We leave Croatia behind driving northeast, into Bosnia. We get a little nervous when we're waved to the side at the border crossing, the agent wants to look inside our van. He glances in and remarks, heavily accented, "did you make it yourself? nice mobile apartment". And we're waved through. We visited the old city of Mostar. It has an old center that is very pretty and clearly shows the influence from the Ottoman empire as it ruled Bosnia from the 15th to 18th century. There are multiple mosques around and we're surprised by the call for prayer, which I had never heard in the flesh before. Much to our surprise, the couple of core streets are completely packed with tourists. We escape into a tiny bar, where we're served a Turkish style coffee. (And they teach us how to have it.) We attempt to visit the next old town, but are withheld by a ridiculous amount of traffic because of some local fair. Too bad, we drive on instead. And again the drive is amazing. It's mountain view after view, zigzagging through wild forests. We need to stop multiple times because of cows or sheep on the road. We head towards Sutjeska National Park, sleeping in a picnic area by a lake on the way. The next day we make it into the park, which is stunningly beautiful. Which makes it all the more frustrating that we can't do much: all hikes start above long and steep gravel roads, that we don't dare to embark on with Vespa. We get into a very nice campsite (above only a short gravel road), run by a couple that speak German but no English. The only other guests: a Dutch couple with a camper. Darn, these guys get everywhere. I do a mountainbike loop and Federica continues to recover with a nap. There is no real shower on the site, but the hostess lets us use the shower inside their house.

The day after we do absolutely nothing. We lazy in the sun reading our books and doing puzzles.

Organized through our campsite host we join a guided tour into Perućica, on of the last remaining primeval forests in the Europe, in the hearth of the park. We are picked up in a rickety Volkswagen van and meet our guide: Dejan. The tour takes the entire day and we learn a lot about the nature around but also about the history of Bosnia. In a nutshell, the people in Bosnia have constantly had the misfortune of being caught between bigger powers around them. The Bosnian War, from 1992 to 1995, had left about a hundred thousand dead and about 2 minion people displaced. The scars of this history are very obvious: it seems about a third of the buildings are derelict and pretty much every bit of concrete shows bullet holes.

Now a small problem: we gave the guide the last of our cash, and we still had to pay for our campsite. Bosnia (and Montenegro and Albania) aren't included in European roaming, so we can't pay through PayPal. I take my bike the 300m down into the valley, but a restaurant, a hotel and a bar cannot help get cash. The first ATM is 30 minutes by car away. Fortunately, the Dutch couple will advance some money for us in the end.