We started the day by riding out of the flat basin we’d camped in uphill to the border crossing into Bosnia and Herzegovina. This took most of the morning, we got up to the top of the ridge of hills where the border was a bit after 11. 

 

The border was dead compared to the crossing into Croatia which had cars backed up on both sides. Here, only maybe three or four cars passed through the border while we were there. 

 

 
On the other side we stopped for some food and revised where we would finish for the day. We found out that there was a big mountain lake a reasonable distance from where we were so we figured might as well head for it. We descended a short way down from the border and then arrived at the shore of another lake.

  
Following this lake around brought us to a ridge where the flat land around the lake rose up into hills. After climbing over the ridge we rolled down onto another open plain of almost perfectly flat land. Here we stopped for a little while at the town of Tomislavgrad to get out some local currency. We followed a road out of town along the flat. This we rode along for about 20km before starting to climb up into the mountains.

 

 
  
Lake Blidnje was situated up at 1100m so we had a bit of climbing to do to reach it. It was all very gradual though, so not too difficult, just get down to the granny gear and spin it out. The road was pretty good most of the time, but once we started to descended it went from sealed tarmac to loose gravel. It made the riding a bit more challenging, but it was a good sign for us, it meant we were getting out to a remote area.

  
Just before we arrived at the lake we passed a Shepard herding his flock up the road. He gave as a wave a and a toothless smile as we passed by and then down out to the lake, and what a sight! It wasn’t huge but it stretched out across a flat plateau that almost completely barren and two huge peaks rose up behind it.

 

   
There was a sandy shore not far from the road where we set up for the night. Across the road there was a stand of pine trees. We had a bit of time to kill as we had finished up a bit earlier than normal so we gathered some wood and lit out first campfire of the trip later that evening.