17. Montenegro, Albania and North Macedonia - heatwave!

Day 91, July 13th.  Uvak canyon, Serbia – Biograd Lake National Park, Montenegro, 30 - 41C, sunny

It takes us ten minutes to get stamped out of Serbia and stamped into Montenegro.  Immediately, we’re on a brand-new road, climbing steeply, then following a cliff-edge road which hugs the contours, high above the spectacular, sheer, heavily forested Ibar gorge.  Already, Montenegro feels encouraging.

Our intended target tonight is the Biograd Lake – only 50km from the border as the crow flies, but over 100km by road, and two hours’ drive away.  We reach the lake – nestled in a high, forested valley at 1,100m above sea level, accessed via a series of tight hairpin bends – late in the afternoon.  It’s heaving with locals; we can barely find a spot to park the car. 

It’s not what we were expecting: we’d naively assumed that being this remote, we’d have the place to ourselves.  No matter.  Nina enquires at the tourist information bureau; it transpires we can drive higher still, to a quieter and more remote camping spot.  “How much further?”  “It’s about six kilometres” says the helpful attendant.  “How long does it take to get there?”  “About one hour if driving, maybe two hours if walking.”

This feels like a long time – and it’s getting late and we’re all a little hungry – but we soon find out why.  The track up to the campsite is rocky and heavily rutted – only wide enough for a single vehicle (we have to wait ten minutes whilst a Montenegrin driver reverses back for us at one early stage), and very steep.  We climb, slowly and carefully, through over a dozen switchbacks, each one so tight and steep that we have to stop and reverse to complete the turn.  Luckily, we don’t meet anyone else coming down.

Nina, sensibly, doesn’t tell me how many turns lie ahead.  Sure enough, nearly an hour later, and having climbed a further 500 metres, we’re debouched on to the serene, grassy valley at 1,600 metres.  We see the ‘Camp Janketic’ ahead of us on the track – a collection of little wooden huts with green rooves, plus a very welcome looking mountain canteen. 

We’re spotted and waved in by the cheerful, welcoming smile of Dijana, the daughter of the family who’ve owned and run this campsite for the past twenty years.

Sure enough, it is quieter here, much quieter.  Only 4x4’s and hikers can reach the place; the only other guests tonight are four Dutch overlanders in a pair of Land Cruisers (much to Laurie’s delight – he’s always thrilled when we manage to escape the motor homes) and a few hikers, staying in the mountain huts.

We’re too tired to cook and we don’t have a lot of food anyway: it’s Sunday and we’ve yet to pass a single open shop in Montenegro, to stock up on supplies.  Dijana informs us they have fresh trout (from their own stock kept live next to the restaurant) for supper; if we order now we can eat at 7pm with the other guests.  We don’t need asking twice. 

They even have a stock of beer and soft drinks, kept cool in a stone tank, perpetually filled with glacial stream water as it gushes out of the mountain – heaven.

We set up camp and make friends with the Dutchies.  Why is it always the Dutch?  We’ve seen so many of them overlanding or in motorhomes, we wonder if there’s actually anyone left in Holland.  So much more adventurous than the English. 

After supper (superb grilled trout), we share beer and stories with the Dutch before collapsing into bed, relishing the cool mountain air and the chances to snuggle up under our duvets and sleeping bags for once.

Day 92, July 14th.  Camp Janketic, Biograd Lake National Park, Montenegro, 16 - 29C, sunny

Refreshed, we’ve already decided to spend two nights here.  This presents a slight logistical problem, inasmuch as Dijana won’t accept cards and we’ve less than 100 euros in cash (courtesy of no euro-dispensing ATMs throughout Bosnia and Serbia). Luckily this problem is resolved via a cash-for-bank transfer with our new Dutch friends, enabling us to stay here – and eat – for another night.

We laze the day away.  Several times during the day, we walk the ten minutes’ or so up to the Bendovac viewpoint to admire the staggering views of Montenegro’s section of the Dinaric Alps: ridges of forested alps and grassy high plateaus in the foreground, steeper, greyer, rockier peaks in the distance, and the aquamarine waters of Lake Biograd, 500 metres below us and looking rather small now, nestled in its own forested valley.

