Time to move again, now into Montenegro. I feel I should admit that until a couple of weeks ago I wouldn't have been able to pin this country a map. By now Federica was feeling better, but now both of us have caught a cold.
Today's drive is probably the pretties yet. We cross that lands that seem so wild we feel unwelcome. Then we follow the giant canyon made by the Tara river for an hour, until we are directed up the tiniest, steepest road up into the mountains. Once we leave the canyon we feel we entered another planet: there are vast planes around us, with sparse grass as the only vegetation and mountains all around us. The inhabitants are cows, sheep and shepherds. We encounter only a handful of other cars over the next hour, but for each one we need to come to a full stop to let each other pass.
We reach Žabljak, which we expected to be a quiet mountain village but in reality is an up-and-coming skiing town. We drive past it a bit to camp wild at the head of a trail we want to do the next morning. We stay right next to an abandoned ski lift. As we're at 1500 meters above sea level, the night proves very cold. We sleep in all our clothes under 3 blankets. We sleep in a lot, giving our bodies a chance to recover. The hike afterwards is just what we need, easy-going and very quiet. We treat ourselves to a lunch in a restaurant in town afterwards.
At the restaurant's WiFi we see bad weather coming this night and the next day, so we change our plan for the coming days to head south instead, back towards the coast. We start driving and plan to camp free this night, but as the rain hits we get cold feet and instead turn around, heading back to a real campsite we'd just passed. We spend the night amidst the horses kept on the site, listening to the wind and rain pelting the van. We wake up to a surprise: we're surrounded by snow! We should have studies the weather report better. We have breakfast with our down jackets on, it's about 0°C outside and 8°C inside the van (remember, we have no heating). I'm not sure if this is because we did a good job insulating our van or if we should have done a better job. The second surprise comes when we try to depart: we get stuck in the mud... There is no other guests and no sign of our campsite host. Suppressing a feeling of panic we sacrifice our doormat and a horse blanket I found nearby under the wheels and after about 30 minutes of struggling we get free. Our fingers are frozen stiff and we have mud stains all over. We drive a bit (very carefully) to get down and escape the cold. We warm up with a coffee in a bar. The next issue: we had found 3 ticks on us the night before, we think they have been there for as much as 4 days. Following our Dutch doctor's advice we seek out a doctor, fortunately there is something of a clinic in the town we stopped in. Only inside it looks more like a Sovjet torture site. With the doctors not speaking English, we manage to convey our worries using their Google Translate. In the end I receive a shot against Tetanus and we both get antibiotics for the coming days. That's the second for Federica in less than 2 weeks.
As if today wasn't eventful enough yet, by now police have blocked the road that we needed out of town. They can't (or won't) help us with a detour, so we improvise ourselves and drive the other way. We're exhausted by the time we passed through the capital (Podgorica) and hit our farm stay. But, here is hot shower, WiFi and even a laundry machine.
We take the morning off by sleeping in, enjoying a coffee and using the WiFi to call parents and update this blog (I was already a week and half behind).
