Day 5…Lets head to Bovec, Slovenia
We drove 4.5 hours to Bovec, Slovenia with a quick lunch stop in Italy. We were surprised to find out we would be driving through Italy for roughly 20 minutes…so we stopped at a small little restaurant on the side of the road and drank some wine and ate some pasta for lunch! My dad is 50% Italian so he was the most excited he was on the entire trip for these 20 minutes:)
Cream sauce with pasta…I don’t allow myself to eat this in the states very often, but in Italy, it’s a must!
As we drove through to Slovenia we had to stop and take a picture of this beautiful view! We saw some German hikers heading down past this rope and said they were hiking to Bovec and would see us there in about 15 miles! We decided to finish driving it instead of hiking it:)
We reached our hotel and this pic is right in the parking lot of our hotel, what fantastic views! It was close to town and we were able to walk from our hotel to the cute restaurants and bars downtown. Download the pdf for hotel info!
But before we could relax, we signed up for an adventure of kayaking in the Soca River! Everything you read says you have to experience Soca River and I absolutely agree! I thought it was going to be a peaceful ride like these lovely kayakers below, however, due to the heavy rains they experienced over the last 3 days, the gentle river turned into a white water rafting river, so to be safe he said we needed a 3 person raft instead of a kayak, so we said…..OK???
I have to admit I was nervous going into it. The temperature of the water was 45 degrees and as you can see from my hair and face, we got soaked! It was like having buckets of ice water being thrown at your face, it would take your breath away. Not only that but in a 3 person raft, if you are in the front, you tend to be at the lowest part when going through any type of rapids, so I would tip below the water and the 2nd and 3rd person in the raft would stay a bit more dry. The boys sitting behind me seemed to be much more calm and dry than I was during this lovely white water ride.
This may look like any ordinary gorge by the looks of it, but it ISN’T!!!! We couldn’t take the 3 person raft through this gorge because it was too narrow and fierce, so the instructor said we could lower the raft right after this gorge (right behind our heads) and the instructor waded with the raft in a safe pocket of water. We would then jump off this 10 foot cliff and hope to JUMP over the fierce water INTO the SAFE POCKET and then our instructor would pull us into the raft. Does that sound FUN?!?!? I said no, no, no no way. My husband slowly convinced me to do this. I was almost in tears, but said OK!!!! The good news is there were about 10 guides practicing rescues right beyond this gorge and once I saw them in the water, I thought….I’m in good hands! I made the jump and didn’t need the rescue guides, phew close call!
Why couldn’t we just be these cute kids in kayaks?!?!?!?
Well, we survived and ventured downtown where there was a marathon race that was concluding, so they had a live band playing music and a ton more people downtown than usual, which was a fun surprise!
We ran back into the German hikers that hiked into the city! Half of them said they bailed and hitch hiked back into town, but they were a fun group of guys!
