The events in this story happened on Wednesday, the 3rd of April, 2024. We paddled our inflatable canoe Zucchini from Erdut to Vukovar in Croatia. This was our third kayaking day down the Danube in 2024 and the 52nd in total. Though we had slept in Croatia the night before, we hadn’t properly entered Croatia on paper yet until Vukovar.

Paddling Two Days in a Row + Zucchini Leaks

The evening before we left Erdut, we looked at the map together. The challenges of kayaking to Vukovar from Erdut were mostly the distance and the fact that we would have to pass through Croatian immigration for the first time. Also, the ~33 kilometers to Vukovar on the Danube are very twisty. This means we’ll probably have headwind at least part of the way. But the forecast said it wouldn’t be too bad.

Paddling two days in a row is also tough. But the day before – Apatin to Erdut – wasn’t too tough since we had some tailwind and could use the kayak sail. But our launch spot in Erdut gave me some stress, because of the sign that reads “State Border” with a no-access symbol on it. The border area between Croatia and Serbia is still a sensitive issue. And the Croatian War of Independence is not that long ago, either.

We had coffee and smashed one juicy pear each. They were provided by our host and at excellent ripeness. He’d said that it’s not only grapes and wine that’s produced in Erdut, but also lots of fruits.

Though our host had offered to drive us back down to our launch spot, he messaged us a little before 7:00 that he couldn’t make it at the agreed time. He said he could bring us down at 8:00. Shit. We were already wearing our kayak shoes and had packed our hiking shoes away. But we can walk the ~800 meters to the Danube. It’s just that it’s 60 meters down, quite steep, and there might be loose dogs that are aggressive. But we didn’t want to wait one hour either.

So we walked downhill. I wasn’t feeling great. I used my walking stick to balance on the way down. Falling with this >20kg backpack would be possibly quite devastating for my spine. But we made it down there without falling. There was no cat on the edge of the wall, unfortunately.

To not trigger the barking dog, we tried to pump up Zucchini as silently as possible. And to get into the water, we intended to use the bridge of one of the private jetties here. Maybe it’s not halal, but using it for two minutes would save us a lot of pain and effort and mud in the boat.

But we ran into a problem: the vent at the left chamber of Zucchini was sizzling air as I pumped her up. We tried to locate the origin of the leak. Jonas said it’s between the screw grooves of the main vent. It’s hard to explain. We tried again to pump her up, but the leak kept sizzling. But it was slow and generally, we knew she’d float for at least a while. We really didn’t want to pack it all up and take a train to Vukovar from Erdut if there is such a thing.

So we lived in denial of the situation and finished setting up the boat. But we put the pump behind Jonas’ seat for easy access instead of packed away in the CabinMAX backpack. We launched her from the jetty and off we went to the road and rail bridges across the Danube near Erdut. Starting time: 8:01.

Stress About Sinking Before Vukovar

We paddled out of the backwaters of Erdut to the river bridges. I’m not sure if there was any movement in the truck traffic jam on the bridge in direction EU. I would not be happy as a trucker to be stuck on a bridge, especially with the recent downing of that bridge in the USA with a boat ramming one of the pillars. Absolute madness to be stuck on a bridge.

We paddled beneath both bridges between Bogojevo in Serbia and Erdut in Croatia. The Croatian police boat was moored in this area, but we paddled past it without triggering it. Perhaps there was no one aboard.

We passed between a river island called Inzula and a Croatian floodplain. The shipping lane went around the left side of the island, but we took a shortcut through the right. We’ll be doing that a lot today.

In my head, I was very afraid of sinking. We would occasionally squeeze the left chamber of Zucchini to see how she was doing. Slowly losing pressure, but still fine. I hope it’s not going to be a case of “gradually, then suddenly”.

After the island, we passed a sluice gate on the Serbian side. This is one of the Danube–Tisza–Danube Canal sluice gates. Someone on Google Maps says that construction on this system of canals started during the Austro-Hungarian Empire and lasted almost two centuries. For the Panama Canal, 179 million tons of material were removed and for the DTD Canal, it was 130 million tons. But unlike the Panama Canal, this one has fallen into disrepair.

In quick succession, we encountered two cargo ships traveling upstream. The first was actually two ships tied together and fighting against the current with two engines. It probably saves a lot of money. The next ship was pushing at least two barges.

We finished paddling around the Erdut bend. I had a flag on my map here from Jonas’ call with Thomas from the TID. He said there’s a nice hidden spot for stealth camping on the Croatian side. It’s in a little backwater. But one must be careful in this area, since if you’re to the right of the shipping lane, there are some sills in the water. If the water levels are low enough, it’s possible to scrape your boat on it. We didn’t want to have that happen again like we had the day before upon arrival in Erdut.

At this point, we squeezed Zucchini’s left chamber and felt it was getting low. Landing here was also just a good idea to check on Zucchini. We landed our boat there at 9:24. We had our break on this beautiful sandy beach and pumped up Zucchini without checking the pressure. Jonas also tightened the valve. We continued 11 minutes later.

