun-loungers below the falls, dominated by bars and cafes playing loud music. That sounded like my idea of a waterfall nightmare, but the pictures I'd seen online were so beautiful that in the end I decided Kravica needed to stay on our itinerary. We were just going to approach it with suitably low expectations and try not to compare it with the unspoiled waterfalls we'd recently seen in the Una National Park.

It took us about an hour to drive from Mostar to Kravica. When we arrived we found an enormous parking area which was almost empty. That seemed promising! We had to pay 20 KM (£8.57) each to enter the waterfall area, which definitely makes it more expensive than the other waterfalls we've seen on this trip, but not excessively so. Parking had to be paid separately on top of that, although it only ended up costing about £1. We investigated a viewpoint to the side of the car park and found that while we couldn't see the waterfall from here, we could at least see some spray which confirmed there was a waterfall down there!

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Having bought our tickets we proceeded to climb down a series of steep steps towards the waterfalls. Every so often we got a tantalising glimpse of what lay below.

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After a while we came to the end of the steps, reaching a flatter viewing area above the top of the waterfalls.

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From here we could see water flowing around a corner and over the top of a drop.

As you can probably tell from the video, not all of this water looked like it was supposed to be here; it seemed like there had been flooding here too which was causing new waterfalls to form over patches of grass.

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We walked further downhill on a gently sloping path.

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From here we got our first proper view of the Kravica waterfalls.

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Wow, they really were spectacular!

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If the photos look a bit blurry it's because the spray coming off the waterfalls today was immense! You'll be able to see it more clearly in the video.

We were definitely seeing the waterfalls with an above-average level of water in them!

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I suspect if we came again we'd never see the falls with quite as much water as this.

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I suspect we'd also never see them quite as quiet and peaceful as this either. We continued our way down towards the beach area, which I'd read so much about online.

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Whatever noisy activities are normally happening there clearly weren't happening today, because the majority of the area was flooded.

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There might ordinarily be sun-loungers here, but today definitely wasn't the day for it.

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Once we'd finished admiring the views at the bottom, the climb back up to the car park awaited us. Rather than go back up the steep steps, we took a slightly longer but less steep route on a footpath. We had to dodge the tourist train which runs up and down this track carrying people who aren't able to walk, but we found some fantastic viewpoints on the way.

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In fact, arguably these were the best views of the whole day :)

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We also found a Kravica sign, though it was difficult to fit in into a photo.

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There was just time for a final look at the falls...

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...and then we were heading towards our second destination for the day: Počitelj. Počitelj is a historic walled town, partway between Kravica and Mostar. We parked alongside the main road and began walking up towards it.

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A town is first thought to have been built here in the 12th century, although the majority of the buildings visible today date from the Ottoman era.

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We could see the remains of the Turkish baths...

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...and the beautiful mosque, which was built in 1563.

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You could wander around the town for hours exploring but it is built on a rather significant hill, so getting anywhere is quite hard work!

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This is about as high as we made it.

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It's a really fascinating place, though - definitely worth visiting :)

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We drove back to Mostar, cooled off in the apartment for a while and then walked into the city centre to get a belated lunch/early dinner. The river Neretva was still looking rather brown!

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We've had a really fun day though and overall it's been a really fun holiday, even if there have been a few unexpected challenges. Our final challenge for tomorrow is to make it back from Mostar to Sarajevo by 3pm in order to hand back the rental car and catch our flight home to the UK.  A journey which should have taken 2 hours is now going to need more like 4 - 5, as we divert to avoid flooding and closed roads. Fingers crossed all goes according to plan!




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