Balkan photo's

Albania-mania

So away from Croatia we drove this week, over what has to be said were pretty poor road conditions towards the end; at one point the road devolving into a gravel track which required slowing to a speed of around 20mph just to negotiate safely.  An hour queue at the Croatian exit border, followed by another 45 minutes waiting at the Montenegro entry border was made difficult as ever by that sweltering midday sun; some good route tips from a Slovakian fella earlier that morning had been very helpful but made us later than we'd have liked heading off.  Anyway, no border hassle this time, and the required vehicle insurance was purchased very swiftly for a mere 20 euros.  Onto the fjord, we couldn't wait for this, and set off for the road which skirts the whole way around it.  Montenegro disappointment number 1: the beautiful Unesco fjord has been spoilt somewhat by the usual tourist eyesores.  This is save for a 10k stretch leading south from Kotor, which is genuinely beautiful.  We tried to camp as close to this area as possible, but the creeping of time unfortunately left us making a mutually bad choice of campsite - atrocious facilities, blaring euro pop...oh lordy, at least it was very cheap and just for one night.  Campsites are very competitive in Montenegro too - as soon as they spot the top of your campervan approaching from their well positioned balconies, they are all literally bearing down on you "hey! hey! you want camping?? come, you come stay with us".  Empty promises of wifi are later realised when the only place for a signal is with your back pressed up against the front door of their family home...so apologies to all those we hoped to skype, but we thought it was a pretty inappropriate location!

Up early the next day we headed for the old town of Kotor.  Yes it's another old town along the coast but this one is well worth the visit; the city walls extend all the way up the side of the mountain, this must have been a seriously impenetrable fortress.  We had learned our lesson from Croatia and got there earlier than perhaps any other tourists and had a great morning.  Kotor is definitely a rival to Dubrovnik in beauty, and feels somewhat less 'discovered'.  We grabbed a chicken and pickle sandwich and headed back to the van to head south.  We could only have been two minutes away when the policeman by the side of the road thrust out his arm and beckoned us over...ugh, what now?  "you no lights".  Aha, of course, this dipped beam law that literally every other time we had remembered had caught us out. "Two nil, you pay or write ticket for post office thirty, you no lights".  Hah!  This guy was actually wanting us to slip him some money the crafty bugger.  We let him repeat himself a few times and looked puzzled "we no understand" and thankfully he tired and eventually waved us onwards empty handed.  Phew...so Montenegro disappointment number 2: corrupt police.

South of Bar, we headed for campsite Uhjeha recommended by the Slovakian guy the previous day, which was tucked into a fairly touristy bay.  Met by the usual stampede of campsite owners plying for trade we managed to manoeuvre ourselves into a very tight spot, rather too close to a Macedonian family in their tent but thankfully they didn't mind.  Nothing really to see here, but we decided to stay a couple of nights, partly because it was so cheap yet again, and also we felt we had earned a day on the beach relaxing before Albania.  The family from Macedonia turned out to be an absolute joy and we spent our last evening with them squeezed into what little space was left between our van and their tent.  Suzanna spoke very good English, from her 6 month stint living in Brighton when the war in Yugoslavia temporarily moved her, and she was camping with her parents and young son.  Her mother couldn't speak a word of English but that didn't stop her coming over and chatting away to us...she called Michael "London" and chirped away about how we should have lots of babies as we could surely fit four of them in our van!  They showed us amazing hospitality, bringing us plates of their wonderful food to share, and even better - some of the fathers home brewed ouzo.  We were truly spoilt by them, and it really touched us as they clearly had very little in terms of possessions; it was a reminder that we must be prepared with little gifts to offer in return of such kindness...there's only so many times you can offer English tea bags to these wonderful people.

