We'd crossed the Bosnia–Croatia border without a hitch and were rolling into the poorest country in Europe.
Mosques and animal-skin rug sellers transported us to Asia. The first town, Bihac, and the first supermarket we walked into confirmed our first impression.
Bosnia reminds us of Laos. A brutal contrast after two years living in and travelling through Europe. Towns stripped of any decoration — purely functional, a line of one- and two-storey houses and buildings along the road.
Worth noting, though: the area around the river running through Bihac was lovely, with a nice park and views from the bridge that took us south-east into Bosnia.
We stopped at a petrol station to refuel — that is, to fill our water bottles. And we took advantage of the open WiFi to check the weather forecast. In the last few hours it had changed, and it was now predicting rain all day tomorrow. Damn.
After having been soaked to the skin in Croatia, and spending half a day drying our kit and tent, we'd thought decent weather would last at least a week. We were wrong. Or, to be more precise, the weather man had been wrong again and we'd believed him.
Our route was taking us into the mountains of the Una National Park — not a great destination in the rain. We watched the clouds swallowing the blue sky, and started to worry as fog began to swallow the road.
We decided to stop our climb and ask at a house by the road if we could spend the night in their garden. A few gestures, hand movements, a mime of pitching a tent and an exchange of smiles later, the old woman gave us the OK.
It was 7pm and we were already inside our tent, the clouds turning the afternoon into night in a hurry, the first drops beginning to fall on our pop-up home.
The night felt particularly long — locked inside the tent for so many hours. We slept solidly for a good chunk of it, though, despite the constant rain. Sometimes heavier, sometimes a drizzle, sometimes falling from the roof of the house next to us and bouncing off the ground beside our tent.
By morning it was still raining, and our tent was sitting in a fog bank. When the rain finally eased it was well past mid-morning and our tent was soaked — which is a problem on days without sun, because there's no way to dry it. Pack it wet and it'll be damp inside and out the following night.
After thinking it over for a while we decided to spend another day in the tent. Carrying on would mean going further into the mountains, where there'd be even more rain; ending up completely soaked and having to sleep in a wet tent didn't seem like a good idea.
At midday the rain stopped and we got out to stretch our legs and cook some fried eggs, when the old woman who owned the garden came over and handed us a tray with fresh local cheese, homemade jam and a peculiar flaky bread.
We thanked her warmly, and thanked her again for letting us stay another day in her garden.
And so there we sat. In our tent, spending the afternoon listening to rain on the roof, with another 18 hours still ahead of us. Crossing our fingers and hoping that the next day would bring enough sun to dry the tent and let us get back on the road with a smile.
And it did. After a failed first attempt at sunrise, the second time was the charm — the sun broke through the clouds and gave us a proper welcome to Bosnia. We dried the tent, had breakfast and launched ourselves into the mountains and the wilder side of Bosnia.
