ISTRIA

Since the weather is still overcast (and the coastal road very winding, and slow going), we decided to take the freeway (at 130km/h) inland, which has taken us to top of Croatia … a region known as Istria, which until 1947 was part of Italy … and it really feels more Italian that Balkan.
In the next few days, we’ll decide where to go next … with Vanice being on top of my list.

MARINA

Along the way (in a town called Marina, near one of Croatia’s premier boat clubs), we stayed with this lovely family, which fed us with their home made delicacies (and even packed some home-made biscuits for the road).

END OF SUMMER

Unfortunately for us, it feels like that summer has come to an end …. in the last few days its been overcast, and struggling to break into the 20s…. and speaking to some locals … there is unanimous agreement that the season has come to an end.
We are little disappointed, and have decided to head up the coast, hopefully warming up as we head inland.

KORCULA

Little further up the coast, we caught a car-ferry (that Pamela asleep on it) onto Korcula, one of Croatia’s islands …. a wine making region, dotted with rocky beaches, and charming little villages.

DUBROVNIK

Probably one of the most beautiful old town quarters I have ever seen …. surrounded by high protective walls, one feels like they are stepping back in time …. An absolutely amazing place.

MONTENEGRO

Thank god for some civilization …. And we settled into Petrovac for the night … a nice little seaside town on the Adriatic Sea.
Once again, finding accommodation was easy … just rock up at the bus station, parked the car, and within seconds little ladies are approaching offering rooms … and just in time, cause within an hour of us getting in, the skies opened up, and it rained heavily for the rest of the night (hence no photos).
We figured that most of the Adriatic coast had fairly similar scenery and atmosphere, and so we decided to move on north up the coast into Croatia.

THROUGH ALBANIA

Lets just say that southern Albania is beautiful rugged mountains, with winding goat-tracks roads, no driving manners (licensees were given away as some mobile-phone promotion), top speed is 50km/h (at best), and where the roads are actually half-decent, there’s cops all over the place waiting to pull some unsuspecting foreigner over for more roadway sodomy …. So a 120km drive to the capital (Tirana) took over 3 hours.
The capital itself is an absolute mess, with even worse roads, crazy traffic with no sense of rules … and lets not forget that I have seen places like Cambodia …. and Tirana is worse !!!! … so it didn’t take much for us to decide to get the hell out of Albania, and keep on going to Montenegro … and once again it was a case of “I know that there is a border here somewhere …. But f&*k knows how to get there” … and after ending up in a paddock full of goats and cows, it took us over an hour to find it.
Albania has just hit the top of my Countries to NEVER visit Again List!!

THERE IS A COUNTRY AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE

You would think that finding a whole country would be fairly easy, especially when you’re 10 km from its border ….. well not if you are trying to enter Albania … the roads are no more than dirt tracks, and we drove down three different ones, before actually hitting the border …. (Forget the idea of sign-posts)

OHRID

Within 10 seconds of parking in Ohrid, our car was swamped with people (approx 20 or so) offering us apartment accommodation, for 10 Euro per night (A$17, which is more like what we expected, with washing machine and all) … so we decided to rest, relax, and stay for few nights …. With Pamela giving the machine a thorough workout … 5 loads in all.
Ohrid itself is charming and relaxed, and has no succumbed to soullessness that often comes with tourism … quite a highlight ….and we were going to write off Macedonia all together, so there’s a lesson to be learned.
For the next few weeks, we are definitely going to try and bypass the big cities !!!

SERBIAN SODOMY

The border guards don’t call the area Serbia, but rather Kosovo … and during transit they informed us that we need to buy car insurance for Kosovo for 50 Euro … apparently EU insurance, which we have with the car (known as the Green Card, after its colour) doesn’t apply to Kosovo.
I told him that I don’t want to go to Kosovo (thinking it was for a city), and that’s where it all started … and since all we wanted to do was travel 100km or so through the country (into Montinegro), we basically told him that we didn’t want to pay … and so we were pointed back towards Macedonian …. So its back into Macedonia (again)....
There is no way we were going to pay 43 Euro for dorm accommodation, and so after backtracking to Skopje, we headed south to Ohrid (from what we heard, a key tourist town on a Lake)….and then onto Albania …. another backwards country, which I was preferring to by-pass altogether … so stay tuned for more Border Sodomy

