Yes, you read the headline correctly, Croatian has a Sahara and yes camels are wandering around. Last week in the town of Djurdjevac in the Koprivnica-Krizevci County camels arrived! This has got to be one of the weirdest stories of the week in Croatia.

The Croatian town in cooperation with the local tourist board bought three desert animals and brought them to Croatia. Two of them are two-hump females and one is a one-hump male.

Zeljko Lackovic, the mayor of Djurdjevac, said they wanted to turn the remains of a local desert ''Djurdjevacki Peski'' or the ''Croatian Sahara'' into a desirable tourist attraction.
''We were recently visited by a TV crew in our desert, which is one of only two such in Europe, and someone from the crew asked where the camels were. And that's how we came up with this idea'', explained Lackovic.

The first three camels are currently at a temporary location in quarantine adapting to the new environment. They are very friendly, mostly eating grass and resting. Visitors of the Croatian Sahara will be able to ride them as well. Their price hasn’t been confirmed yet, but unofficially the entire cost was around 90,000 Kunas.

‘’Lots of people wonder how camels came to this area, but archaeological findings showed bones of camels which were used by Turks to transport their cargo’’, explained Mario Fucek, the director of the Djurdjevac tourist board.

The interest in the Croatian Sahara and its new dwellers is quite big. Many production companies for filming commercials and music videos have already expressed their interest in this unique site.

Djurdjevacki Peski (Djurdjevac Sands) spread over 20 hectares and as a special geographical and botanic reserve it has been protected since 1963. The Croatian Sahara was created by drifting sediments of former glaciers in the Pleistocene, therefore within the last one million years.