Croatia-Along the Dalmation Coast-Day 401(28,880 miles)

From Montenegro we took the quickest route possible which meant a quick trip into Bosnia, not sure we can really claim this as a country visited as we were in and out within an hour!

Croatia is the bit of the former Yugoslavia that contains the resorts and towns that were the most popular tourist destinations before the war and subsequent split. We headed for Dubrovnik, it's beautiful, historical and the Lonely Planet says not to miss it! Having now been we would agree it was nice, but for us August was probably not the time of year to do it. If you cope well with temperatures above 35c temperatures and thousands of tourists (many arriving in large groups off coaches or cruise ships) you may be fine, it coincides with the Summer Festival so the plus is that there are loads of art and music events. We lasted about 5 hours before having to go and lay down in a darkened room!

It's strange, when compared to Delhi, Bangkok, Kathmandu or Phnom Penh it was nowhere as intense in Dubrovnik but perhaps it is because in these other cities people are using the city to go about their daily lives, living and working on the streets whereas here it is pedestrianised and full of tourists wandering about without purpose which just seemed to make it more oppressive.

We stayed about 10km out of the city in a nice little cove called Zaton and travelled into the city by boat and bus.







Close to the bus stop was this armoured vehicle and a small plaque explaining that it was used by the Dubrovnik Defenders which was the name given to the local people who took up arms to defend the city when it was attacked by Serbia and Montenegro in 1991. For 7 months Dubrovnik was cut off from the rest of Croatia and without electricity, 200 of the Defenders and 100 civilians were killed and something like 50% of the buildings in the old city sustained some damaged. It's a UNESCO world heritage site and there is little sign of the damage now, there was an exhibition showing photos of the city under siege, some buildings really were badly effected.






Sunset back in our nice quiet little cove.

We headed up the coast to a place called Trogir which turned out to be a very similar to Dubrovnik only much smaller and quieter.

The harbour wasn't big enough for cruise ships (luckily) but there were some pretty flashy super yachts.


Don't upset the kids but it looks like Santa's retired to the sun.





We headed over to Rab one of the many islands along the coast, unfortunately so had half the population of Italy (lots of them come here in August) and we could only find accommodation for one night.

They loaded so many cars onto the ferry that they couldn't close the tail gate properly (perhaps they never heard about the Herald of Free Enterprise!)




On to Slovenia.........

Montenegro - As pretty as we'd heard - Day 395 (28,348 miles)

We had met a few travellers along the way who said Montenegro had been their favourite part of the former Yugoslavia. As we are only visiting bits of each country it's hard to say whether we agree but it certainly has some stunning scenery and is a great motorbiking country.

We had an overnight stop at Virpazar on Lake Skadar, the lake is half in Montenegro and half in Albania.

Dinner that night was carp from the lake, a first for both of us and better than we thought it would be (lots of garlic). The above isn't some kind of weird ventriloquist act! This is the head of a carp caught by the owner of our hotel in the lake a few years ago, it weighed in at around 70kg.

Our next stop was the very pretty walled city of Kotor which was first settled in by the ancient Romans. Very quaint and although it's August it wasn't horrendeously busy.









The city fortification wall to St John's castle is about 300m high and the path up is a couple of km long, not exactly a mountain but the day I chose to walk up was possibly the most humid during our whole trip. Honestly, it was sweatier than anytime in Asia. This combined with the 35c plus temperature meant that by the time I got down I was a bright red, sweaty, wet haired mess. Before meeting John (who had sensibly decided to not bother and took photos of the town instead) I found a hairdresser and booked a haircut appointment. The receptionist commented that they usually took a deposit but he could see I was desperate and was happy I would turn up! How awful did I feel.



While stopped in a lay-by taking these photos we were chatting to a German biker who had come via the Dolomites which he raved about. Mmmm, we hadn't planned on Italy but perhaps we can fit it in.


We had a couple of nights in the mountain town of Zablijak, this was the view from our apartment. Found a huge apartment for 35 euro a night with a full kitchen so we could cook all our meals and a lounge with a huge sofa, oh the luxury! We've stayed in lots of apartments all through Europe and they've been good but this was the first with a sofa to stretch out on.

Until we came here we were completely unaware that the 2nd deepest canyon in the world, the Tara Canyon is in Montenegro. We splashed out on a white water rafting trip (bad pun, sorry about that) to get a look at the canyon from the inside. It was beautifully lush and green, completely different but lacking the drama of the bare red rock of the Grand Canyon.

John complete with helmet cam ready to capture the rafting action (and any fit young ladies in bikinis) on film.

Although it wasn't cold I wore a wet suit, bouyancy jacket and if they had offered pink armbands and a rubber ring with a ducks head on I'd have taken those too, such is my confidence level in fast flowing water!

