Day 5: Jajce to Kulen Vakuf via Martin Brod

We had a few hours of driving ahead of us this morning as we left Jajce behind and drove westwards, towards the Una National Park. Up until now all of our travels have been within the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the two autonomous entities which make up the overall country, but today's route involved driving through part of the second entity: Republika Srpska.

This is the part of Bosnia with a majority Serbian population and we could tell things looked different straightaway. As soon as we crossed the demarcation line we could see what looked like a small Orthodox church, as well as a flag which looked quite reminiscent of the Serbian one.

We drove through Republika Srpska for a while before crossing back into the Federation. After around 2.5 hours of driving we reached our destination for the day: Martin Brod.

Martin Brod is a small village within the Una National Park. Although it's very close to the border with Croatia, the first sight which we saw here was an Orthodox monastery. It looked like quite a modern one.

The village is built at the confluence of the rivers Unu and Unac. The water here was flowing incredibly strongly!

Martin Brod is famous for being home to an impressive waterfall and that's what we had come to see. As we set off on the path towards it, we were accompanied by two local dogs who seemed to be making it their purpose to guide us.

Of course, it wasn't long before Tim had made friends!

After paying an entrance fee of 3 KM each (around £1.28) we got our first glimpse of the falls.

We walked towards them on a series of wooden walkways...

...and soon we had an unimpeded view.

The waterfall was absolutely incredible, bigger than I had imagined in advance.

This seems to be yet another amazing place in Bosnia which hardly anyone has ever heard of.

We had this entire viewpoint to ourselves.

Well, apart from our new friend of course.

We spent quite a bit of time here, admiring the falls.

Look at them in action!

There's constant motion here!

Then we headed back into the village to see whether we could track down somewhere to have lunch. It was such a small place that I wasn't overly optimistic, but we did eventually find a small restaurant which was open and serving pork and fries.

After lunch we drove for another 20 minutes or so to the village of Kulen Vakuf, where we're staying in a small apartment for two nights. We checked in, paid for the accommodation (which is the cheapest of the trip so far at EUR 36/night) and then set straight out again after around 15 minutes. We were in and out so quickly that I forgot to take a photo of the room. I did, however, take a photo of the view from the kitchen window, which is really beautiful.

The original holiday itinerary was just to see the waterfall at Martin Brod today, then to visit the Una National Park's biggest waterfall - Štrbački buk - on Thursday. Unfortunately, the weather forecast for Thursday is absolutely terrible with 100% rain forecast for the entire day. It was still looking quite sunny this afternoon, so we decided to go and see Štrbački buk straightaway, so that if the rain really is torrential tomorrow then it isn't the end of the world.

It was a drive of another 30 minutes or so to get us to Štrbački buk. We paid an additional 8 KM (£3.41) each to enter the national park again, via a road which wasn't 100% tarmac.

We parked beside the river Una and followed a series of wooden walkways down towards the water's edge.

The river Una forms the border between Bosnia and Croatia here - the border literally flows down the middle of the river - and we could see a Croatian flag on the opposite bank.