We rose early the next day for our entry into Albania, both feeling a little off colour and not sure if it was the ouzo, some dodgy water or heat exhaustion.  Just 5k before the Montenegro exit border we found our route blocked by a very recent and nasty looking traffic accident.  Thankfully, aside from a nose bleed and cuts and scratches to some of those involved there were no serious injuries, just some very shaken people.  There was of course though a hefty wait for the police to arrive and with no other way around we duly waited with the ever increasing queue of traffic both sides.  Eventually we moved onwards and sailed through the exit border into Albania.  Right then, where's the Albanian border, and our opportunity to buy insurance?  Nothing in sight, and after 20 minutes of driving we realised there either wasn't one or we had overshot it.  This did nothing for our anxiety levels; after all the stories of terrible road conditions and crazy drivers, Albania was the last place we wanted to be without insurance.  Anyway we pressed on to just south of Durres, hoping to get things sorted the following day and to be honest, fairly pleasantly surprised by driving conditions.  So much work is being done to the roads in Albania, and yes there are some ropey parts and the occasional pothole to swerve around, but we felt that everything we had read prior to our arrival was greatly exaggerated; we had seen worse roads in Montenegro, and the drivers in Croatia are as yet unrivalled in the crazyness-stakes.  So, we arrived at Pa Emer campsite feeling reasonably relieved, to an extremely warm welcome from the owner Leonado who beckoned us up for a free espresso once we had found a pitch.  I really needn't say anything about our pitch as you will see from the photo that this is about as good as it gets.  Leonado is just lovely, an Albanian chap who spent 18 years living in Milan, only to return home and create his vision of a beautiful campsite in his  home country.  Obviously it helps that he is a landscape architect, and it is really apparent in the design of his 'vision'.  Anyway to make things even easier he says he will take us to sort out insurance the next day and really he thinks we should see the capital so we'll stop in Tirane on the way.  Top man.

So this takes us to today...and what a day we've had.  10am we met Leonado, him looking very 'Milan' in linen shirt and pastel jeans and he drove us through Tirane. We didn't stop but he pointed out enough sights for us to want to come back for a city break sometime very soon.  And I recommend that you all do - there's even something of the 'New York' about the streets of Tirane.  We tagged along to various construction sites while he nipped in for various meetings about landscape design and then he took us for some 'proper Albanian food', beautiful rice pilaf and meat stew.  Then of course we had to go for some ice cream, although it turned out this was more to do with Leonado having an eye for the lovely Albanian girl in the shop opposite.  We drove back towards the campsite, making a quick stop to pick up van insurance on the way - a mere 25 euros by the way, far less than the many high figures we had been led to believe before arriving.  All the while we are receiving a well-informed briefing on how much Albania is working hard to improve it's roads and actually in general it's reputation amongst it's European neighbours.  But you know what, we have realised it for ourselves anyway; Albania is an absolute gem.  The people are incredibly friendly, the scenery especially out towards the mountains is just awesome, it really is just sitting here waiting to be given a chance by anyone prepared to forget the bad hype and make the journey here.  We love it.  Anyway, back to our day - Leonado wanted to make one more stop on the way back for coffee at his friends restaurant, so in we went.  A young lad then walked us through the vineyards at the back of the restaurant, and unlocked the door to an underground cellar where there were huge vats full of last year's produce just waiting for us to have a taste.  Beautiful stuff, both red and white, and 'no nasty pesticides' as Leonado explains.  So naturally we bought a couple of bottles, very cheaply, and headed back to Pa Emer, both of us admitting to perhaps one of the best days of the trip so far and eternally grateful to Leonado for opening our eyes to wonderful Albania.

Tomorrow we head south on the coastal road which we hear is a stunning drive from some fellow English campers that live in France (I know weird or what?!).  But for now, we are enjoying a fine evening indeed, about to take a lovely bottle of Albanian red to share with new friends.

This is the End (of Croatia at least)

I was originally gonna start this blog entry playfully teasing about how we'd heard those of you back up in Northern Europe had been struggling with unseasonably bad weather and how we have been 'struggling' with beautifully warm days and that our only options for relief were a dip in the cool Adriatic or an ice cold beer.  Well, to some degree, the joke is on us and we are struggling with the weather.  There's no other way to put it; it's mudder fudding HOT. Damn bloody inescapably hot.  Cultivating a swamp in your pants, can't move for slipping off your flip flops hot. It's hot. Temperatures   regularly 35-40 degrees, that's naaaasty.  I hope you feel for us.

So, where did we get up to?  We left Camp Jasenova and continued south down the Adriatic Highway. A beautiful road to drive.  Every bay more picturesque than the last.  Our first stop was at some big, but very empty, campsite around Zaostrag. Place was a little touristy but we were away from the main drag and had a couple of days just hanging out doing nothing.  With the weather the way it is - and now that we've been away for 2 months, we've kind of slowed down a little.  There's loads of things to do around here, Island trips, National Parks etc but with an eye on budget and time (back to my old Project Management days) we've mainly hugged the coast and have spent the last week or so in the Makarska Riviera region.

