Back in Time in Bosnia and Herzegovina

For the Easter vacation, me and Matej went for a one week kayak school with three danish boys, who had been paddling just on rodeo boats until then and wanted to learn how to ride the creek boats and how to paddle on whitewater. We decided for the destination of Bosnia and Herzegovina because there was supposed to be an ideal whitewater level at that time together with a considerably safe rivers. Also various difficulty levels good for the practice of whitewater basics as safety, boofing, scouting, running rapids etc. shall be found there.





Not only is Bosnia interesting from kayaker's point of view but it also offers a lot when one wants to meet completely different culture. In fact, just the moment you cross the boarders, you feel like you’ve jumped hundred years back in time.

We were quite puzzled when we met an unlit horse carriage heading on pigs market at one o‘clock in the morning right after passing the croatian-bosnian borders. Later on we found out that they are not an unusual means of transport there, even in a larger cities.

One of the nearest river behind the boarders close to Banja Luka is called Vrbas. The Rafting Championship was held there, I guess, some year ago, so new and cozy spectators area is built by the river banks.

The upper part above the two huge dams is at the high water level more wilder and exciting for kayakers for its blocked riverbed. However, the river is there unfortunately much more polluted, scummy and even the surrounding trees are behung by rubbish. The sight of the dam to which the upper part of Vrbas flows is a bit shock to someone used to recycling because the surface is owing to the floating pet bottles completely invisible.

As a result of thousand year struggles for power between the Osman Empire and the western nations, Bosnia is the country where 4 world religions meet. Aside from minor Jewish religion and Catholic Christianism stand next to each other two prominent religions of
Protestant Christians and Muslims. So it is nothing extraordinary, though slightly weird, to see in one tiny village a masjid just few hundred meters from a church.

Neretva was another river we ran, with many waterfalls pouring in narrow gorges and magnificent waves great for kick flips or just surfing.

We met a bunch of workmen, who were as friendly and welcoming as the rest of the locals, and who invited us to the little house on the bank they built for their gentleman parties. Their place with an arbor for barbecue was even more amazing because of the fact that they had been actually sailing all the tuns of heavy material on the raft. The whole river is, indeed, cut into a magnificent canyon and no roads lead down there:o)

Hidden in a narrow and steep canyon is also the river Sana. The entry rapid lays in a wide green valley where everyone smells like a sheep.

Mines are a great disadvantage of Bosnia for they make scouting of rapids pretty dangerous and you need to be careful because they may be laying around also in the water. They come from the World War Two and the Bosnian War for Independence in early 90. It is still impossible to remove the mines completely from some areas, because they were mainly made by partisans or civil soldiers and no one is brave or stupid enough to remove the home made weapons.

The Muslim gravestones on the front garden of a clothes shop in Bihac city. Simply no comments:o) On the way back we made a stop on a beautiful Croatian rivers near the boarders. First of them was Mreznica, which springs in a military zone, so that it’s not possible to paddle the upmost part. Above all, it offers a number of nice clean traventine drops and impressive nature.

We got there quite high water level, which caused that some of the holes were a little sticky.

In such destroyed area as the borderland of Bosnia and Croatia is seems this state of a bridge as nothing unusual. The highest waterfall on Mreznica has around 6 meters and is a pretty exciting “autoboof”.

Finally, our last trip was to the short gorge of Korana, were we got again a high water, which let us enjoy a nice rodeo spot and massive waterfalls falling from the sides on our heads.

Although we hadn’t paddle too hardcore rivers there in Bosnia, it was an extremely impressive experience. To meet an absolutely different culture and mentality so close to the borders of European Union was quite astonishing. Also the encounter with six year old begging children on every supermarket parking lot left in us rather a lot to think about. But after all, I consider Bosnia as a country with wonderful natural heritage and many yet undiscovered whitewater paddling opportunities.

Czech version of the article:

http://boatpark.blogspot.com/2010/05/bosna-hercegovina-2010.html