INTO MACEDONIA

We headed for the capital (Skopje), along highways which were excellent, surprisingly, and allowed us to travel at 120km/h … with the only issue being that they had toll-booths every 20km or so, which slowed everything right down (and makes accelerating to cruising speed a bit of waste of time) … this is what they call a user-pays-system.
Once in Skopje, we found a Hostel, which to our surprise wanted 43 Euro (about A$70) for dorm accommodation … which is just ridiculous for this part of the world (we paid A$50 in Afitos for a whole apartment), and since we were only few kms from the Serbian border, we decided to write-off Macedonia as a bit of a non-event, and head on …. Despite the country being quite spectacularly picturesque along the way to the capital, Skopje itself is just another busy (former Soviet block) city … with really not much to see (in our opinion).

AFITOS

Despite half of Kessandra being alight, life in Afitos continued as if nothing was happening … Pamela discovered black & white setting on the camera …. the effect quite fitting for the feel of the place.

GREECE ON FIRE

Severe bush-fires ignited on the southern side of Kessandra (approx 10km from where we stayed).. as well as numerous other locations (mainly southern Greece) …. All other the TV news … so the next day we drove around to have a look ….and although the fires claimed numerous house and cars, it didn’t look as bad as the television footage showed … we spent good part of the day on the beach watching the fire planes and helicopters reloading water from the sea, only meters from where we were swimming.

OUT OF PETROL

Northern Greek highways are excellent …. So good that they don’t actually have any petrol stations on them … so you actually have to exit to some random village which name you cant decipher (with no guarantee that they have a station) …. And well lets just say we ran out of petrol in the middle of nowhere … (the fuel gauge had been playing up, but for 50km or so, I knew we needed juice).
FYI … this is the third time this happened, but the last two we were going up hills, and we were lucky enough to do a u turn, and coasted down to the Servo (one of them being a 6km downhill sprint).
This time I sent Pamela (still in her bikini top) to the nearby houses, where one of the locals agreed to drive me to the nearest servo, 20kms away (I don’t know what she had to do to get that, but she was gone a while …and to my amazement, he declined any hint of me giving him petrol money)

We have done some serious kms, and decided to stop in a small sea side village of Afitos, on the Kessandra peninsular.

INTO GREECE

Greek immigration is one of the slackest I have ever come across …. They didn’t even look at the passports …. Just looked at the Polish plates (EU), and waved us through …. Big contrast from Turkey, where we just passed through 4 checkpoints, each scrutinizing the passports.

LEAVING TURKEY

We decided to start making some serious km over next few days, so that we can have time up our sleeve in Croatia.
Upon leaving Turkey, custom instructed us to unload all items from the car, so it could be x-rayed …. (must be the Polish plates we’re on, or the fact that I was wearing only shorts (no top), and Pamela, shorts with her bikini top …. we looked like a couple of surfies, and so the hash must have been hidden somewhere!!)

MARMARIS

Stopped in Marmaris, a small sea side village, which has become a key destination for the British package holidays tourist …. Where all prices are quoted in Pounds … which makes it very expensive (about double than everywhere else in Turkey) .
Pamela got food poisoning from a Salami Pizza (how can you f&*ck a pizza up???) from the night we arrived (even though it was one of the most expensive meals we had throughout the whole trip), and so we stayed a couple of days while she recovered.

OLYMPUS

We are now slowly heading back to Poland … and decided to stop for a few days in Olympus, a small beach on the Mediterranean Coast, surrounded by forest with scattered 2000 year old ruins.
The road to the beach is lined with tree house hostels … and full of hippies …. And it makes an interesting mix.

PAMUKKALE

Stopped in Pamukkale …. A small village at the base of giant calcium travertines, surrounded by ancient ruins … most of them are dried up … and once again, photos don’t do the site justice.
Tourists we not allowed into some areas ... but that did not stop some random dog going in for a drink.