Ston is not always Ston

Our plan was to head by bus from Korcula to Mostar, a town just inside Bosnia. While the Internet claimed this was possible and easy, the nice but non-English-speaking lady at the Korcula bus station begged to differ. A few hours of Googling later, and after frantically reading through many years-old threads on travel forums, I thought I had found a solution.

While there were no buses direct from Korcula to Mostar, there were regular buses from Korcula to Dubrovnik, and from Dubrovnik to Mostar. My plan was to take the first bus until it met up with the second bus, at which point we would switch and head to Mostar. On the bus timetables, it looked easy: the town both intersected at was Ston, Croatia. If only it was that easy.

It turns out that “Ston” on the timetable doesn’t always mean Ston on a map. The bus from Dubrovnik to Mostar heads up a highway that hugs the Adriatic coastline. Ston is a few kilometers up a peninsula from that highway. To avoid delaying the bus due to a detour in a small town, the bus – although it has a “Ston” stop – doesn’t actually go to Ston. It just stops on the highway as close as possible to the town without leaving the highway. That is several kilometers away.

Whoops.

Not knowing this, we happily arrived in Ston with 45 minutes to make our connection. Once we realized our error, happiness turned to desperation, as there were no taxis in town, and everything was closed for Sunday. We tried walking, but it became clear we would not be able to make it. Luckily, Jami took the initiative and through some begging (and probably the look on our faces) convinced a few passing ladies of our plight. They called someone they knew and within 2 minutes we were in the cab of a delivery van, headed to the “Fake Ston” stop. Crises averted, and we made it to Mostar without a hitch.

Hoping to see a bus…

Being proactive