Sarajevo to Mostar Road Trip: The Neretva Valley (3 Days)

The Neretva runs green from the mountains above Sarajevo to the Adriatic, and the road that follows it is one of the most rewarding short drives in Europe — partly because so few people think to make it. Roughly 230 km over three days takes you from a city of minarets and coffee houses down a river gorge to Mostar, where a rebuilt sixteenth-century bridge arches over water the colour of bottle glass.

Two things to sort out before you turn the key. Bosnia and Herzegovina is outside the European Union and outside Schengen, so there is a real border with a passport check whichever way you arrive, and a car hired in Croatia, Montenegro or Serbia needs the rental company’s written permission plus insurance that is valid here — arrange it when you book, not at the desk. The second is money: the country uses the convertible mark (BAM), not the euro, and while cards work in Mostar and Sarajevo, the smaller places on this route are more comfortable with cash. You drive on the right.

Day 1 — Sarajevo, then south into the gorge (75 km)

Give the morning to Sarajevo on foot, because the old town is not a driving proposition. Baščaršija, the Ottoman bazaar, still works as a bazaar; the Latin Bridge a few minutes away is where Franz Ferdinand was shot in 1914, an unremarkable street corner that started a world war. If you have time for one museum, make it the Tunnel of Hope (Tunel spasa) out by the airport — the hand-dug tunnel that kept the city supplied through the siege, and the single clearest explanation of what happened here in the 1990s.

Then pick up the car and head south on the M17. The road leaves the city, climbs, and drops into the Neretva valley, and from there it simply follows the river. Sleep in or near Konjic, a small town on the Neretva with a much-photographed Ottoman stone bridge across it.

Day 2 — Konjic to Mostar along the water (85 km)

Konjic’s other draw is underground: Tito’s nuclear bunker, a Cold War command complex built into the hillside over more than two decades and kept secret until the 1990s. It is visited by guided tour only and needs to be arranged in advance rather than turned up for.

Carry on down the M17. The valley opens into Jablanica lake, and in the town of Jablanica a broken railway bridge lies in the river, kept as a memorial with a small museum beside it. This is where Tito’s Partisans destroyed the bridge in 1943 to break out of an encirclement — the Battle of the Neretva, later filmed with the bridge blown up all over again for the cameras. The road tightens below the lake, and the last stretch into Mostar is the best of it.

Arrive with the afternoon left. Stari Most, the old bridge, was destroyed in 1993 and rebuilt to the original design, reopening in 2004; the bridge and the old town around it are on the UNESCO World Heritage list. In summer, divers jump from the parapet into the Neretva below — a local tradition, not a stunt laid on for visitors. Stay the night in Mostar.

Day 3 — Blagaj, Počitelj and the Kravica falls (70 km)

Three short drives, all south of Mostar, all worth the fuel.

Blagaj sits where the Buna river comes straight out of a cliff face — one of Europe’s most powerful karst springs — with a white tekija, a dervish house, built at the foot of the rock beside it. Počitelj is an Ottoman village stacked up a hillside above the Neretva, with a tower you can climb for the view back down the valley.

Finish at the Kravica waterfalls on the Trebižat, a wide curtain of falls dropping into a pool that people swim in through the summer. There is an entrance fee and a car park above the falls; the walk down is short and the walk back up is not. Return to Mostar, or carry on to the Croatian coast — Dubrovnik and Split are both within reach from here.

Costs

Use the cost calculator to price fuel and nights for your dates. Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the cheaper countries in Europe to drive in and to sleep in, and this route is short. Budget for accommodation, fuel for about 230 km, car rental, and entry tickets for the Tunnel of Hope, Tito’s bunker and the Kravica falls, each charged separately. There is no vignette in Bosnia and Herzegovina — see the logistics table below for what is and is not tolled — and if you are crossing a border in a hire car, ask what the cross-border fee is before you book rather than after.