KOTOR - MONTENEGRO

Crossing the border into Montenegro I noticed an improvement in infrastructure and a sharp drop in the amount of litter. I arrived in Kotor having covered the journey from Tirana in around a third of the time I expected to. However I would have swapped 12 hours on buses for what happened next.

I got to the bank to discover my credit and debit cards were missing out my wallet, I searched everywhere in my bags…...nothing. Not too much of a problem as I had plenty of money in travellers cheques only to discover no bank in Montenegro would cash them. They wouldn’t even change the Albanian currency I had, I was now in trouble.

I had a desperate few hours trying to figure out how to get money sent over electronically from dad. I picked up enough cash to last the rest of the trip around 10 minutes before the bank closed. It was a close call, I believe my cards were misplaced not stolen and thankfully no money was missing out my account.

Kotor was definitely much more touristy than Tirana, on one hand you had a flood of people coming off cruise ships every morning. On the other hand you could tell it was low season as it was very quiet at night. There seemed to be lots of eating places with 100 seats outside and only a handful of people sitting in them.

Like in Tirana I did meet just enough people and managed to get out in a local bar for a few hours. I met an interesting traveller who got from place to place working on boats.

I got up early to climb up to the fort, it was not too difficult and took less than an hour to get back.  

So I went straight back to the hostel and hired a bike and went all the way around the bay which included a short ferry crossing. It was the best part of 30 miles and was fairly flat all the way round.

Even after doing that I still wasn’t ready to rest so I headed towards a track which was behind the route to the fort. I met a girl from Poland at the bottom who I walked with for the rest of the time. We wanted to get as far as the road but were quickly running out of daylight time. Compared to the route to the fort there were very few people doing that walk, I admit that I wouldn’t have done half the distance if I had been alone.

I met back up with her an hour later and we went out to eat at some slightly upmarket restaurant. This was a rare thing for me as I tend to do cheap eats and grabbing food on the go when travelling, it was a welcome change. I’d earned my nights sleep and didn’t go out after that…...

As in Tirana I wanted to do a tour the final full day, 4 people were required but only 3 were available so it didn’t run. I’d gone bed early and got up early for nothing so I hired the bike again and this time attempted to do the road route to the national park.

The road wasn’t steep but it was long and the exact same gradient all the way to the top, I rode for around 3 hours with the rest breaks getting more frequent as time went on.

By the time I got to the top more and more people were looking at me as if I was mad, the previous days walking and riding didn’t help and by the time I was near the national park I was more than ready to come back down. It was a dangerous descent with endless switchbacks, loose gravel and sheer drops over the edge. I made good use of the breaks and more use of a bike bell than ever before.

The rest of the time in Kotor was very quiet, I met up with the Polish girl again for food. Then went back to the hostel and ended up going out for a couple of drinks in a nearby bar. The following day I had a walk all round the old town and got a bus across the border to Croatia.