Hutchies Beer Adventures plus Guest 08

its been a while since our last update. since athens we caught a bus to albania. you would think it would have been easy to catch a bus to the next county. Wrong! it took us about 3 hours of greek directions to find a travel agency that actually sold bus tickets at all. ultimately worked it all out and booked a ticket on a night bus to Saranda. The bus ride started out ok with plenty of space on the bus to lie down, but sleeping proved to be all but impossible once we hit albania and the bus turned into a rollercoaster negotiating the hairpin turns climbing endless mountain ranges on roads that were so badly potholed or "under construction" that Fi was thrown out of her seat. she says her head felt like a ping pong ball!

Albania
so the bus that was supposed to take us to Saranda took us to Himare (70km north of Saranda). instead of backtracking we decided to keep heading towards Jane and Kate in Montenegro with the plan to stop somewhere along the way if something good came along. We waited at a cafe with some of the locals who had gotten off the bus with us. no-one spoke english, but we managed to make some friends. The albanian people were so friendly they gave us breakfast and bought us coffee and raki. Nothing like coffee and raki to start the day at 8am!! we managed to ask someone to help us find a bus to north to vlora, but once we got there we decided the beaches were too cold to stay so we kept going to Tirane (capital of Albania).

Once there, we stepped out of the bus and into chaos. again it was very difficult to get directions, it felt like we were on amazing race getting clues to take us to the next destination. There are no organised bus timetables and routes. it kind of works that there is a bus somewhere and it will wait til it is full then it will head to the destination. anyways after taking another public bus and walking round we finally found the fergeon (the bus) down a back alley in the middle of nowhere, to take us to skodra, the next piece of the puzzle to get us to montenegro.

We got to skodra at 5.02pm to find that the mini bus across the border (the last one of the day) had left 2 minutes ago. Doh!! a pushy taxi driver convinced us he could chase down the mini bus and get us across the border. we thought we would give it a shot as we had come so far and if we could just get across the border we could see Jane and Kate by sunset. a hellish ride at 100+kmph speeds, overtaking on blind turns, we flagged the mini bus down with a couple of k's to go.

Montenegro
the fergeon dropped us in Ulcinj and a friendly guy on the bus gave us a lift to the next town of Bar, where we caught the next bus to Budva. At the bus station in Budva we met an american backpacker who had taken a photo of a map to get us to the hostel that Jane and Kate were staying. At Hippos hostel we took the girls by surprise with a joyous reunion a couple of days earlier than planned.

reunion in budva drinking Niksicko!

Budva was fantastic, we stayed here 4 nights. enjoying the beaches, the paddleboats equipped with waterslides and chilling out at the hostel. One day we hired a car and toured the surrounding area seeing amazing fjords and surviving Kates excellent driving for the first time on the wrong side of the road in a manual car. On one lane roads being overtaken by busses. think great ocean road but one lane, having to move off the road into the trees and allowing the bus to barley brush by.

the view from a hill on the road trip

We bought the local specialties Prsut (proschuito), Sir (cheese) and Vino (wine). they claim its the best proschuito in the world and i would have to agree. i have never eaten so much smoked meat. we managed to integrate it to almost every meal for the following week!

the search for prsut

we also scaled the fortress in Kotor which has a beautiful old town.

above kotor

Croatia
we spent a couple of days in Dubrovnik exploring the old town then we headed to split to get on our 7 day cruise. here we were met by surprise by the international man of mystery himself - Tony Beecroft. We toured the south islands of Croatia, the highlight being Hvar with its beautiful city and nightlife. After a hard week of partying and seasickness for Fi we have rested up after watching the eurovision last night and are debating our method of transport to head north to Slovenia.

a cool bar outside the walls of the old town

walking the walls of the old town