Almost through Montenegro

Sunday 1st October 2017
Seascape Apartments (27.5E)
Ulcinj, Montenegro

An extremely pleasant 23c

Montenegro has been an experience, but more of that later.

We arrived in Dubrovnik and eventually found our room in 'Ivan's Rooms'.  For those who haven't been to Dubrovnik, the streets are virtually straight up from the coast road and the port.  Ivan, a sweet man, well into his 80s, couldn't speak English and while I tried to explain to him my name wasn't Lukas from Germany, he just said 'lady, lady', from that I concluded that 'lady' was his wife and she would be home soon.  Lady turned out to be Elena (another one) who arrived roundabout the same time as Lukas from Germany, who it happens, had booked a room with double bed and shared balcony but had ended up in the twin with a shared terrace.  It was just the mix up I was fearing, but by now we were quite attached to the lovely balcony and its sunset.  But fair's fair, we moved.

Dubrovnik

I think we must be heathens at heart because we were not really taken with Dubrovnik.  That's not really accurate, we weren't taken with the number of tourists gawping at Dubrovnik, and of course we became part of that throng.  Our first afternoon was very hot and very sticky, our second day couldn't have been more different.  The rains came and boy did it rain, pretty much all day.  We were very grateful for the overhang at the Tommy supermarket.  We sheltered there for so long waiting for the river on the road to slow down we needed to go into the supermarket and buy some food!  The tourists were not put off visiting Dubrovnik, but now they had umbrellas.  We walked a little, found an Irish pub, had a very expensive pub lunch and then caught the bus 'home'.

Raining in Dubrovnik

Leaving Dubrovnik

Harbour, Dubrovnik

The following day we cycled out of Dubrovnik on the old road initially, until it finally met the new road, where we had to remove our bags, haul the bikes over the barrier and reassemble.  Oh, and the tricky bit, climbing on the bikes while being passed by vehicles driven by some of the worst drivers we've come across to date.  Minutes before this, while on the old road, I had been looking at a sign (in English) something about 1944 and the liberators, I didn't get much further because suddenly, from above, came an almighty crack, so loud it literally made me jump.  Thankfully, it made me jump backwards and to the left, out of the way of the rock that had become dislodged, probably due to all the rain the day before and crashed to the place where I had been standing. For the first, but not last time this trip I'm sure, I asked myself what I would have done if I had been hurt.  Remote location.  Language a problem.  BW's advice 'if you hear that noise again, just GO'.

Shortly after our dice with death we bumped into 3 touring cyclists, one from Kent, one from Wales and one from Spain.  So off we swanned to the local Konzum supermarket for coffee and a catch up.  Later that day we would find each other again, on a bit of a lonesome road; we were heading down to the sleepy cove of Molunat to camp on the beach and the 'boys' had found themselves a wild camping spot on the hill.  Had I realised it would be a very steep 3km climb back up to the road to carry on into Montenegro we may have made a different choice.

The hills had been evident for a long time but now we seemed to be engulfed by them.  The road to the Montenegran border was up and down, and very little sign of life along the way.  We were waiting for the inevitable border town to materialise but it never did.  We passed through Croatian and Montenegran borders without issue and plunged into Herceg Novi but not before turning off data roaming as neither Montenegro or Albania are covered by EU plans and £7.50 per mb is a bit steep!

First glimpse of Hercegovina Novi

Our first night was spent just the other side of HN in the first campsite you come to on the main road.  My advice, don't touch it with a barge pole.  The only good thing about it is the wildlife which inhabit this lovely wooded area.  That night my Exped mattress popped.  Imagine a lilo, with all it's channels, well the Exped is like that and one of the 'seams', the one right in the middle unfortunately, has gone, leaving a rather large hump where there used to be two small ones.  We're in touch with Exped, hoping we'll get a new one sent to Greece because I don't like the idea of going back to using Thermarest.

And so the traffic and terrain have become the thing, while the weather has been extremely pleasant.  Montenegran drivers are in a class of their own.  The buses and taxis are THE worst, never moving out to give us room and moving far too fast for anyone's good.  We made the decision not to follow the MapsMe bike routes, just far too much climbing, so we are sticking to the main road, still a lot of climbing and dealing with the traffic but we get where we're going a bit quicker.

Rooms and apartments here are very cheap; In Budvar we were accosted by a gentleman who said he had a room 'very cheap', and we began the journey through the narrow alleys to find the 'very cheap' room.  I knew immediately I wasn't going to like it, but I looked out of politeness.  It looked and smelled like the local tramp and his 3 dogs had just vacated so I just walked away.  In complete contrast, while walking away from the dump, a lovely lady beckoned us, and her English-speaking son, and said they had a room.  It was lovely and clean, we had a fridge and a little balcony and our own entrance all for the princely sum of E20.  We now know it's a E15 room, but hey.  We weren't quite so lucky with our choice of accommodation in Bar (Hostal Berlin) but that was only E13.5.

I've got a touch of sinusitis again, so we decided we would stay near the beach at Ulcinj for a couple of days.  We found a lovely little camping place, very close to the beach, but found that for another E10 a night we could get a 2 bed apt very close by.  OK, we don't NEED a 2 bed apt but that was what was up for grabs on Booking.com so we grabbed it.  The owner has just been to pick fruit from the garden and has brought us grapes, pomegranates and satsumas.  That's our breakfast sorted tomorrow morning.  The resident dog (only a puppy) keeps following me around.  I've noticed his ears are quite scabby, we're considering giving him a bath but in the long term I'm not sure we can do anything.

Tomorrow we enter Albania.  We're not sure what to expect, although we have found a couple of blogs online, one of which is quite old.  We know the terrain is mountainous, and will continue to be down into northern Greece.  I think my legs are getting used to climbing, although I am rather slow :)

Two sweaty people after the steep climb up to just before Budvar

The whole getting to Athens to obtain Indian Visas has gone by the by now.  Firstly, I have plenty of space in my passport (approx 5 empty pages) but I don't have two consecutive blank pages, which is a requirement.  Knowing how bureaucratic the Indian embassy can be I can't risk it.  Obtaining a new UK passport in Athens takes approx 4 weeks, on top of the 3 weeks to get the visa, nah.  Fly to London to do both, we considered this as an option but it's far easier to fly to Bangkok, get a 30 day visa on arrival and head straight down to Cambodia.  We will need new UK passports but that's easier to arrange when we are visiting friends in Australia.  That little word 'consecutive', honestly, who would have thought we'd have been hampered by something so trivial.

Laters