During the day, Laurie rightly calls time on travelling for a while and insists we stop somewhere for another proper break.  He’s right: we’ve covered a huge distance – and done over 30 nights of camping – since our last mini-break in Tunisia.  Plus, the entire Balkan region is currently suffering from a heatwave, so it’s too hot to actually do anything anyway.

Shaded by the camp’s restaurant in the afternoon sun, we research places by the coast in Montenegro and on Dijana’s advice, book an apartment in Ulcinj (pr. Ulchin) for four nights, starting tomorrow. 

Trout again for supper this evening and another early bed.  Tonight, though, we’re on the edge of a mountain storm: sheet lightning flashes into the valley from all around, and strong winds rip through our tent.  At 2am we zip up all the external windows and cross our fingers that our tent is as strong as it’s promised to be. 

Despite the incessant noise of the canvas flapping and flailing like a crazed, rabid bird, it survives the night.  

Day 93, July 15th.  Biograd National Park - Ulcinj, Montenegro, 16 - 42C, sunny

We don’t linger long after breakfast this morning.  We’re keen to explore some more of Montenegro’s mountains before we reach the coast – plus we’re hoping the benefits of an apartment by the sea will offset the inferno we’re about to descend into.  

We say our goodbyes to Diana; it feels like a good time to leave anyway.  She’s friendly yet particularly feisty – yesterday she tore strips of our Dutch friends for daring to wash their clothes in a sink; this morning she publicly castigates poor Ralph for leaving a few fingerprints on one of the restaurant windows. 

We drive off the mountain a different way – via a 25 kilometre track that weaves its way up to nearly 2,000 metres, then follows a series of high pastures, before finally dropping down through a new ski resort currently under construction (this one makes sense, unlike the Serbian effort) to the valley.

En-route we stop to admire endless meadows of wildflowers, sprawling thickets of ripening wild blueberries, and unbroken, sweeping views of different mountains, drifting into the distance in the haze.  Little Montenegro’s mountain-to-area ratio must exceed that of any other country in Europe.

Back in the valley, we re-join a tarmac road and before long, are on a motorway, heading downhill, inexorably, to the coast.  At lunchtime we bypass the capital, Podgorica (at 42C it’s way too hot to consider a visit) and head straight for the coast.  Soon, Montenegro’s infamous summer traffic catches up with us and we find ourselves sitting in a series of traffic jams, with the air conditioning on full, yet still sweltering.

We stop in Bar for lunch in a beachfront restaurant and a dip in the sea to refresh ourselves.  It’s 3pm and we’re all starving; an over-priced lunch fulfils its primary purpose but little more, whilst the sea is too warm and choppy to really be called ‘refreshing’.

We reach Ulcinj’s outskirts at 4pm and fight with the traffic – and an extraordinary number of foreign plated, fancy cars from all over Europe – for a further 30 minutes.  We later learn that cars in Montenegro are ferociously expensive; it’s cheaper for locals to buy their cars from abroad – even from as far afield as the USA – and import them into Montenegro. Seemingly, they never bother to change the plates.  

We’re on the point of having serious misgivings about this town when we finally reach our apartment, 400 metres up a steep hill from the sea front, overlooking a busy but picturesque little bay and the ‘Stari Grad’ (old town), perched on a hilly promontory on the right-hand side of the bay.

Our hosts appear to own the entire two storey house that we’re staying in and live in a couple of rooms at the back, whilst they rent out the rest of the house as two apartments during the summer.  Chain-smokers, their habits have left their mark in the sitting room and kitchen of our apartment, but with air conditioning and open sliding doors, we can live with it - just.  We’ve become gradually desensitized to cigarette smoke since entering the Balkans. 

In the evening, we make it out to a friendly Italian restaurant nearby, where we order some comfort food and enjoy cold beers and fresh lemonades, before wandering back to our little home – relieved to be not moving for four days.

Days 94 - 96, July 16th – 18th.  Ulcinj, Montenegro, 28 - 35C, sunny

Very little to report. 

Ulcinj has a tiny, crowded, ‘Small Beach’ in the bay, and a 12km long, still quite crowded ‘Long Beach’, 3km further south.  We try out both, for two mornings each.  We spend our afternoons in the cool of our apartment, reading and sleeping.

