Montenegro

Sunday
It was time to farewell everyone on the boat so emails were exchanged and this website shared, and off to the bus station we headed. The station is only a few hundred meters up the road from the port but we were feeling the heat even at 9am. We realised a little too late that you also have to pay to put luggage on board the bus and the guy wasn't giving change so we paid a premium! The drive itself was really interesting, initially following along the coast as we left Dubrovnik and headed south but then moving inland towards the border. You could start to see some of the areas that were affected during the war.

Our first road border crossing was simple. We didn't even have to get off the bus. The official boarded and stamped our passports and on we went. It felt like about 10km from the Croatian border crossing to the Montenegran one, so we were glad we weren't walking. Once through the border we again found the coast and the rest of the drive was constant scenes of the bluest of blue water, games of waterpolo, families swimming and stunning coastlines.

Leaving Dubrovnik

We arrived in Kotor around 2pm and were flooded with people trying to get us to rent their apartments. It was a little unnerving but our guide book had warned us of this. We had prebooked our accomodation so just had to figure out which of the three 'gates' to the old town it was nearest to (Note:Google maps hasn't made it to Kotor yet). Unluckily for us it was the furthest one from the station so another few km of walking in 40+ temperatures. The lady at the apartment told us there had been a slight mix-up with the bookings but not to worry as we would stay in her friends apartment for the same money. He arrived to show us the new apartment which we had no idea whether to trust him or not. The conversation went along the lines of:

Him - "English?"

Us - "Yes. Do you speak English?"

Him: - "No."

And that was that.

After thinking we were getting led down the garden path as we wound our way through other peoples driveways and backyards, our apartment was excellent. 1bed mezzanine style studio with the all important air conditioning. There was a lot of pointing and nodding as he tried to show us how the air-con worked and the complicated front door lock, but we figured it out.



The afternoon was spent wandering the Old Town in search of a supermarket. The old town is in immaculate condition, no wonder that UNESCO gave it heritage status. You would think it would be easy to get lost but most of the narrow, cobbled streets all end up back in a square near one of the 3 gates. Thankfully it doesn’t take too long to walk around the town in its entirety and the temperatures kept all sane people indoors so we had the place pretty much to ourselves. Since we had pretty much walked back to the bus station to find a supermarket we decided to cook our own dinner. Pasta, a bottle of wine, really bad english TV and airconditioning. What more could you want.
Monday
The view from out front door is straight up the mountain backing the Old Town. At the top is St Ivan Fortress and a small church halfway up. Claire's mobile phone provider was very nice in sending us a weather report for free at 5pm every day so we knew that temperatures were going to be high again. Knowing this we set off around 7am. It took a fairly leisurely 2 hours to get up and back, and this included lots of photo stops to appreciate the view and feel sorry for the guy having to whippersnip the path.


Our reward was breakfast down on the waterfront before stocking up for lunch at the markets and returning to the airconditioning to recover. That afternoon we forced ourselves to brave the heat and looked at a couple of churches and visited one of the historical Palaces which also doubles as the maritime museum.

We also attempted to walk further round the bay but the road was really narrow and quite busy with cars, so gave up in favour of icecream and shade. After dinner we headed back into the Old Town to try for some shots of the fortress. The people were out in force. As soon as the sun sets, this town comes alive. There were heaps of families out doing the shopping and kids playing at 10pm.

Tuesday
It was our last day in Kotor so we ventured down to the pebbly beach for a swim. The water was surprisingly chilly considering how hot it gets during the day. The non-english speaking apartment owner was great and let us stay until after lunch as our bus wasn't leaving until 3pm.

The bus trip back to Dubrovnik encounted a slight delay at the border crossing, as the Croatian police decided to do a random baggage check on every passenger on our entire bus. An hour later we were on our way and very glad that we had invested in packing cells, which made the repack much quicker then others.

After arriving at the Dubrovnik bus station we had to figure out how to get to our hotel. Thinking we were used to the croatian transport system we assumed the bus would be fine relised it only came every hour from that stop and we had just missed one. We looked at the map and thought "it isn't too far, we'll just walk". An uphill 60min walk later (with our large backpacks) we arrived at the hotel completely knackered. We decided against going into town for dinner and settled for an expensive buffet dinner at the hotel.


Wednesday
This was to be our last day in Croatia and our flight back to London was for late afternoon. For the morning we joined a sea kayaking tour that left from just outside the Old Town walls and went around the nearby island before stopping off for lunch in a cave and returning to the Old Town. We did have the option of snorkelling at the cave but after hearing the shrieks at how cold it was both of us decided not to go in. We were wet enough anyway just from the paddling. All in all it was a relaxing holiday.