So after leaving Dubrovnik, we rode for a day and ended up in a town called Herceg Novi. This was a typical beach town with lots of tourists and crowded beaches. We stayed a night here and then headed north inland, into the highlands.
So we bought a map of Montenegro and decided we´d ride north through the mountains. There was a yellow line on the map that was supposed to represent a ¨primary¨road. It started off well, being a nice sealed bitumen windy road with little traffic, except for big garbage trucks. The road then turned to bitumen interrupted by intermittent gravel patches, and eventually after about 4 hours of climbing we got to what must have been the top - a massive rubbish dump complete with fire and burning rubber smoke. Yum.
After we pushed our bikes through the home of the rubbish men we found the road became gravel, and then the gravel stones became bigger and bigger until each rock was the size of a fist. Not good for touring bikes with 30kg of gear on the back with no suspension and slicks. So push we did.
This was some of the stuff we had to push for, for 3 hours.
It was depressing pushing our bikes downhill. Really depressing. And we really weren´t sure where the hell we were. Where was the primary road that was marked on the map? It seemed this was it. We followed it for a few hours, not sure whether we should turn back or not, but eventually we hit bitumen and were relieved to finally get back on our saddles.
We were still lost however, and what made it even spookier was that there was absolutely no-one around. It was deserted. There were loads of old farm houses that looked like they´d been bombed. It was eerie.
Eventually we found a couple of boys who couldn´t speak much english, but rang their parents who could and we talked to them on their mobile phones and got some vague directions.
We ended up camping near a small village called Grahovo, where the lovely lady at the grocery store gave us directions to a lake we could camp at for free! We were stoked. It was a perfect end to an epic day... We´d been riding since 6am and set up camp at around 6pm.
The beautiful lake we camped at, near Grahovo.
The next day we rode to the town of Niksic, which was pretty dusty and boring, so no need to say anymore except that we didn´t get lost this time!
Then we headed north towards the town of Zabljak, which apparently had loads of outdoor stuff to do like mountain biking, rafting, hiking, skiing (when in winter) etc, and was also home to the Tara Gorge. This was a spectacular part of the ride, with quiet roads (some unfortunately riddled with potholes) and magnificent views.
On the road to Zabljak.
The road to Zabljak was uphill. And lots of it. It nearly broke us, as we thought we´d be riding up to a plateau and then it´d be mostly flat, but it certainly wasn´t the case. I don´t know how high we climbed, but we spent a good part of 10 hours riding uphill of our 12 hour day. Beautiful, but buggering.
We spent 3 nights in Zabljak, I think, just resting and chilling out. We did some exploring of the area too and managed to get ourselves lost a couple of times. We hiked to a lookout of the Tara Gorge, which was beautiful, and met a couple of local Montenegran fellas who were visiting Zabljak for the weekend. They gave us some good insights into the political situation there.
We also took our bikes around the Black Lake, which ended up being a fun easy mountain bike plus a bit of hike-a-bike up the stairs, but it was certainly a lot of fun.
Leaving Zabljak was for once mostly downhill, and we really enjoyed it! Here´s a picture of the Tara Gorge from the bottom of the descent. The colour of the water was just unbelievably beautiful. We´ll have to come back one day to paddle it.
The beautiful Tara Gorge.
That was the most exciting part of Montenegro over. I think we rode along for another day or so and then caught a train into Serbia.
No comments:
Post a Comment