A bit further down and we had another stop, a lovely little town called Trsteno (that we didn't realise until we got there features on the front cover of the Croatian Rough Guide). Helen's better at writing about the historical stuff but we went to some historical Roman place there. Big gardens with old buildings in, loads of plants and trees and an old olive mill. Superb.  Walk down into the little harbour and you end up in the most amazing little place for a swim, extremely picturesque. The local kids looked like they were having a wicked time bobbing about these old buildings, bombing in and out of the sea. We were surprised that there are so many empty properties there, we'd love to buy one but would probably melt in the summer.  We left Trsteno heading for our final Croatian location, Dubrovnik (D'Brov from hereon in).

First we had to do the Bosnia and Hercegovina 10k scuttle.  A pointless stretch of Bosnia that doesn't seem to serve any purpose other then ensuring Bosnia has a bit of coast and flogging cheap booze n fags to travellers - a Balkan Calais if you will - but still a very scenic route to take.  You have to pass through two border controls, not too far apart from each other.  We approached the first and saw that pretty much every vehicle was being waved through.  We must have still been 200 meters away from it when we saw loads of serious looking, well tooled up, border types leap from their hut. "That'll be for us then babe".  I've never got through a border without being stopped (though I will hold my hands up to drinking a bottle of vodka, a bottle of Listerine and then trying to get into NYC as my own fault) and sure enough this was no exception.  Passports suspiciously checked over and then the obligatory 'pull overs to ze roadsides and get out of ze vehicles'.  Did I mention it was hot? Helen and I, mid-bloody-day, no bloody shade as Tweedledeeski and Tweedledumovic went through everything.  Being good Christians and all of course we had nothing to hide but bugger us, how about an ice-cream or something whilst you two knock ya-selves out looking through our pants?  They had been at it for sometime when it all came to an abrupt end.  Whilst going through our medication bag; Idiot 1 - "Aha! Vot are deez for!?" "Diarrhea". Idiot 2, upon finding a 'suspicious package' "AHA!!! VOT ARE DEEZ FOR!!??" "Ladies".  Idiot 2 didn't speak English so Idiot 1 translated and we were soon on our way.

A short hop from the border and we soon got our first glimpse of D'Brov from up on the main bridge leading into town, quite a sight too.  We decided to head past town to the suburbs for a cheaper stay on an auto-camp. These are often very small places, just a front garden sometimes and we much prefer the chilled out atmosphere you can find at them.  Didn't like the look of the first place and the second one we pulled onto we didn't think was up to much, despite being waved at by a couple in a VW, so we turned around to leave only to hear a northern voice say 'you alreet mate?' Thankfully that voice knew how good the place we had arrived at was and his friendly manner convinced us to park up.  A wise choice.  We're currently at a brilliant little place with some really interesting characters, not least said northern voice, Pete and his wife Vicky and also the VW wavers who are a Spanish couple living in Strasbourg.   Pete and Vicky are a blast, proper hospitable to boot. They, like a few at this place, are on longer trips much like ours so tend to be different to the norm in one way or another. Pete and Vicky came away with a van loaded with 500 cans of Boddingtons and as many cans of beans and Fray Bentos pies as a Cash and Carry.  The Spanish couple we'd only been with for one night and they've invited us to go and stay at their place in Strasbourg as soon as we can, all good people, finally good stuff happening. It's been great all gathering in the evening to watch the footie sat outside a van, beers, sunsets and laughs.

We've headed into D'Brov on the local bus a couple of times. The first time we over-shot the old town where most head to and ended up at the port full of cruise ships.  We had a long walk back up a hill that was littered with sweaty cruisers huddled in what ever shade they could find, needless to say we had to join them.  We'll not be doing that walk again.  D'Brov old town is just breathtaking, if you've not been you should go.  Too much to write about but it's just brilliant, although, as always, it has been spoilt somewhat.  Not by the war of 1990-1992 but by the tourist trade.  It was rammo when we were there but you can find some solice in the narrow side streets or by avoiding the numerous pizza places. We went back again and headed to the port this time to get a boat to an island only to have missed the one we wanted.  "Right, what shall we do?" - back up the bloody hill again all gasping for air and desperate for shade.

It's our last day here today and we went for a swim in a little bay that is juxtaposed by bombed out hotels left over from the war.  Not as ugly as it sounds and quite an interesting sight.  There's quite a few scars left over from the conflict still in this area but it's getting back on its feet with regards to tourism.  Well worth the extra miles I'd say if you ever drive to Croatia and you just need to time your visit to D'Brov right.

