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Monday 7 June 2010
Our last night in Greece was spent in a beautiful place called Lake Kastoria. Freecamped there for two nights. First night we had a lovely French couple beside us,The second night we shared the spot with a Dutch couple who were a lot of fun. Got a couple of good contacts for future travels.
Finally left for Macedonia. Border crossing was fairly uneventful or though Betsy's export plates (temporary licence plates) cause a bit of grief to the officials. Made our way through to Lake Ohrid. We had quite a bit of trouble finding a place to stay for the night. Eventually parked outside a restaurant right on the Lake front. We went and had a meal ( a big pizza, a Caesar salad and a small bottle of wine all for about $18NZ ). Food and vegetables extremely cheap here.
Next morning we got up early to head for the border into Kosovo. Macedonia is an amazing place scenery wise but we didn't get very good vibes from the place. We kept traveling north where we stopped at a town called Tetovo. Then Mr bloody Garmin GPS worked his magic again. We finished going up this secondary road to the border. The two countries border controls are 50m apart. We finally got out of Macedonia and headed to the Kosovo. We had to drive through this "wash" to disinfect the tyres Cost 5 euro. Then they wouldn't let us cross at this border due to Betsy's plates so we had to turn around and re enter Macedonia 50 metres down the road. They were not going to let us re enter Macedonia cos of the plates. After a little bit of discussion and back patting we had to drive all the way back to Tetovo and go back up the main road to another border crossing . Same crap just in bigger dollops. They wanted an 1100 euro bond to pass thru Kosovo. Next problem , it was Sunday and the banks were closed. So we were parked up at the customs control centre with no place to go. They told us that we could spend the night in the van until the morning when we could sort every thing out. Then miraculously they came up with an "alternative " solution after we had spent about 45 minutes in the van . The boss of the customs would go "guarantor" for the bond as long as we went straight through Kosovo to Montenegro. So after 3 hours and 120 euros (240nz) later we were on our way. They told us we could get to the border in 2 hrs. I explained that Betsy was not exactly a Ferrari so they gave us 3hrs. We got to a town called Pristina where they had decided to reconstruct about 20kms of there motorway. We spent most of the time in either 1st or 2nd gear. The road was nothing short of abysmal. We then went up the transit road to the border. We were so far up into the mountains that we thought we must have taken the wrong road then in the middle of no where was the border. When you arrive at these places at 10.30 at night it's a bit scary especially with their history. Fortunately we had all the right documents so that was not so much of a problem. So now we were in Montenegro. 10 kms down the track and I mean track we came across the Montenegro border crossing officials. Same crap about the plates. By this time we had no Euros left because of our friends at Kosovo. Thes guys wanted 30 euros to enter their country. I told them all we had left was US dollars so we finally settled on $20 US and we were on our way. Finally finished up spending the night in some little village 20kms from the border.
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