After reading about driving in Croatia in the Lonely Planet guide, I was more than a little apprehensive.

Apparently the Croats do crazy things on the road and the roads have big potholes in them.

First off, the Croats, in general, do not drive like maniacs and secondly the roads are great. As a matter of fact, I’d say the average Croat is a slow driver, who like the Italians, doesn’t like to indicate, and the highways are amongst the very best I’ve ever seen, anywhere. Even the tiny little back roads are good.

As we were driving from Istria to Split both Engogirl and I felt that there didn’t seem to be very much commerce or industry along the excellent highway to justify its existence. We discussed why the road was there and speculated where such a small country with a proportionally small tax base got the money to build such extensive and excellent infrastructure.

A quick check in WikiTaxi on the laptop by Engogirl while I was driving revealed that almost half of Croatian economy is generated by the tourism industry. During the recent past with easy credit, the Croatian government decided to invest in upgrading their infrastructure. I can understand why, because it’s a bit of the old chicken and egg scenario. If you can’t get goods and tourists to their markets you won’t make any money and for that you need good roads. So I guess the Croatian government has decided to take a punt and build up their road system and hopefully the rest will fall into place.

I sure hope it works out because the poor old Croats deserve a break after all the crap they’ve been through over last 1000 years.