Flat Battery – Croatia

On our first trip in 2009 we stayed in a small bay near the village of Trpanj in Croatia. The campsite was not very busy as we were there in the off season and we had a great spot near to the beach. We enjoyed the place so much that we really didn’t want to leave and ended up staying for 5 days.  Our site was unpowered but we normally don’t use very much electricity. I checked the gauge every day and it said that we still had plenty of power left in the battery but it was monitoring the wrong battery. When it was time to leave the motorhome wouldn’t start as the battery was flat. Over the last few days we had become friendly with a Dutch couple traveling on their motorbikes, Gaby and Renko. He had a look for us and found out that the connection on the battery was the wrong way around and in fact we were using the main battery and not the leisure battery. After borrowing some jumper leads we managed to get it started and parked up on hill in case we had to roll start it. Gaby invited us for a coffee before we left but as they were traveling light we had to supply our own mugs. We drank coffee and talked and after 3 hours we finally hit the road again, can’t rush things when you are touring. A couple of days later we received an email from Gaby and Renko saying that we had left our mugs behind and that they would take then back to Holland where we were invited to come and visit them, picking our mugs up at the same time. At the end of our trip we did visit them and had done so many times on other trips. We still have contact through Facebook and Skype and hope to see them again on our next trip. Since Renko fixed our problem we have never had a flat battery since and have gained 2 friends as well. By the way they still have our coffee mugs as we had bought some new ones since.