Bosnian Stecaks

One of the stecaks we saw

I took another hike with Fikret.  We met at 8:30 on Sunday morning--about 12 hikers--and took a city bus UP and UP until the bus couldn't ascend any more,   Like literally--we could smell the clutch burning out!   So we walked to the start of our hike.  We were northeast of Sarajevo in the mountains probably already up 2,500 feet.   We climbed UP for 2 hours through woods, meadows, and along the ridges of Mt. Cavljak and followed a path to an abandoned village called Donji Mocioci.  Then climbed and climbed for another hour to the Stecaks cemetary.


You can see the Stecak (stay-chak) tombstones in front of the National Art Museum in Sarajevo, but there is nothing like working 3 hours to climb to a remote Stecak cemetary.  Granted, these stones are worn from 800 years of weather, but the tranquility and simplicity of the site is remarkable.

Hikers having lunch

A stecak is a medieval tombstone, and there are thousands of them scattered across the mountains in Bosnia.  The ones we saw were perched at least 4,200 feet up the mountain.  They are the tombstones of very early settlers who lived between the 11th and 15th centuries.

This is an example of a stecak from a museum

After having lunch there, we started the descent over Cardak lookout, Seven Springs, and through lush meadows and pine woods to a town called Nahorevo where the bus took us back to Sarajevo.  My legs were mush by the time we got to Nahorevo.  Altogether we were out 8 hours.  Fantastic!