Photos: HPD Papuk Virovitica
Written in Croatian by Danijel, translation by Adrian

***

Prologue:

Monika: “I’m really scared. I’ve never been rafting before.”
Skipper: “You think that’s bad? I’ve never been rafting either. I usually work in the kitchen—they just ran out of skippers.”

***

Twelve of us from HPD Papuk Virovitica piled into a rented van and one car and headed for the Tara/Drina River—only learning at the border that the van’s registration expired exactly on the day we were due back. The road after Sarajevo along the Bistrica is already a handful: curves, roadworks, the usual. But past Foča, the road revealed what it was truly capable of. Wavy asphalt, potholes, stretches of bare gravel—and pigs and cows wandering across as if they hadn’t heard of us.

Arriving at the camp on the Drina that evening, the hardships of the road dissolved the moment we saw it—turquoise water, canyon walls, the green pressing in from every side. We stayed in A-frame houses at the Drina-Tara Rafting Center, two to a bed, and the one-day package at 105 euros covered dinner, breakfast, lunch, an overnight stay, the rafting itself, and all the gear. The only grumble was the shared bathroom—a few of us wished we’d spent the extra 15 euros for a private one rather than making the walk in the dark. The food was generous and varied, and the meat-eaters among us had no complaints. In the morning, they fitted us out: shoes, helmets, vests, long pants—everything in the right size. :-)

We loaded into vans and rode 20 km upstream, crossing into Montenegro to reach the Tara River Canyon, where eight of us were assigned a skipper and a rubber boat. The skippers, as the prologue suggests, were good company—quick with a joke and easy to talk to. Near the end of the run, ours tied us to a rock and yanked the rope so the boat lurched and we grabbed for the sides. “That was for pure 10,” he announced. Matej: “What if I’d fallen out?” Skipper: “Then it would’ve been 11.” :-)

Unlike the Mrežnica or Zrmanja, the Tara and Drina don’t offer waterfalls, but the rapids more than make up for it—the boat bucks and rolls through them, throwing up spray on all sides. Between the rougher stretches, the river settles down, and those are the moments you have to earn your way forward with the paddle. At one point, we could jump in and swim, which I did—the cold knocked the breath right out of me. Midway through, we pulled over near a waterfall where they were selling canned drinks. The whole run, including the break, takes three to four hours. For those with more time and budget, a two-day version exists: an overnight stop midway, a longer push upstream into Montenegro, and a price tag of around 300 euros.

The Tara canyon is stunning—second deepest in the world, or so they say. The catch, until someone invents teleportation, is the roads. Past the Plužine turnoff heading toward Žabljak, the road narrows into unlit tunnels and switchbacks. Through Durmitor National Park, one side drops away into nothing—no guardrail, no margin for error. Passing an oncoming car means finding the one spot wide enough and hoping for the best. In Motička Gaj, we picked our way through the potholes carefully, not wanting to leave our shock absorbers behind as a souvenir.

The drive back from Durmitor offered its own entertainment. First, a pair of cows ambled ahead of us on the narrow road, indifferent to our existence—one stopped to relieve herself, then the other, and we sat and waited until a shepherd materialized and shooed them off. Then a herd of horses came the other way. We were still wondering what the road had left in store when, back in Bosnia and Herzegovina near the rafting camps, we got our answer: donkeys. Before setting off for home, the van’s gauge showed a quarter tank. By the descent from Durmitor, the warning light was already on, and we made an unplanned stop at the gas station in Plužine. (We also finally got to do the zip line on the Đurđevića Tara bridge, which we’d missed on the way in.)

One more thing the road will teach you: a quarter tank is not a quarter tank once the cows set the pace through Durmitor. Check before the descent. :-)