The Full Montenegro

Until I came to Montenegro last week, I really had no mental picture of the place or the people. Or why they would call their country with a Spanish name…

Having read some terrible reviews on Google of the border crossings, we approached the border, exiting Croatia and the EU, with some trepidation. We hid the dog under a bag as she hadn’t been to a vet for her maybe/maybe-not necessary bill-of-health certificate and joined the queue of cars ready to turned back should something be amiss…

We handed over the passports, they stamped (the stone-faced guard refused to stamp the cuddy toy “Panda Jonathan’s” homemade passport – only in Spain or Ireland has he had any luck) but waved us through without incident.

We passed into the Bay of Kotor and found that roaming would cost us 1 cent per kilobyte. Sounds reasonable…until you calculate that 1 gigabyte comes out at €10 000. Oh dear. So, no maps, paper or digital….we pushed ignorantly onward and found a petrol station with delightfully priced diesel and data sim cards. Phew.

Our desired direction was towards the Durmitor National Park, a long drive, so we stopped near Nicsic at a little campsite that we found on Google called the “Mexicana”. There was nothing at all Mexican about the place except a giant Speedy Gonzalez sprayed on the wall, but we received some amazing hospitality in what was not really campsite, but the back garden of Alexander, an unusually friendly fellow who instantly started plying us with gifts from his garden and some local beer to drink at the side of the river, full of trout, that flowed by the lawn.

There were no other campers, and we sat down while our kids ran off to play with some neighbours at the next house (Alexander’s brother’s house.)

Aran gave Alexander, our host, one of his graffiti stickers which prompted him to say that he used to love doing graffiti and that he was responsible for the Speedy Gonzalez and that he had a load of spray paint that Aran could use to do some graffiti pieces. I didn’t hear this conversation, so was quite surprised to walk around to the front of Alexander’s house to find Aran on a ladder starting a new piece as he had run out of space on the lower section having done the biggest piece of his life!

Zev, meanwhile, was playing football with a little girl in a full Miami Messi strip who was delighted, as her sister only liked dancing and drawing and rarely had any footballing company.

The next morning when we were leaving, I went to pay our host the €20 euros plus beers etc, and he said that he had had such fun, that it was all free. In the end I insisted and he took the €20, but wouldn’t take any payment for the beers and snacks. Surely not all Montenegrins could be this friendly and hospitable, could they?

Onwards towards Durmitor National Park. Our poor car dragged the long caravan up long tortuous mountain roads without incident and then we descended into lovely grasslands dotted with Katums (little pointy sheds) and surrounded by dramatic peaks.

We found a campsite, really a field next to restaurant, very cheap and basic, but with hot showers, great views and lots of friendly animals. The kids loved all the dogs and donkeys etc, and Daisy integrated into the dog pack, which she has never done ever before. That night she wanted to sleep in their shed instead of in the caravan.

We then set about exploring the National Park, on mountain bikes, on foot to a high peak and then on white-water rafts.

We are still in the same place, so this post isn’t quite the full Montenegro after all, it’s now raining very heavily. A great opportunity to catch up on schoolwork, blogging and trying to fix leaks in the caravan!!!