01-Sep-2001 -- When I first visited this site, all of the eight Croatian confluences were
untouched. No need to hurry, I thought. But since then, two of them were
successfully attacked by foreigners. It was time to do something! As I live
near Split (N43°33,4598' E016°30,1523'), almost equally distant from three
unvisited confluences, you might think it would be easy to just pick one and go
for it. But two of them are at sea, out of reach without a serious boat. Even
this one, on the walkable solid ground, is quite far away. 70 km from where I
live, almost 100 km by road. I just had to wait for an opportunity. And it
happened.
My boss and I were going on a sort of business trip to Udbina (N44°32,
5468' E015°45,9280'). The company I work for (http://www.dimb.hr/) has a
digital camera and I borrowed a GPS for this occasion. On the way back, near
Knin, instead of going to Drnis we took a detour towards Zadar and the
confluence. According to map, the confluence is near the road and so it was,
within 400m. We found a graveled road that took us even closer, to around 280
meters from the confluence. From there we had to walk. We were a bit worried
about land mines as this area was a war zone just a few years ago, but as soon
as we saw some fresh sheep droppings we knew we were safe. Finding the 44N-16E
wasn't difficult, no dense forest, no steep hills, just grass, a few stone
walls, a bush here and there.
On the spot we found an evidence that a sheep was
there before us, but I suppose it had a misfortune of just running out of
batteries for GPS and camera. On the way home we extended our journey for a few
more kilometers and drove through Krka national park (http://www.npkrka.hr/).