Located about 2hrs South East of Sarajevo, just beyond Foca, the Tara Canyon is the largest canyon in Europe and the second largest canyon in the world, after the Grand Canyon in the States. The Tara River runs through the canyon, the majority of the river is in Montenegro, it then joins the River Piva and converges into the Drina when it flows into and through Bosnia.
Camp Ivana offers basic overnight accommodation in little wooden huts, there is basic ( and I mean basic) toilet and washing facilities and bar/kitchen area. The accommodation was full, so we offered to camp in the field which was perfect (although subsequently we discovered that it a bit 'anty'! Being about 150 degrees (OK, slight over exaggeration) we walked the 100m or so down to the river. Wow... was my first impression, a relatively fast flowing, wide river with steep banks and woodland on either side. Ice blue in colour and as it turned out; also in temperature... it was freezing! Only two of us actually made it in properly, the others fussed about on the shore! It was certainly refreshing, so clean you can drink the water straight from it, something I realised I had never done before.
That evening we had a delicious meal at the camp 'restaurant'. A feast of meat and fresh river trout and a couple of beers and after a few camp fire games, we all hit the sack.
By 7:30am the next morning I was awake, as soon as the sun rose the tent got hotter and hotter! We packed up the campsite and were then put into groups, handed some rather dodgy (and smelly) life jackets and waterproof shoes. We then piled into a van and set off up stream. The journey to the rafting start point was about a 40 minute drive away, across the Montenegrin boarder. It is a beautiful drive, right up through the steep cannon. After a bit of organised chaos, we were carrying our raft down to the river and offer we went. We were given some basic rafting instructions by our 'Skipper', in short to 'paddle' when he said so, and to stop when he said so... and that was our briefing! Arrrh the joys of being outside the EU!
The gentle drift downstream was quite fantastic, the steep sided canon/gorge is beautiful and the water is crystal clear (yet still absolutely freezing)!! As none of us knew what we letting ourselves in for, in terms of how much 'white water' there would be, we didn’t take a camera which is a huge regret. However, this means we will have to go back next year! We were on the water for a good 4/5hrs, we had a number of stops where we moored up, had the chance to swim etc... we even stopped at a fantastic river side bar which kept the beer cold in the water itself! There were other people at these stops (no Brits, lots of locals), so it was not quite as isolated as we were expecting and it would have been marginally better if the stops had been staggered so we were not all stopping in the same place at the same time.
Anyway, our journey ended back at the camp with another delicious meal consisting of about 3 courses, just what we needed after a tough day on the water!
The rafting was enjoyable both for adults and for children, we were three generations, everybody enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteWhite Water Rafting