So we head now for Montenegro, Albania and Macedonia.  I imagine it will be a bit like the nail-biting, excruciatingly tense re-entry of Apollo 13 through our atmosphere.  It may all go quiet for a while so you'll just have to hold your breath, hope that we make it and that you hear from us again on the other side!

Oh yeah, even the sea is warm now, no escape!

Pick of Pics

Chilling in Croatia

If only the weather had held.  But we began to hear that all too familiar pitter patter; of course I'm sure there are worse places than swimming out of a cove in the Adriatic when it's raining, however after a day and night of it we took it as our prompt to pack up and move onwards.  After we had dug ourselves out from underneath the pile of Finnish campers that had descended upon us the night before that is (if anyone remembers that game where you have re-arrange tiles across a board with only one empty space...well anyway it was complicated).  So after much 'to me, to you' we finally managed to extract ourselves from Camp Ujca and we were on our way again.

Along the Adriatic Highway we drove.  We had intended to stop before, but found ourselves on a campsite on the suburbs of Split where we had two plans; firstly to have ourselves another day of city life wandering the streets of Split, and then secondly to return back up the coast to the stunning coastline we had passed along our way.

I'm sure many of you will already know this, but Split is absolutely gorgeous.  And very old; some of the buildings in the old town dating back to Roman times.  But what makes the city so attractive and buzzy is that the new city, the cafe's, bars and shops all exist within the fabric of the old town, rather than leaving these crumbling buildings as a memorial to the Roman Emperor Diocletian.  We had missed the fish market, but took in a free exhibition of photo's taken in the market itself of wonderfully gruesome looking fish, and we happily stumbled our way through the fruit and veg market, where locals had obviously cleared their gardens and laid their goods on stalls that seemed to go on for miles.  Amongst other things we found some wild asparagus to cook up later that night.  We were quite gutted when we left not to be staying in the city itself, as Split is the kind of place that looks like it comes alive in the evenings...the perfect place to blow a weeks budget, so actually perhaps not!  But no, not us, we even decided to save the money for the bus fare back to the campsite; 'let's walk' says Michael 'there's a coastal path, much nicer than the bus'.  Hmmmm.  Thing is it looked a lot closer on the map, but 9 thirsty kilometres in the searing heat through the far less beautiful city suburbs (I swear we heard gunshots coming from the rather worryingly named 'white boys' football club).  Many blisters later we returned, never happier to see rows and rows of campervans.

So back up the coast we drove, to Jasenova, and finally we found it...the small, chilled kind of campsite that we actually want to stay on.  A small place, a beach and a small bar (that plays the footie so Hooper's happy) and even free wifi...perfect.  The guy that owns the site has got to be the most chilled-out guy we've ever met, although there is something of the 'don' about him; it's all very Soprano's when him and his mates are down at the bar huddled around drinking.  It was at this point that we received a timely reminder - in the form of a lovely email from our good friend Pat - which made us realise we had been perhaps over-thinking the purpose of our trip.  We are very lucky, and actually sometimes it's ok just to relax and, well....be...

So we are having a holiday of sorts while we are here, lots of beach action.  And we've met a lovely Japanese/Swiss couple, Rie and Roland from Australia, and their lovely kids Natasha and Fabian.  In the time we've spent with Natasha she has developed a perfect cockney accent and a love of English tea.  She also broke one of our deck chairs, but let's face it, it saves Michael the job!  The family have been perfect company for watching the Euro 2012 games, particularly as Fabian is an aspiring right back.

Amongst all the relaxation, we headed off on our bikes to search out the local delicacy, a red wine called babic.  Not too far away we came across a hand painted sign that led us to a local house where a guy in dungarees (and not many teeth) beckoned us in and creaked open the door to his shed, revealing a huge vat of his home brew.  I was pretty daunted as he thrust a glass into my hand to taste.  Thankfully it was lovely, and we took away 2 litres for literally a few pounds.  He did however give us said wine in a tattered old sprite bottle so no expense spared there..

Anyway, apologies but there is a beach towel with my name on it...the sun is baking at last and set to stick around as far as my weather skills can determine.  So here we shall stay, until we fancy ambling further down this beautiful coast...

Croatia...and obligatory sunset photo (first of many)

Where we beenia? Only Slovenia (and a bit of Croatia, too).

We’ve had quite a lot of things to consider this last week or so; budget, which we knew would come up; what we want to get out of our trip, experiences etc; what the weather will be doing (as this has some impact on where we stay and how we spend our time) and also altitude, which we didn’t think would come up at all.

