After the long day yesterday where we argued too much, and the last rest day being too far back (in Rome!), we were more cautious again about strenuous routing. There does seem to be a jo-jo dynamic: You do an easy day, see an exciting place to stay or go and route a bit further, and then also with a bit more climbing, you realize it is too much, take a rest day, and plan an easy day again.
With the route being quite open now, we keep changing plans: We wanted to stay further south of Sarajevo to get to Višegrad where we would enter Serbia and a nature reserve. But then we could not find a nice place for a rest day tomorrow, so now we’ll end up going to Sarajevo anyway, because about in the middle of the 120km / 75mile trip to get there, we found a nice place to stay right on the lake Jablaničko jezero (jezero is Bosnian for lake).
Before leaving the guest house, we chatted to both the owners and a family living in Osnabrück, where my good friend and former PhD office mate Sebastian is from (they did not know him or his family, though). The family with Bosnian roots was here on holiday and gave us a tip for Sarajevo, before they would leave for beach holidays at the Adriatic coast in Croatia.
For breakfast, we stopped at a Pekara/bakery, where a small cat eyed us curiously/beggingly while we had a chocolate croissant (me), sour cherry poptart (Liz) and a delicious cheese burek. A bit further on, we also stopped at one of the many fruit stands along the road to get some grapes and peaches.
To get to our rest day, we followed the valley of the Neretva river out north of Mostar, which made for some stunning views. Unfortunately, we also had to follow the main M17 road, which did not have a shoulder and made for some situations with large trucks passing too close for comfort. We focused on riding as close as possible to the edge of the road to get as much space as possible.
The first part of the ride had only a very gradual incline, but we faced strong head-wind. Through some tunnels we had to pedal hard to keep moving at a reasonable speed.
After crossing a bridge over the river, we were on the same side as a railway line that the road followed a bit further below. We saw some maintenance workers doing something to the power lines, so there are probably no trains running at the moment.
We then climbed a bit further up to Jablanica, with more stunning views. After town, we started the longest climb of the day, which turned out to be only about 120m of elevation. At the top, we had to go through a longer tunnel (about 550m), and we decided to ride on the small elevated sidewalk next to the tunnel’s wall to be safer. When we did this again in the next longer tunnel, the sidewalk had a sketchy surface and we had to slow down a bit. Just before the goal, we hit yet another long tunnel, with an even sketchier sidewalk, and we even had to climb over a major pothole. But, we are rather slow and safe there than ride on the super narrow tunnel road.
The place we are staying on the lake has a restaurant with a rent a floating table service: You order your food and sit at a table on a motorized floating island, and a pilot takes you around the lake while you eat your food. There are also lots of women in burkas, reminding us that many people in Bosnia are muslim. Liz was a bit hesitant to take a swim in a bikini, but later we saw that the local women apparently have no reservations.
After a nice lunch of more Chevapi and the house specialty, trout (we passed several trout farms along the way), a refreshing swim in the lake where we missed the additional flotation provided by salty water, we took a longer nap to be well prepared for the rest day tomorrow.
During dinner, the owner of the Pansion Asim offerd us to try his homemade quince schnaps, which was quite tasty. He took a shot himself (while we sipped it), albeit a smaller one because he still had to work. Earlier, we were invited to join a birthday party by the brother of the birthday boy (50th birthday), and we walked up to them after dinner, where we promptly got invited to sit with them at the table, enjoying the music of Benko, a guitar player and singer they hired for the party. We congratulated the birthday boy who then offered Jack Daniel’s to us and filled our wine glasses with a very generous amount, almost a Swiss pour of wine (100ml / 3.4 fl.oz.), I would estimate. At some point Liz took over my glass, saving my rest-day from starting out head-achy, as she has much better tolerance than me. We told them about our trip so far, and they laughed at our pictures of us riding the dodgy sidewalks inside the tunnels. Liz talked to a the mother and daughter of a family that owns a leather processing company east of Sarajevo. Declining more shots of whisky, we went up to our room, looking forward to sleeping well into out rest day tomorrow.
Bonus beautiful music: The birthay boy’s and his brother’s father could not make it to the party because he is too old, so they played Sve Smo Mogli my by Jadranka Stojakovic for him:
Total distance/elevation to date: 4454km/35’759m
Rest days: 14
Route and Stats
Relive Video
The 1948 Tour 
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