One morning, Laurie eyes up a little girl going out on a jet ski with her father; sure enough, our nine-year-old adrenaline junkie soon decides that we should do the same.  The look on his face when we get back in – untrammelled joy mixed with a soupçon of overcome fear – is priceless.

We repeat the experience the following afternoon, with Nina and Ralph renting their own jet ski and trundling round the open waters beyond the bay at a rather more sedate pace.  Laurie and I behave like hooligans.

We eat in a series of decent restaurants in the Stari Grad (‘Old Town’), all of which seem to have a terrace and great views over the bay / sea / coast.  Every evening, we walk back along the ‘strip’ – the busy, nightclub / café / restaurant-filled road in front of the ‘Small Beach’ – mingling with locals and their children, enjoying the chaotic, friendly holiday atmosphere of a small beach town dedicated to having fun. 

Simple pleasures.  By the morning of our last day, we’re rather fond of the place and reluctant to have to pack our bags and get moving again.

Day 97, July 19th.  Ulcinj, Montenegro – Lake Shkodra, Albania, 32 - 42C, sunny

But pack up we must. 

After a final, lazy morning on Ulcinj’s ‘Long Beach’, we have a quick picnic lunch under the shade of pine trees behind the beach, then set off towards Albania.  The road to the border is lined with petrol stations, nightclubs and casinos – do these represent things that are still missing in Albania?

Border formalities are straightforward. 

The queue on the Montenegrin side is backed up over 100 metres but moves swiftly; we are neither stamped out of Montenegro, nor stamped into Albania.  The near-horizontal Albanian border official, who’s simultaneously smoking a cigarette and watching the football on his computer screen, doesn’t even bother to look at our passports – he just asks where we’re going, waves us in and says, “Have a nice day”.

Albania is immediately different: potholed roads, shabbier buildings, and litter – litter everywhere.  Our first stop is the town of Shkodra, on the banks of Lake Shkodra; a chunk of which we’ve seen from the Montenegrin side, driving down from the hills.  Driving in, we’re greeted by Soviet-era apartment blocks: whilst Albania was never part of the Soviet Union – indeed it’s mad dictator Enver Hoxha severed ties with the USSR in 1961 – much of its grim architecture is identical.

We’re looking for an art shop which Google Maps promises us is in the centre somewhere; it is.  Having just about got our heads round the basics of ‘Balkan’ as a language – Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin being much of a muchness – we’re completely out of our depth again in Albania.  We can’t even say “hello” or “thank you”, and the translations appear utterly incomprehensible to us.  Luckily, the nice girl in the art shop speaks excellent English and we can successfully top up the boys’ painting supplies.

It's far too hot to even consider walking round the city.  Instead, we drive through what’s left of its ancient quarter.  We’re greeted by a small patch of surprisingly endearing cobbled streets, lined with ancient, pastel coloured Venetian-looking buildings, complete with little bars and cafes spilling out sleepily onto the cobbles.

But we don’t linger – for a start, there is literally nowhere to park the car.  We find a Spar supermarket on the outskirts of town, nestled under a particularly grim looking apartment building.  We pick our way over the rubbish in the car park, guiltily side-step the beggar children and immerse ourselves in the air conditioning, to stock up on supplies for tonight.  We haven’t seen a local food market anywhere yet.

Shopping complete, we head for a campsite on the lake – the only one, as it transpires.  It’s large, orderly, busy, well-appointed, and boasts a generous amount of lakefront with a little pier – from which we can see dozens of well-heeled German and Polish children jumping off into the lake, with their families.

It’s nearly 6pm and still above 40C.  Sweating profusely, we put the tent up and head to the lake, yearning for a refreshing dip. 

‘Refreshing’ it is not: despite being the largest lake in the Balkans – 48km long – it’s only 5 metres deep and at this time of year, it’s a hot as a bath.  Literally.  We jump in and almost yelp in surprise at the heat.  We estimate it’s perhaps 35C.  It is – by some margin – the warmest water we’ve ever swam in.  Nina’s father has been striving for 40 years to get his swimming pool as warm as this – maybe it’s finally time to move?!

Unrefreshed, we have a cold shower afterwards to cool down, cook our supper, have another cold shower, and climb into our furnace of a tent.  The heat is relentless; at quarter past eleven I register the first whiff of a breeze – but it’s only a teaser.  Around 4am, the tent finally reaches a near-comfortable temperature.  If it wasn’t for the ubiquitous mosquitoes, we’d have slept on the grass outside.