Paddling Past Dalj  + Our First 100 Kilometers

We paddled past the Croatian river island mapped as Tanja. It’s quite big and apparently navigable for small boats. The river turned northwest and the calm glassy water was replaced with slightly unruly water. We’re paddling a bit against the wind. But we could see Dalj, the first Croatian town on the Danube since leaving Erdut. If something goes wrong with Zucchini now, we could still land there and call it a day.

I hadn’t been feeling the paddling much today. A bit lethargic, a bit hungover from the gifted wine. But when that wind was pushing us back, I got into goblin mode. When the Danube turns south after Dalj, I can have my protein bar. I was going to work for it.

We were parallel to Dalj at 10:30. Since there were few ships, we just shortcutted through the bend a little bit, facing a headwind but still making progress. After Dalj, there was a bit more current, so an excellent time to just let ourselves float and eat that protein bar. Zucchini decided that the back was the front of the boat, so we were floating past fishermen on the shore while not looking where we were going. I enjoyed sometimes paddling backward. Doing the same paddling motion – but in reverse – feels good on the arms.

We didn’t see the ship coming upstream carrying a whole entire excavator. But we weren’t in their way and paddled past them without trouble. Looking back, we saw the plateau of Dalj and Erdut. You could see the agricultural patchwork of land from this distance. That’s where juicy Croatian pears come from.

I was measuring the distance from our location to the start of the next river island. It was counting down, but slowly. The wind was coming slightly from the back now that we were going southeast, but it wasn’t strong enough to deploy the kayak sail.

Somewhere in this area, we were about to pass the 1347 sign. Jonas and I had taken a photo in Mohács at the 1447 sign, which means that we’re about to cross our first 100 kilometers on the Danube since restarting this trip. It’s crazy that we’re doing this in three days. In 2019, it took us 7 paddle days before we completed our first 100 kilometers near Ulm.

Once at the island after 11:30, we were about halfway to Vukovar. Vukovar is a place I knew I wanted to visit on the Danube. But I was also afraid I’d hyped it up too much.

Borovska Ada + Borovo

We took the shortcut on the right side of the island while the shipping lane went left. This island is mapped as Borovska Ada, meaning island of Borovo, a town near Vukovar. The upstream tip of the island had a nice-looking picnic table, but Jonas didn’t want to stop there.

The quiet backwater was full of birds. The flow was quite good as well. Then Jonas said he needed to make a stop. We could have stopped at a very nice spot on the island, but now we had to find a mediocre spot on the Croatian mainland. Jonas saw a spot that looked okay. Once we’d landed, we checked the left chamber of Zucchini again. She had neither lost any air since our last stop nor was the vent sizzling. Is this a self-healing boat?

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, we still need to email the company Sevylor and might still have to buy a completely new boat and get it delivered to Croatia or Serbia. That would sincerely fuck up our timeline of this trip. And what would we call the new boat? Zucchini II? Or Courgette? Or something else completely, like Jalapeño? Hah, I am so original.

We continued paddling after a seven-minute break. As we exited the waters between Borovska Ada and the Croatian mainland, a ship traveled downstream at high speed. Jonas was wondering all day why we see so many ships traveling upstream, but so few going downstream. I thought it had something to do with when we’re on the river, where we get out, and where the downstream ships anchor for the night or dock. But perhaps they always sneak past us when we can’t see them because we’re behind a river island. And they just disappear from view much faster because they go downstream.

After the island and the westward turn, we could see the town of Borovo. I was hungry, so Jonas grabbed me one of the sandwiches we’d prepared in Apatin and kept cool(ish) on the kayak, and put in the fridge in Erdut. Sketchy? Perhaps, but it still tasted very good. Had we known earlier that Erdut has a good supermarket with bread and cheese, we wouldn’t be making sandwiches for multiple days.

Approaching Borovo, we had the wind against us once again. It had picked up since Dalj and there were even some waves that caused a spray as Zucchini’s bow plowed through them. Borovo had nice landing spots and forested areas where people were walking their dogs. We tried to get close to the shore to get some wind protection, but we mostly got increased current. Nice!

We decided to float a bit again as we were speeding up due to no actions of ourselves. There was a house with big CCTV cameras on the river near the 1339 sign. As we floated through the river bend, I was calculating when we would be able to see our exit spot in Vukovar. This is still going to be a little tricky.

Slowly, more and more Vukovar became visible. And then we saw its iconic water tower. We’re arriving!

Arriving in Vukovar + Bad Information

We floated past the little recreational airfield of Vukovar. All we could see was an end-of-the-runway cube. People were walking on the embankment here, sometimes looking at us and pointing at us for their children to see.

At 13:20, we entered the industrial area of Vukovar parallel to the train tracks. We saw some giant cranes in the distance. Our presumed police, customs, and immigration check was somewhere on the right behind a factory. We discussed where to land, but it wasn’t obvious.

