Week 7: Travel friends and always ascend!
Wow, what a week. I’ve gone well and truly off script but it has paid off so far. I’m writing now, (a day late I know and I’m sorry) from Zabljak in Montenegro. A tiny mountain town where night time temperatures approach zero. An incredible place, but first let’s go back.
When I left off I was in Mostar in Bosnia, loving my time there in an amazing hostel. I spent Monday and Tuesday there. Monday it rained for a lot of the day but I found a lovely rock shelf in view of the old bridge as writing shelter, and was even visited by two 9 year old Bosnian kids who wanted to smoke weed among other things. Prior to that writing session I also took the bold step of getting a Bosnian haircut. Below you can see the before and after photos.
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I had my final meal at my favourite restaurant in Mostar and spent the evening at the hostel chatting with new arrivals and even venturing out to find a few who’d gotten lost on their way. Hostel Madjas became home to me incredibly quickly and if you are ever in the Balkans make time to go to Mostar, stay here, and, as I learned on the morrow, take Bada’s crazy tour.
We left the hostel at 945 Tuesday morning and were taken on a whirlwind adventure for the next 15 hours.
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| The Best Tour Guide Ever |
We visited many of the same places as my waterfall day but they were brought to life with new magic by our crazy and incredible guide. We also visited a town made famous by 6 teenagers who were of in the woods in the 1980’s and claimed to see the Virgin Mary. It is now the third largest catholic pilgrimage sight in the world, and in 20 odd years what had been just a few country houses became a bustling tourism town full of souvenir shops, and 4 star hotels. It serves as the inspiration for a short story I’m planning to write at some point over the next few months.
The tour was fantastic in so many different ways. Making friends who I ended up travelling to Kotor with, learning about the war and Bada’s incredibly moving and hard to believe stories from war time (and the different ways in which the war is still going on.) and also just for natural scenery and history. The waterfall was amazing again, and this time I explored from one end to the other, climbing, ducking under streams, and somehow still surviving. I was having so much fun that even at our 3 pm lunch I opted to skip it and go explore the top of the falls on the other side. I hiked up them with some success and this time managed to get right to the edge, with my shoes dry, of course my last jump on the way back, onto a 45 degree angle tree backfired and my shoes were rendered soaked and useless for the better part of the next three days, but hey I caught myself before tumbling over the falls, so I’m putting that one in the win column.
We rolled back into the hostel at 1:30 am and were greeted with a birthday cake as one of our French tour mates was celebrating. Honestly I couldn’t think of a better way to do it.
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| Me halfway through the tour. |
The nightmare came Wednesday morning waking up in time for a 7 am bus to Kotor. Luckily two fellow tour mates were also catching it. We awoke to pissing rain and headed to the bus station groggy and tired, but early enough to buy tickets. Turns out we were the lucky ones, we got to the bus station and two minutes later the skies truly opened in a torrential pour. A few other hostel guests arrived at 645 for a 7 am bus to split, soaked to the bone. It felt bad to laugh at them, but you kind of had to.
The bus ride passed well because of my Aussie and fellow Canadian friend, though the 5 borders and two blank passport pages ruined was a bit annoying. The scenery from the bus was insane along the coast, and made me excited to get into Montenegro. The entire bay is insane, surrounded by mountains and massive but full of curves like a bunch of massive mountain lakes.
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| View of Kotor Bay |
We found our hostel together without issue in a delightful 13thcentury house in the center of a true old town. The next day we all embarked on a tour of Montenegro in which we ascended to the top of black mountain, in among the clouds themselves, then onto a monastery where you can find the hand of John the Baptist and a piece of the very cross Jesus was crucified on. The skies had opened during our lunch but otherwise the weather was not too bad as we headed on to Budva and an insane island where you can drop 150,000 dollars for the nicest room. That’s almost twice my budget for two years of travel.
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| In the clouds |
Still the highlight of the tour came from the tour guide who started telling us some jokes. He started by explaining about the differences between Serbia and Montenegro the main one being how much Montenegrins respect their women, so much so that they never say mother fucker instead using father fucker. (our guide proceeded to say motherfucker about 10 times in the next half hour) But the way you know ypu’ve left Montenegro and gone into Serbia, is when you hear the first mother fucker dropped.
Our last stop at Budva was brief but nice, with stunning views of the sea and we all headed back to the hostel very satisfied and happy to go to bed. The next two days were filled with intermittent rain but I managed to enjoy myself, hiking out along the coast of the bay and finding places to sit and write. They were calmer days and I watched a very enjoyable yet odd movie on Friday evening: Safety not Guaranteed. I highly recommend it though it is more than a little corny.
On Saturday I decided to take a bus to Zabljak which is a small town up in the mountains in the north east of this amazing country. As it turned out one of the Australian guys from our Montenegro tour was headed there too and we embarked on an incredible bus ride through the mountains together and an even more incredible hike the next day.
What struck me first was how amazingly different this place was from Kotor. It’s only about 150 km away bt it’s a different world, for one, it’s cold and at night goes down to about 0. It’s impossible to explain how nice it is to sleep under a blanket again.
We walked up into the mountains and into Durmitor national park the next morning where we hiked to several lakes (Known as the eyes of the mountains) It was a lovely day and I sat down at the second lake and did some writing while he continued on to a third lake. Randomly we met up on the way out of the park and headed home for some Pizza and heart breaking Vikings football.
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| The Black lake in Durmitor. |
Today I hiked back up into the park alone, found my way on to an islet, and spent the day sitting and writing completely alone. I could see a few hikers across the lake from time to time but otherwise it was perfect nature, silent and serene and I pounded out the last few scenes prior to the climax of the book.
My plan had been to head back to Kotor for a night and then on to split finally getting back to some of the places I’d been planning to see, but my lovely hosts at hostel Hikers Den (another incredible hostel that I highly recommend.) convinced me to go to Sarajevo instead and then on to split. I can’t seem to get back on to the planned route but I love it, because my adventures off it have been incredible.
I make no plans past the next day, only knowing that come October 11th I need to be in Thessaloniki for a flight to Crete. Although the more I explore the Balkans the more I think it might be better to skip some Greek islands and gradually work my way to turkey. Kosovo, Serbia and Romania are all beckoning Slovenia too. In the end no one knows what I’ll do, and that is the true freedom of travelling. It is euphoric, addictive and I love it. Hooray for life.
All the best,
Luke.
Song of the Week 7: Letting Go by Lupe Fiasco Feat Sarah Green.
Just an incredible rap song and Lupe is someone I’m getting right back into. So creative, clever and somewhat deep for a rapper too.
