BOSNIA AND
HERZEGOVINA |
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The tme has come to break away from the beach, so we packed up and left Omis and headed for Mostar and then Sarajevo. I (Cliff) got my first fine for speeding coming out of Komin, a nice straight piece of road after the town, according to the copper this was a50 kph speed limit and I was doing 90kph (56mph). After showing him my licence he asked for fine of 500 Kuna's, I said I only have 100, after five minutes haggling we agreed on 150 Kuna's, during the haggling they stopped a | ||||||||||||||
local (probably to order a free pizza for later) but did not fine him, this left me pissed off and Kuna-less.
We went through the Bosnian border with no problems and headed for Mostar. The first thing that struck us was the difference to Croatia - little had been repaired - in fact most was left and new built the other side of the road. The scenery riding along the edge of the mountains and river was beuatiful in many places and the roads good. On arriving at Mostar we headed for the centre of town looking for a Tourist Information centre to get a map etc etc. There appeared to be none so we asked in the main hotel and was directed to the Bus Station ( about 20 minuted walk on a hot day with bike gear and helmets ). We found the office and they had sold out of everything but directed us back to where the bikes were as this was the "Old Town" and where we would find the famous Mostar Bridge ( that is no longer ). We trapsed around for a while looking at the damaged buildings ( of which there were many ) but no sign of the Bridge. Back to the hotel it was for more directions. Eventually we did find it and to see it was quite amazing - even in it's destructed state. There is a new temporary bridge of steel next to it but they have still incorporated diving platforms from the bridge into the river - about at 20m drop to the river - not for the faint hearted. Mostar was far more devastated than we had expected after Croatia - we had thought that many more repairs would have been done by now but perhaps the level of devastation was greater than we expected from TV programs on the place. We met our first beggars here which was a little off-putting and made Jenny wary of an old gentleman who stopped on his bicycle with some mouldy bananas in the basket. Her first impression was that he would also be begging or trying to sell us the bananas. However she was wrong. He asked where we were from, shook our hands, welcomed us to Mostar and basically said how great the British were............... |
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What is left of the Bridge at Mostar.......................Other piccies can be seen here
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A sign near the start of the bridge states that reconstruction was to commence in February 2000 and would be complete in 31 weeks...................maybe not. | ||||||||||||||
Mostar | ||||||||||||||
Sarajevo | ||||||||||||||
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