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Sunday was my last day in Montenegro - after three nights in that surprisingly engaging country, I would be catching an overnight bus to Mostar (Bosnia) that night. On Saturday Niki (NZ) and I headed up to Mount Lovcin, the highest point on Montenegro to get a beautiful panorama of the country - apparently you can see all the way to Italy on a clear day (which, unfortunately for us, it wasn´t). There´s not much I can really tell you about our trip except that it was very beautiful - my photos will probably say it all anyway!
I had been sharing my room at the Hippo Hostel in Budva with all boys (lucky me) - Alex from California, and four lads from England who were traveling around Europe on motorbikes. I have never laughed so much in my life as when I was with those boys. For example...
Meet Craig, a tall, lanky fellow with long scraggly hair who has a tendency to be a bit clumsy (he has dropped/fallen off his bike about four times in the last two weeks). He came into our room, introduced himself to me, and we got talking.
Craig - Everyone picks on me, you know? I´m always the butt of everyone´s jokes!
Hayley - Really? Why´s that?
Craig - I don´t know, actually.
(Craig pulls out a beanie and puts it on - it is rainbow coloured thick wool and has tufts of wool sticking out of the top so that it makes his head look like the offspring of a triceratops and rooster).
Craig - Just you wait, I bet they´re going to make fun of my hat!
Hayley - (trying not to giggle) Why would they do that?
Craig (getting up) - I have no idea!
Hayley - Is that a hole in your pants?
Craig - Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Oh well!
(The ´hole´ in his pants started at his crotch, and ended about halfway down his thigh...)
I was in my room reading my book when I heard the English lads having some drinks down in the garden, talking to the other Australian girl in the hostel - oh my goodness.... Usually it´s American travelers I feel I need to to dis-associate with sometimes, but it was all I could do to stop myself walking downstairs and deny deny deny our Australian association! According to this girl, it is the most common thing for families living in Australian metro areas to have five car garages in their backyards ´Cause we have so much space in Australia, we can afford to´ (I mean, I do, don´t you?!). She also proceeded to tell everyone that the hostel was what ´we in Australia´ call a shack - a house that you usually have as a holiday home and is ´incredibly dated´, with shagpile carpet, green laminate counter tops and peeling wallpaper. And this is while the owners of the hostel were within earshot! The water in towns of Australia is also apparently turned off between the hours of 11pm and 6am, because of water restrictions, and flats are only owned by old people, because ´Australian old people can´t handle having too much room, too much to look after, you know?´. Oh my goodness.
You know when you start laughing, and funny things keep happening so that you just keep laughing, and in the end you have no idea why you were actually laughing in the first place, or why you just laughed at that joke just then? It´s like you get stuck in this hilarious cycle that makes your abdominals ache with pleasure and your throat hoarse. Even just thinking about my conversations with Craig, and these other English lads makes me start laughing. They were seriously some of the funniest boys I have ever met (and their English accents just made it all that much funnier). We´d all gone to bed, but were all still awake at 2am crying with laughter. Most of it involved picking on Craig (who was watching a movie at the time, bless him). I can´t even start to tell you what exactly we were talking and laughing about, because I can´t even remember!
This was their favourite joke:
A man walks into a bar called ´The Black Swan´ and notices an actual black swan sitting at the bar drinking a pint. The man walks up to the swan and says ¨Wow! So they named this pub after you, did they?¨. The swan looks up at him and says, ¨Named it what? Garry?¨.
I hope that gives you a bit of an idea of their humour...
I felt a bit like I was at a school camp though, because periodically we would get a knock on the door telling us to be quiet, or we would get roused at by hostel staff for keeping everyone up. Oops!
The next morning I headed into Budva´s old town for a quick bout of sight seeing before an eventful afternoon at the beach. I love Budva´s old town! It is similar to most old towns along the Adriatic coast (Dubrovnik, Hvar, Zadar, etc), minus the tourists! And you´d all know by now just how much I hate tour groups... So, heaven! While there weren´t actually many attractions as such to visit, it was just so pleasant wandering around and not knocking the glasses off groups of geriatrics at every turn. I had probably the best meal on my entire trip in Budva´s old town - not in terms of ambiance (ala vegetarian restaurant in Dubrovnik) or abundance of food (ala buffet in Barcelona...), but best tasting food ever. Delicious. Vegetarian lasagna (even better than the one I cook at home, shock!), salad and sundried tomato toast. Drool...
That afternoon saw the beginning of our pirate adventure - arrrrrgh! That´s right, me harties, we sailed and we plundered, and we sang jolly pirate tunes as we set sail to Sam Island!
...In other worlds, we hired a paddle boat and headed out to the private island just out from Budva and discovered something very, very interesting...
We had hired one of those manual foot paddle boats (blue, to act as ocean camouflage on our pirate adventure) from a local on the beach with the intention of exploring the island just off Budva´s main beach. However, we soon learned that the island was privately owned and heavily guarded, meaning that once we got over there we wouldn´t be able to actually set foot on the island... or would we?! It took us about 45 minutes of hardkore foot peddling to get over to the island - I started to have real sympathy for The Flintstones after about 20 minutes! As we got closer to the island we could see that there was a lot of construction going on for what seemed to be a resort - lucky b******s! Heading around the right hand side of the island, we discovered four caves all in a row, and decided we would park our ´pirate ship Jolly Roger´ in there just for the hell of it - all this room on the island and they can´t even afford to have a five boat cave-garage like in Australia! HA!
At the back of the island we came across what looked like a deserted beach party - there was a bar/hut building, beach lounges, umbrellas that had blown into the water, and lots of other abandoned things. This is where our pirate-ness came into play... After parking our pirate ship on the beach, the boys ventured into the bar to explore while I stood guard by our pirate ship for other pirates/island security. ´X´ marks the spot! The boys pillaged and rummaged, and found a bounty of drinks for us to take back to the hostel! Aren´t we good pirates (which in effect means we´re naughty, right?)? We ended up with a couple cans of beer, some Coke, wine, and a bottle of vodka! Totally worth the two Euro we each paid to hire the boat!
After returning to the hostel with our loot, we had a quick dinner before I had to catch my overnight bus to Mostar, Bosnia. Sam then offered to give me a ride to the bus station on his motorbike! Ahhhhhh!!! Me and my turtle home and all, clinging to the back of the motorbike squealing at every corner for him to slow down!
So that was Montenegro! I really didn´t know what to think of it in the beginning - it looked so forgotten and run down, and everything looked half finished. But I leave wishing I had more time to explore the country. I know that when I return in a few years it will probably be a vastly different, over-run with tourists like Croatia. But I´m very glad I got to see the real Montenegro first, even if it was only half complete.
Talk to you soon!
Love Hayley x
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