By the time darkness fell, we still hadn't managed to find a suitable place for our camp, but there had hardly been any such place on the whole way from Cappadocia to the north of Turkey. The landscape still looked the same – slopes with little trees, houses in small groups – mostly new 5 to 10-storey buildings. The sameness of the landscape probably added some fuel to my sickness caused by the long drive toward the Georgian border.

That day we engaged in racing Arabian racehorses through Valleys of Fairy Chimneys in Cappadocia!

That day we kept exploring a fairy-tale Cappadocia: its most famous and still-to-be-discovered places and even found a natural Jacuzzi!

That day we discovered a perfect place to camp in a valley of fairy chimneys! But it was a long way to get there. We left Istanbul at 8 am and at around 6 pm and 750 km behind us we reached the Ilhara valley in Cappadocia.

We drive through Greece and discover some empty beaches...

We explore Ohrid - the most prominent sight of Macedonia, leave the beaten track and by chance discover the most beautiful place in the country.

Should I mentione that we found the perfect location overlooking Lake Skadar for our base camp the previous night? In Montenegro, finding a desolate and incredibly scenic location might have been the easiest from all the countries we've been to on our way from Germany to Georgia.

...and some amazing beaches, towns and villages in between. We keep exploring Montenegro and meet the locals.

With the tank full of cheap Bosnian diesel and food supplies that should last us a week we crossed the Croatian border as early as 7 am. The border crossing at Neum was not busy, there were maybe 10 cars in front of us and the cars moved quickly. For comparison: 10 cars at the Ukrainian-Polish border would mean an hour of waiting at least.

We explore Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer heat of the Balkans. The temperature rose to 38°C (100°F) on that day!

On this day we examined the best Dalmatian beaches (according to Lonely Planet) and now share our impressions here.

We check more bucket list destinations in Croatia - Rastoke, Zadar and Sibenik - and go shoe shopping!

We leave the Croatian coast and go further inland heading to Plitvice Lakes National park. But what we see there makes us change our plans...

The warm Adriatic Sea and the exquisite coastline of Opatija – a former Austrian aristocrat resort – certainly repay visitors for any inconvenience involved in getting or staying there. In our case finding a parking spot turned out to be such an inconvenience – we drove backwards and forwards the whole morning, looking for a free place to park – we did finally find something at a supermarket – luckily the gate was broken and we could park for as long as we wanted to! Without our Gnu, we strolled around the streets of Opatija. I liked what I saw very much.

Gnu, our lovely Defender here, has a story of its own if I may say so. When we got him from the British RAF he was rather tattered and you could see outside in places where you really shouldn't be able to - which is to say that rust and other, possibly more sinister causes, had left their mark.