Hiking to Puntijarka - Medvednica

Today we were heading out of town to a National Park to do a bit of a hike. We had breakfast at the same cafe as yesterday and all ordered basically the same thing.

Then we caught a taxi out to the start of the walks - there were an few different walks. There weren’t really any maps or information about which walks went where so the first trail we found going up we took. It was beautiful in the forest with the cool air, birds chirping and lush green of the trees. It was hard work at times and quite steep. I think Kyria was wishing we had just taken the taxi to the top 😂 There were no indications as to where we were walking or how far we had to go - which made it hard. We arrived at a shelter and there were a couple of guys there who explained where the hike went. Apparently there was a restaurant at the end with a playground for kids and we were about half way - it was about a 5km walk all up. This doesn’t seem far but when it’s mostly uphill - phew!

We decided to keep going after a bit of a break and slowly made our way onwards. Mike and Eli were swapping the backpack with Heidi between them. I don’t envy them having to carry that - it would have been nearly an extra 20kg to lug 😅 I was quite chuffed that I was the first one up the top!!! I didn’t think that was a bad effort for 24 weeks pregnant.

It was more of a canteen than a restaurant at the top and the playground only amounted to a couple of swings, turntable and ladder so that was a bit disappointing. We had also exhausted most of the cash we had left (which wasnt much) paying the taxi driver and the canteen only took cash! Luckily Kyria had some money and we were able to get a few drinks.

We were a bit disappointed there wasn’t really a view or anything from here - I guess we should have picked a different walk - but we’d just had to take pot luck and guess!

We arranged for our taxi driver to meet us at the top and drive us back down. Kyria and I wanted to walk back down but Eli wanted to get Heidi down for a nap. As it was, our taxi driver ended up taking us for a bit of a tour! He stopped at a couple of points on the way down for us to get a picture of the view, which was lovely, and also took us past the cemetery which is humongous. It’s called Mirogoj and looked amazing. There was an older section and a newer section. The taxi driver reckoned it was 2km long and had about 4 million people buried in it which is the same number as the current population of Croatia!

We were dropped back at the same place we were picked up, luckily there was an ATM there so we could pay our taxi driver!Read more