When we approached the ship, I said it would be best to go between the shore and the ship. It’s a bit dodgy because there are low-hanging cables, but I think we can make it there. We landed there at 13:33. It was a bad spot with a slippery and steep embankment and lots of goose shit. There was one rock we used to get in and out of Zucchini. Jonas went up the embankment with his dry bag with our passports and documents. It was very steep and all of it felt wrong as there were no flags.

He returned 15 minutes later with the bad news that this wasn’t the place. Some guys said it was further downstream. How much further? No idea. We’ll just have to see. Worst case, we’ll not check into Croatia today or will do it later after packing up Zucchini. But first, we have to paddle further.

We left the dodgy area and paddled under the cables out past one of the geese that use this area as his toilet. The current was still strong as we floated downstream, scouring the embankment for Croatian flags and police boats. We might paddle to one of the slipways in Vukovar and get out of the Danube if there’s no police. There’s this taxi app called Cammeo we can use to get to our hotel.

Croatian Police, Customs, and Immigration in Vukovar

Two big cranes were doing a dance of dropping rubble in a ship. Behind that, Jonas spotted Croatian and EU flags and boats that looked like the Croatian police boats we’d seen on the river. Is this the place?

The embankment appeared super nice: several stairs into the water with different heights for different ship sizes. One of them will work for Zucchini. We approached it and turned our boat around, floating backward and breaking until we were parallel to our exit spot. There was a bit of shallow water here that made an excellent step to get out. As I helped Jonas out of the boat, a guy on the ship moored immediately downstream of us came out of his wheelhouse and shouted something at us that we understood as “What are you doing here?”

We said we we’re here for the police, which he seemed to accept as a valid reason. Another guy came from the shore, and said the same as the other guy. When Jonas repeated the need for the police, he wanted to go with Jonas to the police immediately together. But Jonas had to go back to the boat to grab the passports. They did not want us to take the boat out of the water.

Once Jonas had the documents, another guy showed up, who spoke English very well. He was the harbor master. He was very friendly and went to the police… container office with Jonas. Jonas told them we came from Apatin in Serbia, which is a white lie since today we came from Erdut. There was a police lady who did not seem to speak English. Jonas gave our crew list and passports to the lady. She made copies of everything and put a beautiful entry stamp on the Serbian crew list.

The harbor master had a friendly chat with Jonas about our plans. He also said there’s no water police in Ilok, against our knowledge from the document Jonas used to find the coordinates of the other goose-shit police spot in Vukovar. The harbor master said we’d have to check out of Croatia here in Vukovar. Jonas asked if it’s okay to just use the land border in Ilok – Bačka Palanka. He said it would be an okay way to do it as well. He even ran it past the police lady, who also seemed to consider this a valid solution. But this is a later problem.

Jonas got our passports and crew list back with the words “Welcome to Croatia.”

Jonas asked if it’s okay to still pack up the boat here and call a taxi. The harbor master said it’s okay and even shared the phone number of a taxi guy and the correct address (Dunavski Prilaz 8) to call it to.

Meanwhile, I (Iris) was sitting with Zucchini still in the water and without a phone. Jonas had taken it because mine was the only one with EU mobile data still active. I was just watching the dance of the cranes picking up rubble and dropping it on the ship. Sometimes from great heights, sometimes missing the ship and dropping rocks in the water. I hope no one was aboard.

When Jonas returned, we pulled Zucchini out of the water. If we could have done this earlier, I could have packed up a significant amount of stuff and Zucchini would have been drier. To my surprise, the Croatian police didn’t need to see my face with my passport to confirm I am who I say I am when entering Schengen.

We managed to pack everything up quite quickly, but the wet boat activated the dried mud on the embankment. So we packed up a rather wet and dirty boat. Jonas called in the taxi via the Cammeo app.

I put on my paddle dress and we walked up the embankment past the police office to our pickup spot. This was also where the police HQ was at, which I marked on my map and also took a photo of from the outside. A police lady – the same one who had stamped us in – popped out of the office to tell me not to take photos. How else am I going to help other kayakers not make the same mistakes we made today when entering Vukovar?

The taxi drove us to our three-night accommodation in the Borovo area near Vukovar. This app worked reasonably well and at €4, it was a good price to get in and out of town freely. We arrived at hotel/motel O Sole Mio and got into our room. It was okay, but definitely our third choice. With so many cancellations in Vukovar, Booking promised to pay us back the difference per night in Vukovar. This motel was not a €100 per night place to stay.

We rolled out Zucchini in the sun in the parking lot for a few hours and took a shower. It was time to rest and take things easy by ordering dinner.

In the evening, Jonas called Thomas from the TID again. He was trying to gain clarity on what we should do regarding immigration when we cannot check out of Croatia in Ilok. None of the options were that good.

Tomorrow we’ll visit downtown Vukovar.

Three Nights in Vukovar: the Water Tower

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