Romania and Croatia

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Photos to come later - have a look at links or wikipedia for pictures.

Mileage: ~4300

Our final excursion in Romania was recommended to us, the Berca Mud Volcanoes. Having no idea what to expect (the word "mud" was never used!), we arrived and found the volcanoes to be bubbling mud! While examining the strange natural phenomenon, Lucy managed to fall in the volcano, covering her right leg in mud up to her waist. How we laughed...

After a lot of driving, getting the car fixed after its sluggishness, a campsite where and camping at a site where someones wedding reception was taking place(!), we made our way back through Romania and through Hungary towards Croatia. We had something of a fiasco at the border - they wouldn't let us in because our back numberplate had fallen off, so we drove on to the next border post and got in there! We then drove down to Kopacki Rit National Park, a wetlands nature reserve on our way through Croatia. We camped in the park and had a look around the next morning. Sadly, with the reserve being so large, and the boat rides through the park not running, we barely scraped the surface of the nature park.

We left heading south, but after a minor navigational error, ended up at the border of Bosnia without realising, some 100 miles off course! We were forced to stay in a hotel, but began our journey anew the following morning, driving down to Plitvice Lakes, a tangle of beautiful waterfalls amid small, clear lakes. The place was heaving with tourists, but this didn't detract too much from the gorgeous scenery - wooden pathways snaking over ponds teaming with fish and around waterfalls small and large. We spent half the day here, before heading south along the Dalmatian Coast to Split.

Camping outside of split in the largest campsite I could have thought possible, we made the journey into Split the following morning. Split is home to Diocletians palace, an old Roman palace which remains at the heart of the city. After eating really too much ice-cream, we moved on down the coast to Dubrovnik. The route required us to pass through Bosnia, for which we were not insured and after stopping to show our passport and green card at the post and them letting us through, we could not start the car again so we pushed it across the border where we were insured and had breakdown recovery! It turned out that some security feature in the car had just stopped the engine from starting and was easily fixed with a phone call to the AA! We made it to Dubrovnik though struggled to find a campsite; after pointedly refusing to pay 40 Euros per night for camping near the city and then attempting to camp in a fire station, we made it to a much nicer campsite where the man gave the now desperate Matthew a hug.

We spent two nights in Dubrovnik - a beautiful walled city with narrow venetian streets looking out onto the Adriatic. The atmosphere was much more relaxed than the bustling Split, but still very touristy. We visited a war photo gallery and spent time at the pebbled beach. As we were a day behind we weren't able to visit any of the islands as intended, so we moved on back up the coast to Zadar. Lucy had to catch her flight back home from Zadar the following day and after dropping her off, Matt and headed into town, where I now write from.

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