Through Monenegro

Tuesday 8th June

Today the sun again was beating down, so we slowly arose and packed up. Today it was time for a new country, Montenegro. We had heard it was a beautiful country, so we headed off to the border. As we came through the Croatian post and headed across no-mans land to the Montenegro side, we passed a wondering single lone dairy cow! It would of made a great picture, but as we were at the border I thought it probably a bad idea to start taking photos! No official seemed to bother with the cow though, as it circled between the cars in front of the border crossing. At the border we were sold what was called ecology tax, that was 10 euros, but we were told it was mandatory! The border official then commended us for having the insurance green card for his country and stamped our passports, already this seemed a strange country.

We then drove off and into Montenegro, without really a clue where we were going. We headed off towards Kotor, around the fjord we had heard was beautiful.

Driving there though we found Montenegro very developed, in terms of a lot of housing and more seemed to be going up. This we would find throughout the country. The drive around the fjord was nice, but we passed through Kotor without really feeling the need to stop. We carried on to Budva and found more developments and a beach filled with sun loungers. So we continued on, becoming more disappointed with Montenegro. We then decided to head inland away from the sea to lake Skadarsko that borders Albania. This was a better drive, up into the mountains and through lovely countryside and views. We reached the lake and pulled over ready to go in search of somewhere to stay for the night. At that point an older guy pulled up, handing over a leaflet for his nearby restaurant. Saying we could also camp there if we needed somewhere to stay. We ended up heading towards his hotel, which we had to drive past to get to the village of Virpazar and the other side of the lake. But as we got to his hotel, well small restaurant, he was waving us over and told us to follow him down a track opposite and to somewhere we could park for free! I’m sure although free, he wanted us to eat in the restaurant. Anyway the track led past some foul bins and up to a strange bit overlooking the road and some marshland near the lake. We stopped down there a few minutes deciding on whether to stay, we weren’t too impressed with the position. But what really made us leave was the fact that the man had parked over on the road and seemed to be watching us. We decided we’d had enough and wanted to head back to the coast, as driving up the mountains we had seen what looked like a group of motorhomes by a big beach. First though we would have to get away from where we were and as soon as we started off down the track, the man moved from the road down to the track entrance. We had to make our excuses and drive off, this country seems weird. Heading back to the coast through the lovely mountains we passed a few tortoises trying to cross the road!

Turning up at the beach near the town of Petrovack, we found it was a campsite that the motorhomes were on and not what we had hoped was a free parking spot. I say campsite, but well it seemed a bit of land next to the beach that may have used to have been a campsite!

It had very run down buildings with no amenities. It looked like they may be doing the whole place up, but very very slowly. It was a great spot for a great campsite, but at present it was a place for us to stay after a long days driving. We found a spot on the far side of the so-called campsite, past a big group of Dutch motorhomer's staying there. But after a while when we were just about to start cooking we got a strange warning from a passing Dutch camper. He informed us that we would be best to park down the other end of the campsite. As where we were now parked, at night became a spot of activity for local men! I must admit at the time I laughed, as what he was saying and the whole situation seemed bizarre. After a while longer I decided to go and ask some other campers whether this end of the Campsite/car Park became a hive of activity at night. I was told yes, there were many coming and goings of men at night down this end, oor eerr missus! Well I didn’t really fancy trying to get some sleep with loads of people around us, so we decided to move to another spot. Later that night, we did indeed hear many cars and men walking past us down to the other end of the campsite.

Wednesday 9th June

Woke up early and the strange campsite manager, who couldn’t speak any English (but then again we couldn’t speak his language!), informed us we needed to move to another spot as the chief was coming. Well this is what he seemed to be saying, also he had already unplugged our electric cable! All the Dutch campers were now gone and apart from a couple of caravans the whole site was free, so why we needed to move was beyond us. Also we were going to have breakfast and head straight off anyway, but as the good citizens we are we moved to a different spot first. As soon as we had finished some toast we were off and away from this strange campsite.

We both were unsure how much of this country we could take, but decided to give it another go today. We headed off to the old town of Bar, Stari Bar, but had some fun when we got to Bar finding the old town. It was signposted, then not signposted, so we ended up driving around till we finally located it and somewhere to park. The old town was basically ruins, with some of the buildings being restored and a plan of it being a creative hub for the area. The town had been badly destroyed in earthquakes and it had also just been neglected. It was on a hill overlooking the sea and was an old walled town, like so many around here and Croatia, but as said it was basically the ruins of an old town with no–one living there.

After the tourist craziness of Dubrovnik, it was actually really nice to wonder alone around this old town.

After we had baked in the sun around the ruins we headed into the new town. To do some food shopping and Lorna also needed to head off by herself to shop, apparently for my birthday gift! I took the opportunity to relax outside in the sun at a bar watching the world go by, while sipping on a cold beer. I could only take this for a short time though, as the bar was playing Rick Astley’s greatest hits! So far we have noticed that Eastern Europe seem to love there eighties music, they have so much catching up to do music wise!

We had read that further down the coast near Ulcinj, there were lovely sandy beaches. We decided to head that way to find somewhere nice to stop. On entering the town we where latched onto by a man on a scooter offering us somewhere to stay by the sea! So off we went following him down some roads and then dusty tracks, till we eventually came to some small beach restaurant with a few motorhomes parked there. Again it was somewhere else that was in the process of being renovated! On the route here we had noticed this area was just one huge long sandy beach with little beach side restaurants/motels side by side, the whole stretch down. It wasn’t really what we were expecting and there was no point driving around finding somewhere else, as they were all pretty much exactly the same.

We decided we would stay here tonight and tomorrow morning head out of this country and into Albania.