Staying in Camp Velebit and climbing Velebit mountain!

My summer started something like this:

And it's true, I've been waiting for this summer to come sooo bad that I kind of started to lose my mind there for a bit. Then, with the exam period being over, my life's background song was ''Who let the dogs out'' (who who whoo). Andrei and I already knew where we wanted to go for weeks, even months, but we had to wait for my exams to be over to finally get back on the road again. And, with losing my mind, my feet were to fall off from all the itchyness!! Then came the day when I posted this message on instagram, and then came the day after the day that came yesterday and we found ourselves out in the open again. When we loaded the car and ran some last minute errands both of our legs were on the gas (methaphorically tho, don't think we're some kind of extremists). It was like I saw the light after being in the dark for so long, like a breath of fresh air into my lungs. I had nothing on my mind, and were going to have nothing on my mind for the next week and a half and just regain all of my energy that exams have taken from me back.

My first question when I got in the car was ''Where are we going to first?''. In fact, we had a couple of destinations on our minds: camp Velebit on the Velebit mountain, Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, source of the river Cetina and Makarska Riviera (aka the seaside). We had no idea what order we were going to follow, we just decided to let the road take us where it wants to. Well, our first stop ended up being camp Velebit. This camp was on our list since 2 summers ago when we saw it coming back from the seaside, since it is located just bellow Velebit mountain (the exact adress being Baške Oštarije 5A) on the secondary road to Croatian seaside. One interesting thing that happened on the way there was that we picked up a couple of hitchikers. It was two boys from Germany, age 18, that were on a class trip here in Croatia, but these two came a little bit early and were meeting their group in the house that they rented. It was so exciting for me because I never picked up a hitchhiker in my life. I was actually so excited that I attacked them with questions when they got in and maybe gave them the worst hitchhiking experience (lol I hope not!). Later it turned out that they were renting a house that was owned by the owners of camp Velebit. What a small world!

So, back to the camp. Let me put it in just one sentence – it was everything we expected and hoped it would be AND MORE!

When you arrive to the camp, if there is no one at the reception, feel free to go in and find yourself a spot. The guy that works there will see you the next morning or the same day and come to you. He will ask you for your ID cards so they can sign you up. When we gave our IDs and set up our tent we went on to explore the rest of the camp. There were already some tents there and every lisense plate said Netherlands. Later we found out from the owner that 90% of campers that come here are Dutch, 0,50% are Croatians which is really not something to brag about, and the rest were campers from other countries. I hope to rise the numbers of Croatian campers here because the camp is absolute heaven! They charge 10€ if you're staying in your own tent or rent bungallows for 15€ a person a night which is a really good price considering it has everything you'll ever need. It has showers, it has bathrooms, equiped kitchens with plates, pans, pots, oil, salt, they even sell local products like eggs, milk, cheese and beer so when you run out of something you have easy access to fresh groceries. If you need something that is not on the list, you can ask the owners and they will kindly buy it for you when they go to the near-by town. They also have electricity everywhere, even near the tents, and WIFI is awailable too, you only ask for a password, and again – they will kindly give it to you. They have fridges you can use so don't worry about your food getting bad. The more interesting part of this camp is that it's surrounded with a couple of hiking and walking trails that you can do that lead up to the tops of the Velebit mountain with breathtaking scenery and a view all the way to the seaside, which is exactly what we did. The camp is also looking into building tree houses so I'm sooo excited to see if they come through with it! Croatia needs something like that ...or I need something like that in Croatia. Both are fine with me!

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Our stay in camp Velebit was soo comfortable and really fun! The day after we arrived, some scouts came to the camp to play some scout games. One of the owners of the camp, lady Marita, started making pancakes for them early in the morning and when we came to the kitchen for breakfest, she offered us some. Being big pancake lovers, we couldn't refuse. And I must say they were really delicious! Later in the evening when we came to make lunch she was still making pancakes, and that's when we got to talking and found out lots of things about this beautyful lady and her family. We became friends and she treated us like her own kids during the next few days of our stay. Definitely start up a conversation with this lady because she has some really interesting life experiences and stories. She is more of a super-woman than a lady. Actually, she is two in one. She teaches piano and has a school of good manners, she intercedes in so many different projects, one being renaming one of our roads after Nikola Tesla. We also met a Dutch couple traveling through Croatia. We talked to them about many things and felt like we already knew them for ages. After camp, they were going to go through Karlovac (which is the city we live in) but since we were taking our trip to the whole other side of the country, we couldn't meet them there and give them a tour. If you are reading this blog right now, we hope you liked Karlovac and thank you for making our rainy days more colorfull!

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After we had lunch, she asked me if I could film the scouts that were coming that day so she has some material for a project she is working on for the camp. Ofcourse I said yes because I like filming, editing and taking pictures. And I was glad I could help. I ended up editing the video for her and she was so excited and content with what I had made while I was thinking she'll think of as amateur work. I was so happy she was pleased with the video!

Now a flashback to the first night that foregoed. As the night got closer, stormy clouds came with it. We knew the weather forecast was not that great for the next couple of days but we didn't expect anything too extreme. Well, we were so wrong. It started raining just when we got into the tent to go to sleep. We fell asleep for a couple of hours and was woken up at 2 AM by really strong wind and rain. I thought the wind was going to blow us over and that the rain will flood our tent. The seems were letting in water because it was pouring that much, and the tent was shaking so bad. I was really scared. Luckily, Andrei wasn't and we had our car just by the tent. He told me to stay in the tent and hand things that were in the tent over to him. He moved all of things to the car, placed our matress in the trunk of the car and told me to go into the car myself, while he was putting down our tent. When he finally came into the car, we fell asleep (with me being a little bit frightened). But don't worry about this storm ruining your days in the camp because we were lucky enough to have the strongest winds in the last 12 years. Yaay!

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After shooting the scouts the next day, we went on one of the hiking trails I mentioned before. If you want to know about these hiking trails, ask Dado (the husband of lady Marita and the owner), he knows everything and will give you a map of the place that you can follow. The one we went for was the one that lead up to a mountaintop called ''Ljubičko brdo''. It starts about 200 m from the camp (you will see a church and you take a turn there) and it says it takes you 2 hours to finish it but it took us only 1 hour which is nice since we don't do hiking very often (not because we don't like it, it's just that our schedules are bussy and we don't get to travel as much). You can go with a car, but only to a certain point where you park it and start your hike. It was kind of scary though, because the forest was full of bees and the buzzing was a little bit loud. We also found some hair that seemed to belong to an animal. But don't let this scare you, just go when there's still daylight, and also make sure it will be daylight when you will be coming back down. It's also good if you bring some kind of protection with you just in case, a knife or a pepperspray. I mean, you have to bring that anytime you go on a hike in a forest or somewhere with a potential animal sighting. When you climb up there, know that you are on a 1320 m above sea level. The view is absolutely breathtaking. The climb is too but it is definitely worth it. We took some funny pictures up there, experimenting with a panorama photo hack that I saw on youtube. The pics turned out great and are a really good memory to have!

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One of my favourite things about traveling is feeling welcome to the place that I visit and the people I meet there. Camp Velebit surprised us and was what we were expecting at the same time! We met so many nice people there and became friends with the owners that are so nice and friendly and have treated us like one of their own. We can't be thankfull enough for you hospitality, camp Velebit! You've really enriched us and we will definitely come back! Although this camp has only 2 stars, we definitely give it 5!

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Check out camp Velebit here.

Watch a video related to this post.