Mountain village

We drove in a smaller minibus today (because of the rough terrain) via one of the 1984 winter Olympic centres on the Bosnian side of the mountains (continental weather of low cloud) then reached a dirt and stony single track road which wound its way up, over, round and down to the Herzegovinan side with its Mediterranean climate (warm and sunny) to reach in about 2.5 hours Lukomir. This village is the highest in the country at 1469m and consists of about 50 stone houses with steep metal roofs. The population here is mostly elderly. They have sheep which go down with them to a less severe area when winter comes between October and April when the road is totally blocked with snow. They sell knitted socks and hats to tourists and get some visitors to stay in the summer. (It’s so unusual for buses to come up that people on motor bikes and jeeps stopped to take photos of us).

Our first stop was to climb up a hill to see some 14th century stecci, (tombstones) then we walked up a hill to get a good view down to Rakitnica Canyon, one of the deepest in Europe. The scenery was majestic. In the other direction we looked back down to the village where we had lunch outside at one of the homesteads. There were 3 large pies - potato, spinach or cheese to share and a bit of beetroot, tomato and cabbage, followed by a small sweet cake and a Bosnian coffee. This is like Turkish though not as thick.

Before we left some of us had a walk down to the small mosque, put on headgear, took off our shoes and entered. Then it was the long drive back to rainy Sarajevo.

Apologies for lack of comments - as always the trip is full-on so there’s little time