Day 98, July 20th.  Lake Shkodra, Albania – Lake Ohrid, North Macedonia, 31 - 42C, sunny

Everyone is very sleepy this morning.  We’d agreed to do a long ‘family swim’ this morning – Shkodra being the perfect lake to test the boy’s swimming ability.  By 8am we’re jumping off the pier again – into quieter, calmer waters than last night, but with the same level of heat.

My GPS watch suggests we swim 740 metres with the boys, but a visual estimate of our swimming distance away from the pier and back again would suggest it’s closer to half that.  Either way, it’s a decent distance for them – especially Laurie – who’s out of his depth the whole time.  It is the first time I’ve ever broken into a sweat whilst swimming.

On the way back, I spy a snake, swimming serenely with its head above water, passing just by us, as it heads out for its morning swim.  Prudently, I keep this information to myself until we’re back on the pier.

We pack up and get going promptly, before the sun gets too hot.  We’ve already decided that Albania is going to be far too hot for us to achieve anything other than retreat into another apartment by the coast – and we’ve just done that.  Instead, we plan to lunch in Tirana then head for Lake Ohrid in North Macedonia, which – at 690 metres above sea level – we expect to be cooler.

The drive to Tirana is slow, and hot.  It takes us an hour to leave the outskirts of Shkodra, passing through areas of relative wealth, then neighbourhoods of abject poverty, collapsed houses and piles of litter. 

We also pass innumerable derelict concrete bunkers – a legacy of the insane and cruel Hoxha regime. Between the 1960’s and 80’s, Hoxha’s uber-paranoid, hard-line Stalinist government severed ties with all its neighbours and former allies and consequently built nearly a quarter a million bunkers, to fortify the country in the event of a military attack from Yugoslavia, the USSR, NATO or latterly even China – potentially simultaneously.  The bunkers were a vast drain on the country’s resources and contributed to chronic under-investment in houses, roads and hospitals: much of which the country is still grappling with today.

Out of Shkodra, the road to Tirana is lined with dozens of small, independent fuel stations, builder’s merchants, brick yards, car wash shops, garages and tyre repair shops, a handful of casinos, a rather sorry looking strip club and the odd fruit market.  It’s a random mix, with – notably – no multinational companies.  They haven’t reached Albania yet.

The traffic in Tirana is predictably heavy, and the driving standards possibly the lowest we’ve seen on the trip so far.  It appears to be quite reasonable in Tirana to stop in the middle of a three-lane highway, get out, dash across the other lanes, buy a coffee, chat to someone, then get back into your car and continue.  Using one’s hazard light’s is effectively carte-blanche to perform any motoring manoeuvre you care to think of.

Eventually we reach the centre, unscathed, park in a car park and immediately dive through the back door of a smart, air-conditioned restaurant, the front of which leads on to Skanderberg Square: Tirana’s central square.  Once inside, it’s hard to leave: we stop for lunch and enjoy delicious local meatballs and salads, wondering just how much of Tirana we’re actually going to see.

After lunch, we drag the children out of the front door of the restaurant and walk 30 metres along the edge of Skanderberg Square (a vast, unshaded area of paving and tarmac – like a frying pan today).  We stop briefly in a beautifully painted (and air-conditioned) Ottoman-era mosque, then head underground into ‘Bunk-Art 2’ – a museum dedicated to Albania’s grim, police and security force-ridden past, housed in one of Tirana’s ‘5-star’ bunkers, designed to house government officials and bureaucrats in the event of a nuclear attack. 

It's incredibly busy and cramped in the museum.  This is unsurprising, given (a) it’s a bunker and they’re all cramped and (b) it is far too hot for any other sane tourist in Tirana to be anywhere else apart from underground right now. 

But it’s an absorbing, sobering place: amongst the more technical elements, there are interesting insights into Albania’s Orwellian surveillance systems, its programmes of torture and incarceration, and numerous sage quotations from intellectuals and politicians, old and new, citing a similar message: “Never let this happen again”.

Eventually we resurface and make a beeline for the car – stopping only in same restaurant we lunched in, to grab an ice cream. 

