Day 45 - 4/9/11 - Sunday- Dubrovnik- Kotor-Budva- Dubrovnik

In Australia, you don't often recall the phrase I'm just going to another country the day. In fact, i don't think I have ever known of anyone that has done it. In the territory that is the former federation of Yugoslavia now stand 8 separate countries- Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovinia, Slovenia, Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Kosovo. The last, Kosovo, is however not recognised by Serbia, who claim it remains a part of Serbia.

For Cin and I, this represented too good an opportunity to pass up a visit to another country, and given Dubrovnik's location in the south of Croatia, a day trip to Montenegro was our plan. It would help in achieving my silly goal of visiting 100 different countries, and it is possible we will visit 6 different countries in these 2 weeks.

We had planned to take the public bus to Montenegro and stay the night, however the day trip package offers seemed well organised and preferable, hence we cancelled our public bus tickets, for a reasonable 10% cancellation fee. Instead a custom made tourist tour, stopping at all of the worthwile places, without having to stay or research where to go.

It is a strange situation when you are in a minibus in Croatia, and the 5 other passengers are all South American. Cinthia had found 2 other Brazilian boys (that didn't know each other) and there were 2 Argentinian girls. One of the girls did not speak much English, so the tour leader explained the tour to her in Italian (given her Italian was better than his Spanish). Given Cinthia and the Brazilian boys were speaking Portugese, the Argentinian girls speaking Spanish to each other, and the tour leader generally English to the group, there was often a cross fire of four different languages bouncing off the walls of the bus.

The minibus was more comfortable than a larger bus, especially on coastal sections, however the roads deteriorated as we headed toward the Montenegro borrder. Our guide explained this was due to the fact that a lot of tanks went across this road during the war. During the war Montenegro sided with Serbia, and indeed remained a joined country with Serbia until 2006, when the world's scorn of Serbia became too much and it finally voted for independence.

The day trip out was lovely scenery, as we ventured around the bay of Kotor. A clean and clear bay that Melbourne would die for, so clean that there is a lot of oyster farming in the bay. We stopped at 2 places, Kotor, and Budva.

Budva

Budva

Budva



Budva


Both had small old towns, however Budva also had a beach, which was almost sandy. We had a nice lunch at Budva, and then took an afternoon swim. On the return trip we took the car ferry across the bay, and whilst it only took 10 minutes, it saved us close to an hour. All in all, it was a lovely trip, and allowed us to experience a little more of the region, its people, history, and landscapes. It also allowed Cinthia to add to her increasingly ridiculous fridge magnet collection, which for some reason, I agreed to at the start of the trip.



Kotor




Kotor