26 September ’04, Sunday. Part 1… Our stay in Sarajevo was wet, wet, wet. As you know from our last posting, we arrived at the campground at night, and it was just starting to mist. The mist didn’t last long as it rained pretty good all night through. We didn’t really have it in us to tour Sarajevo, so we opted to head onto Sofija, Bulgaria. Our route was to take 761 and then connect to E 80 just outside of Nis. Well, you can probably start already to see that we probably made a little mistake….it’s our nature, right? You couldn’t be more right. We missed 761 right out of Sarajevo and found ourselves on 5. Now that’s ok, as 5 will intersect with 761 just before you reach E 80. As we were traveling around this corner and the next, the scenery was really pretty. We were following this fantastic river valley. The water was brilliant blue, the rock formations were awesome, and the Fall foliage is turning every leaf spectacular colors. We were really enjoying all this beauty and the solitude from being the only car or truck on the road….wait a minute…why is this ???? “It’s probably because it’s Sunday”…You think ??? I think over a period of about 45 minutes, we saw 3 cars and no trucks, and they were all coming towards us….now this could be a bad sign, wouldn’t you think ??? We came around a corner and approached a tunnel ….”Turn On Your Headlights…” “TURN ON THE HEADLIGHTS !!!!”…. “THEY ARE ON !!! DAMN, the tunnel is SUCKING the light right out of them”…”SLOW DOWN” !!! “I’M IN FIRST GEAR, AND ONLY DOING 2 MILES AN HOUR”… Let me tell you, I thought we had driven off into “The Black Hole”… As we pulled out into the daylight at the other end, we both said let’s not do that again… To our surprise, we had to do it over and over again for an additional 10 or 12 times, and we weren’t bright enough to recognize that we still we not seeing any traffic. As we rounded another corner, we had another tunnel staring us in the face, except this one was really small and had a stop light in front of it. The light was “Green” for us, but I delayed for a minute thinking do we really want to go into “This” tunnel? We could turn around and head all the way back to Sarajevo (about an hours drive now) or this could be just around the corner from our attended “761”. Now, Louise had been reading this book on the areas that we are now traveling through, and those that we will be traveling through for the next few days, in it, it said….”IT IS BEST NOT TO GET OFF THE “WELL TRAVELED” ROADS” !!! Well, I’m not sure that we are either “REALLY DUMB, or just feel someone is always watching over us. We pull into the tunnel REALLY SSSLLLOOOWWW. It was about as wide and as high as our van and no more…It was TOTALLY black, you could NOT see more than a foot in front of you, the roadway was wet and very bumpy, and there was no end to it… All we could think was…”Dear God, Please Let Us Live” Is there another car or truck coming in the other end ??? Did I really have a “Green” light, how long does it last ??? What if I have to back out ??? I can’t see anything in front of us, let alone have to back out….THIS COULD BE TROUBLE !!! Believe it or not, but we made it…as we pulled out the end, we both said “we will never do that again”. Now that we were through with that, we were on our way to find 761. I’ll have to continue this tomorrow….I’m too weak to finish tonight…