Day 126: Mostar - Trebinje

Aug 7 - We have to be out of the apartment by 10:30, but our bus doesn’t leave town until 17:30. It is another scorching day, so we store the baggage at the host’s house and walk into town. Bide our time in a restaurant, then Janet finds a shopping mall on Google maps, so we head there.

An especially shot up building, left to rot for the last 30 years. Much of the fighting in Mostar occurred between the Bosniaks and the Croats, who form the two major groups in this region.

These signs are everywhere in public places, including at the bus station. They are Bosniak funeral notices.

It is Sunday, so in theory I would imagine this enormous shopping mall would be busy, but it is completely empty, with almost all the stores closed. However, it is air-conditioned! And the movie theatre is open, so we get tickets for Minions - The Rise of Gru (USD $5 per ticket). This occupies enough time that the wait for the bus is not excessive.

Not even any piped-in music to break the solitude.

Back to the sweltering bus station, I take a quick round trip in a taxi to collect the bags. A lot of people congregate, only to leave on the bus to Split. I wonder if they know how crowded it will be? Our bus shows up a bit later, and there are just a few people still waiting. We head south toward Blagaj, but veer east up a significant elevation gain to the limestone plateau.

Get a great view of Blagaj Fortress, several hundred meters above the Dervish House discussed on Day 124. We did not visit this fortress because it would have involved a long taxi ride, and a hot hike up the mountain in 40⁰ C. This hilltop site shows evidence of use back to Roman times, and it became an important fort during the early medieval period, as it looked over one of the best valley routes from the coast into the BiH highlands. By the late Ottoman period, it fell out of use when Mostar became the main fortified control for route access.

We move in and out of limestone on the first part of this bus route, as noted by the significant changes in vegetation. So much open land here, forests and rocky plains with barely a house. Pass a sign welcoming us to Republika Srpska, half covered in graffiti. Eventually approach the eastern border of BiH and turn south. The towns we pass have changed character a bit. More stone structures and many small Orthodox chapels and churches.

There was a major gravel quarry near Gacko, covering much of the valley floor.

Downtown Gacko, with some patriotic monument and an Orthodox church in the background. The BiH flag has all but disappeared, replaced with the R. Srpska flag, which is the same three horizonal bands of color as the Russian flag, just in the opposite order.

Enter a region characterized by rocky hills and scrub. Descending into Trebinje in the dark, we can see a haze over everything. It is smoke from fires, though I cannot see where they are. The town smells heavily of it. We find a place with roasted chicken that is still open at 22:00, so eat a much needed meal and retreat to our apartment.

Today’s route: (A) Mostar, (B) Trebinje.

Bosnia and Herzegovina