 

There are a lot of mountains down where we have been (unavoidable unless you can afford to take the toll roads, bridges, passes or trains) and the van hates them and, as lovely as they are, we’re ashamed to say that we became a bit complacent towards them too.  We’ve had a couple of weeks or so of willing the bus up steep winding roads (and hoping it would stop coming down them) wrestling the heavy steering around serpentine twists and turns so we thought we’d head for lower ground and water level, I.E the bloody beach (weather permitting)!  This kind of thinking led us to blast through Slovenia which was a shame as it is surprisingly beautiful, seemed pretty chilled and the people very friendly.

We initially headed for the ‘must see’ Bled lake in the North. The only trouble was every tourist in Slovenia had obviously felt that they ‘must see’ the lake too at the very same time, something that we’re coming up against quite a lot.  There ain’t nothing like hanging with the coach trip crowd to dampen the spirits.  Invariably the lake had been ruined somewhat by the hotels and tacky gift shops built up around it and therein lies the problem with wanting to visit natural places of beauty and get away from it all, everyone does, you’re never really alone, especially in Europe.  So we’re finding the freedom we crave and the real experience (whatever that means) of a country hard to come by sometimes.  Travelling in a van offers you some freedom but you can be restricted - especially in an older, slower bus like ours - as to where you can reach and safely park up for free away from other people.  Campsites often offer little respite as these can be hit and miss and tend to be centred around packing people into a coastal area, lake or mountain range and free camping is frowned upon in some places but you takes ya chance.  Not all doom and gloom by any stretch of the imagination but we’ve found we have entered a period of reflection regarding what it is we actually want to achieve by doing all this.  We read somewhere before we headed off that what others doing something similar had found most challenging was having too much time and too many options; something we would partly agree with at this point in time. We are also having to weigh up the cost of reaching remote places - and not killing our bus - against the desire to find something more than campsites and being amongst rows of mobile-homes.  We want to ensure that we have more fulfilling experiences that stay with us and help shape our future.

So, we’ve decided to sell the van and become Slovenian goat botherer’s.  We haven’t, of course. I’ve had a restraining order banning me from going within 100 yards of a goat for some years now.  Belated apologies to ‘Billy’.  It was dark, I was drunk, I thought you were ‘Larry’.

Back to the trip.

We left Bled pretty sharpish and found a hotel in a lovely little town that had a stellplatz for 10 Euros.  Still one or two other vans there but much closer to what we are after.  Had a sunny evening stroll around the tiny village to find the only shop and walked back across fields.  Slovenia being fairly small, about the same size as glorious Wales, we headed out for a drive across the country the next day after first climbing up to what was described as Slovenia’s ‘most perfect example of an old castle’.  I’ll say nothing other than at least the view was dramatic.  Our drive took us through more stunning, but now familiar, mountain ranges so we performed a perfect 360 degree hand-brake turn complete with screeching tyres and dust cloud and headed for Slovenia’s small, but perfectly formed, coastline.  

With an eye on our moola we opted for another free stay at a marina stellplatz in Izola. There she was.  The clear blue sparkling Adriatic, in full HD3D sunshine.  Brilliant stopover in great little town which could only have been bettered had we; a) paid the 15 Euros to actually stay there and saved us a night of not looking over our shoulders and b) it wasn’t on a main road.  A really good stop this though, beers by the sea for the first time in ages and after a lot of kilometres (miles are so very British).

Up early to avoid the potential parking fine or clamp and we headed straight across the boarder into Croatia.  First impressions? Awesome. An absolutely stunning drive along the coastline and across the bridge to the Island of Krk’s most southerly town, Baska. A campsite for a few days relaxing. Not too bad a place as it offered free camping set back from the crowd – you could park where you like, not, not pay – which was cheaper than all of the vans bunched up on the beach like a shanty town.  Decent beach, great swimming, lovely town in the early morning when just the locals.

Still fairly busy, even in June, we decided to head off after a few nights and head back to the mainland.  Good decision.  If you have to stay on campsites, which we’d rather not do, you want something special and sparsely populated if possible. After a drive along the Adriatic Highway - which we’ve vowed to return to and cycle rather than drive one day – we found Camp Ujca hidden away down a steep hill, through a long tunnel and tucked into a gorgeous cove.  A little campsite with just a few tents and with the opportunity to park right on the beach meaning that we could tick one item off of the ‘trip wish list’, opening the van door in the morning, stepping out and jumping into a clear blue sea. So, this is where you leave us for now: happy, free, having fun but lots to consider over the next few weeks...

Digital images of things that we've seen