I really didn't need to worry, it was basically a couple of hours of gently paddling down the river with a few whooshy bits. At no point was there any chance of falling out or turning over in fact even I (the biggest coward in the world) would have liked it to be a bit more lively. On reflection the fact that helmets were optional, we were not asked if we had done it before and we were given absolutely no instruction should have given us a clue to the difficulty level.

We will probably get about 3 minutes worth of slightly interesting footage out of the hour and a half that John took with the GoPro!




The canyon from above.











A couple of weeks ago we had heard from Mike and Caroline who are riding an Enfield in India, they had recounted how their bike had fallen over the edge of a cliff! Luckily they were not on it and they were able to get it retrieved, how had that happened we had wondered? Well, probably like many others we nearly found out when taking this photo, the ground under the sidestand was softer than we had thought, luckily it wasn't fully loaded and John caught it just in time.

Next stop Croatia.

Albania - What an interesting place -Day 390 (27,974 miles)

After reading the Lonely Planet blurb on Albania we were intrigued to see it for ourselves. It's a small country with a population of around 3.2 million and was ruled by a Communist regime until 1990.


Very ostentatious fuel station canopy, it looked more like the entrance to a Vegas hotel.

The countryside from the border to Tirane was littered with these concrete bunkers, apparently there were about 700,000 built to defend the country during the 41 year Communist leadership of Enver Hoxha (who sounded like a completely paranoid nutter!)

Whatever day of the week it was we came across many convoys of wedding parties, we were transported back to India by the level of horn honking used to mark the celebrations. In fact the noise was not the only way we were reminded of India.........
During Communist rule there were only 1,000 cars in Albania and the majority of these were assigned to Party officials. So, an awful lot of people have learnt to drive and taken to the roads in the last 11 years and we are convinced they flew in a posse of Indian driving instructors to teach them! Yes, Albania is definitely the European version of India as far as driving standards go. They are pretty bloody awful and as most are driving big German cars pretty fast it feels even more dangerous.

We expected Tirane to be pretty cheap but unbeknown to us it is Lonely Planet's no. 1 city to visit in 2011 so understandably prices are on the rise. However, there are some really good standard hostels and we found one with good parking, a helpful owner and like alot of hostels now it was actually a double room with en-suite rather than a dorm.

Many of the buildings that date back to the Communist period have been painted in a variety of colours to give the city a more cheerful appearance. Not sure that this makes much difference to those that lived through years of an oppressive regime and worked as forced labour on farms or in factories.
Among the grand buildings there are still signs of poverty, beggars, street kids selling cheap pens and others selling small amounts of home grown vegetables or second hand clothes. We didn't find out whether there is any kind of state support for those without work but like many poor places, probably not.



After Enver Hoxha died this pyramid was built as a mausoleum and museum in his honour. Since the fall of Communism the country is split on what should be done with the building, it is now in quite a state, closed to the public and may be pulled down to make way for a new parliament building. It's a shame it can't be renovated and put to good use but I suppose that's easy to say for us as tourists, we didn't suffer under their regime.


We stood in the middle of the road, in the middle of the day and took the photo's above and below, considering how few cars were in Tirane until 1991 the size of the roads is somewhat disproportional, even today it's not busy. Presumably the space was required for processions of Communist strength.







We found the National Art Gallery really interesting it contained work from many different periods including lots of Communist propaganda stuff. Not surprisingly all the subjects looked fit, healthy and well looked after (yeah right).





Still life?

Not sure why a street in Tirana was named after him, perhaps he seemed a slightly nicer bloke than Enver Hoxha.

We took a bus trip out to the small town of Kruje, a quaint little place in the hills that is mainly famous for a castle and museum detailing Albania's ancient history. In particular the 15th century hero Skanderbeg who fought off the Ottomans and joined forces with the Venetians.

To be honest I wish we had stayed in Tirane for another day but the bus ride to Kruje was quite entertaining. We needed to find a Furgon which is basically a badly maintained mini bus in which as many people as possible are crammed (including one on an unsecured plastic stool), we were helped to find the right bus and more importantly told the locals fare to pay by a couple of young lads. They were off to a market to sell a selection of fags, and cheap plastics goods from a small box and once the bus got going one of them started to practise his sales technique on John. They had been helpful and fun so John bought a incredibly cheap and tacky Albanian passport cover (always handy!) Negotiations started at 300 Lek and he ended up paying 70 Lek (about 50p), after a few minutes the young lad obviously felt he had done pretty well as he threw in an equally tacky card holder and a couple of packs of plasters!

Sales transactions completed the same young lad then engaged John in a discussion on the physical attributes of each young lady that got onto the bus (lots of gesturing as he spoke no English and John no Albanian!)

Wish we'd had time to see more.