Aug 12 - Spend morning preparing the bags. I thought if we could get out the door at 10:00, we would be fine getting to the bus station by 11:00. In short, we did make it, but just in time as traffic is so bad everywhere. An old man on the bus asks me if I liked Dubrovnik and if I plan to come back. I say yes, but maybe not when it is so crowded. “We like to get many people,” he replies, but then gives it some thought and adds “It is a good thing and also bad thing.”
There are a number of backpackers milling about, apparently waiting so see if there are any spaces left on the bus. In the end, a some of them sit on the floor in the aisle. It is amazing to me that people just pitch up thinking to find last minute seats on a bus out of Dubrovnik, at the height of tourist season.
I sit next to a Dutch backpacker, who just came from Bari, Italy by ferry last night, but decided to continue to Kotor because there were no dorm beds left in Dubrovnik. Again, the Adriatic Coast is way too full of tourists right now to expect such luck finding stuff at the last minute.
The traffic stops, well short of the border. It takes over two hours to inch forward into sight of the immigration checkpoint. The Dutch guy talks about how stressed he is that the trip is so slow, but how to explain that this is all part of it? Several backpackers (this bus has almost no one besides budget tourists) get out repeatedly to smoke. Finally, the driver has had enough and says ‘No more out! Everyone sit!” As bossy as is seems, in the end people wandering off just becomes a problem for the driver when we go through immigration. And I agree with zero sympathy for people ‘needing’ cigarettes.
COST SUMMARY:
This is our final day in Croatia, done in two parts (with costs of BiH excluded). I really wasn’t sure what to budget here, but I decided that high costs would not deter us from seeing the ‘big ticket’ places like Dubrovnik and Plitvice NP. I imagined cost averages would be similar to Slovenia.
Projected daily cost from the pre-planning phase = $200/day
Realized daily average costs for July 18-30 and Aug 9-12 = $165/day
The share of this cost apportioned to lodging was 39%, food 35%, and transport 17%. Realized average daily came out better than I thought when we finished in Dubrovnik today. Getting a cheap room for four days in Trogir rather than dealing with Split accommodation prices did make a significant difference. If I were going to do this again, I would again seek out small towns close to Split and Dubrovnik and just deal with more transport.
Croatia IIMontenegro