Yesterday (Friday) was interesting.
Starting off in Croatia, everything was again beautiful. More coast roads, blue skies and wild jasmine in the air. Lovely.
Just south of Split I turned up into the mountains heading for Mostar. The mountains were fun but I was curious to see if swapping Croatia for Bosnia would end up being a mistake.
Mostar was depressing. Aggressive/selfish/dangerous driving and buildings still riddled with bullet holes. I thought seeing the bullet holes would be interesting, but the gloom overrode any lure of the unseen-before.
Bosnia seems to be a land of contrasts. Good roads and awful roads. Good drivers and awful drivers. Very rich folk and very poor. There is a lot of subsistence farming here.
I pushed on through Sarajevo and found a nice little family-run motel on the road towards Tuzla.
The bike could do with a little TLC and the family are going to help me source a new rear tyre. They also need a laptop fixing, so we have a nice trade lined up.
Dad Skyped this morning (is “To Skype” a verb? I hope not). That was cool. He’s going to try and arrange some holiday time in Vancouver for August. Sorted.
Right. Time for coffee and tyre-hunting. I like my morning coffee these days :).
[coffee]
The family have been really nice and their motel is in a lovely location.
I have my first sunburn (from riding without gloves yesterday) and the motel owner has just doused me with rather good aftersun cream.
I’m going to check the bike over in a moment to see how the over-the-exhaust pannier-fix is working out. I really need a long-term fix for the melted bike plastics there. The stone/plastic/bottle bodge is good for a day, but no more than that.