Mostar is an excellent destination on its own. It offers some interesting sights to see and exceptional food to enjoy. However, it also excels in offering some insane day trip options. You can visit the likes of Konjic, Kravica Waterfall, Počitelj, Blagaj and a few others easily within a single day if you are staying in Mostar. Unfortunately, we did not plan to stay in Mostar for a long time and thus chose to visit only one of these. From the title of this article, you already know which one that is. By reading the article below, you can probably figure out why we opted to visit it among many others!
This is the United World College in the Spanish Square in Mostar. While it is not visible from this angle, you can find a bus stop to the left of this area. In order to get to Blagaj, you need to enjoy a scenic bus ride, specifically on bus number 12. This service is not frequent, and it becomes even rarer on weekends and holidays. You can find the schedule at the time of your visit on any one of these bus stops, but usually it seems to be running once an hour during weekdays.
After paying 2.5 BAM for a thirty-minute ride, you will be dropped off at the very last stop. Unsurprisingly, that is the stop in the small town of Blagaj. Then, you will just walk for about five minutes until you come across unbelievably gorgeous scenes like this. Imagine rustic stone houses built over creeks and ponds of all sizes.
Birds chirp non-stop and all shades of green surround you as your breath is taken away by this wonderful scenery. I strongly suggest you take the earliest bus you can get to Blagaj, because in order to enjoy any one of these things in peace, you do need to beat the crowds. We took the 8 a.m. bus and even then, we had to deal with some mass tourism on our way back. It seems like tour operators start descending onto this tiny town after 9 a.m., which is also when most gift shops and vendors start operating as well. A smart strategy would be to go early and do all the walking and photographing that you may ever need. Then, simply wait for the crowds to arrive and the shops to open up for all your shopping and eating needs.
Blagaj is different from Mostar in many ways. Not only does it feel like a piece of heaven, surrounding you with nature on all sides, but it is also noticeably more Muslim. Muslims, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians live side by side in Bosnia and Herzegovina today, but you can often see which group is a clear majority in any given locality. For many Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) today the atrocities that are happening in Palestine is relatable to the horrors that they had to suffer in the 1990s. That is why, many such graffiti can be found across the more Muslim majority parts of BiH. I will be writing more about this issue in a much later article so stay tuned for that!
To go back to Blagaj, as you go upstream, you will realize that there are more and more vendors of all varieties. Due to us being there quite early on, not many of them were actually offering any services at that moment. That would change on our way back.
Eventually, we found bridge and used it to go across the Buna River. As you can see, the sun was still waiting for its time to shine just behind the mountain, which allowed us to enjoy the scenery without getting scorched to death. This is yet another reason to visit Blagaj as early as possible.
Once you reach the other side of the river, you will find a small path that traces a route behind the restaurants. This path gets you as close as you can to the spring of the Buna River, a picturesque cavern that you can explore for a few short minutes on boat. These boats were not working when we were there, likely due to us being there quite early. However, since we were there that early, we had around twenty minutes to enjoy these views all by ourselves!
You see, while seeing the spring of a river is all it takes to motivate me to do a daytrip, for many, Blagaj matters due to this beautiful historic Sufi monastery instead. I was born in a small Turkish town called Kastamonu, so I know a thing or two about similar structures, and frankly, that is exactly why they do not excite me in the slightest. I have seen ‘this exact building’ in so many different places, and I know exactly what is stored inside. Furthermore, I never paid to visit a Sufi monastery before, but you somehow have to pay to visit this one. For a religious movement that involves welcoming people of all backgrounds, it certainly feels quite wrong to charge people to visit a small shrine. Thankfully, the best part of this particular monastery is the way that it looks from the other shore, which is freely accessible. While this photo does not do it justice, you can enjoy an almost perfect reflection of the monastery on the surrounding clear waters of the Buna River. Suffice to say, this is also the best place to take a few photos of yourself, if you are interested.
Once you had your fill of the view, it just might be time to go back. Once again, Blagaj is a tourist hot spot. Numerous buses will bring thousands of tourists here every day, and the restaurants that are found alongside the river will charge you a premium for their reportedly mediocre fare. It is simply smarter to see all you wish to see in Blagaj early on and then enjoy the offerings at Mostar in the remainder of the day. On the way back, you can also see the Herceg Stjepan’s Fortress atop a hill overlooking the area. You should be able to hike all the way up there; I simply did not fancy suffering the sun more than I had to.
Surprisingly, there are magnets for all sorts of sites in BiH, and the birthplace of the Buna River is no exception. I bought a magnet for my collection, and some homemade rakija on a whim. Little did I know, this turned out to be the best rakija I had in my life. If you do come across a lovely older lady who sells homemade booze, concentrated juices, fragrant, and olive oil, make sure to buy some of her excellent products. Even my mother, who normally hates the Turkish rakı, enjoyed the Balkan variety quite a lot, and that likely had to do with the fact that this was an actually homemade product. You simply cannot get the good stuff in supermarkets.
Eventually, we went back to our bus stop and killed some time walking around the local cemetery. You really need to visit Blagaj during weekdays, as this is when the bus is most frequent. Even then, waits up to an hour are considered normal. We were lucky to wait only for half an hour.
This is where the bus dropped us off, and thus this is also where we hopped back onto it to go back. While this is technically its first stop on this route, unlike an actual bus stop, it has no space for the bus to wait around. Also, given the traffic caused by tour operators, the bus may arrive slightly later than the schedule suggest. This is to say, if you can, try to be here before the departure time even if it may mean that you will wait around for a while. It is easy to miss this bus as it comes and goes in an instant, and with how rare it is, you do not want to miss it.
Well, the perfect combination of a somewhat infrequent but affordable bus service, being able to see the gorgeous spring of a beautiful river, and an opportunity to take a few cool photographs against the backdrop of a mystic Sufi monastery that should not be charging its visitors any money, made a trip to Blagaj extremely worthy in my book. This could be the easiest day trip to do from Mostar, and frankly, you will have enough time to see what Mostar has to offer in the remainder of the day if you visit Blagaj early in the morning as we did. While the same can be said for Počitelj as well, all the other daytrips take a much longer time, and often lack convenient public transport options. If you need to pick one day trip to do from Mostar, it might as well be Blagaj. You will not regret it!