Leaving Tirana’s monotholic, baked outskirts, we head south and east, through the uninspiring town of Elbasan, before starting the slow climb into the mountains towards the border.  Along the way, we pass the immediate aftermath of three traffic accidents, all seemingly caused by blind overtaking: we’ve seen plenty of that. 

We lose count of our sightings of concrete bunkers and skeletons of decaying infrastructure – including a seemingly once important railway line that cut through the mountains via a series of tunnels and huge viaducts – all now in a state of abject decline.

The final stretch of the climb is steep.  After a series of hairpin bends, we drive through a small pass; immediately beyond the brow, the glistening deep blue waters of Lake Ohrid greet us, just a few kilometres away.  The temperature has dropped from early 40’s to early 30’s; things are looking up.

The Albanian border guards once again wave us through without bothering to look at our passports.  The North Macedonians are friendly, yet a little more formal than the Albanians – actually checking our passports and insisting we buy insurance before we can continue.  But their systems are efficient, and we’re through in less than 15 minutes.

We’ve found ‘Camping Rino’ online – it’s a small campsite, nestled on the north-west shore of the lake.  ‘Rino’ (pr. Reeno) cheerfully greets us and says we can park anywhere.  There are five other campers here, all Dutch, Swiss and German (as usual).  We find the last spot he has that directly fronts the lake. 

Whilst Nina and the boys enjoy a dip in the lake (which is crystal clear and actually refreshing), I complete registration formalities with Rino, which involves him taking a copy of our passports, and insisting I share a drink with him.  Cue another (large) shot of – this time really filthy – rakia. He pours one for Nina; I tell him she doesn’t drink.  Definitely taken one for the team here.

We’re all looking forward to a revitalising night’s sleep, following last night’s sweat-drenched non-event.  Alas, as we’re climbing into bed, the club on the other side of the lake – perhaps 15 kilometres away – strikes up its music. It’s Saturday night: we’re ruthlessly bombarded with Euro-trash dance and techno music until 2am. At which point, the geese in a neighbouring enclosure start chatting, urgently and agitatedly.  So many things must go right to get a good night’s sleep camping…

Day 99, July 21st.  Lake Ohrid, North Macedonia, 24 - 37C, sunny

Everyone’s in remarkably good humour, despite the lack of sleep last night.  But it’s a lazy morning, nonetheless: the boys spend a few happy hours building bamboo and reed rafts and floating them on the lake, whilst Nina and I take full advantage of Rino’s free coffee. 

He’s only charging us 20 euros to stay here; what with the rakia, free coffee and the litre of local wine he gives us as a gift when we leave, we wonder how he’s making any money at all. 

But – like many in these parts – he’s a contented, relaxed soul, and not motivated by money. These are fine traits, indeed.

We finally drag ourselves out of the campsite and drive to the town of Ohrid, aesthetically perched above the lake.  It’s busy, with a surprisingly large number of Americans – who obviously thought North Macedonia was part of Italy or Greece when they booked their flight tickets.

Ohrid is North Macedonia’s number one tourist attraction and it’s easy to see why: quaint, cobbled and stepped streets, delicate brick-built churches and cathedrals, and the ever-present lapping of the waves from the lake.  More than once we mistakenly think we’re by the sea – it feels like a Croatian coastal town thirty years ago.

We enjoy an excellent lunch of local stuffed peppers overlooking the lake, then nearly gate-crash a wedding as Ralph heads off to investigate the intricate, mosaic-like arches and patterns of the Cathedral of St Sophia. 

Our final stop is an ancient paper makers shop, where the kindly curator – an expert craftsman of many decades – demonstrates the thousands-year old skill of hand-making paper, then lets the boys have a go.  As ever, they are rarely happier than when ‘making things’.

Back in the car, we drive down the eastern shore of the lake, searching for an ancient spring, a monastery, and the ‘Bay of Bones’ museum – an archaeological complex with a reconstructed Bronze Age settlement, jutting out on to the lake, on dainty wooden pillars.

Sadly, all are closed: it’s too late in the afternoon.  We’ll try again tomorrow but for now, we need somewhere to sleep.  It’s a full hour back to ‘Camping Rino’, so Nina finds the best option amongst a severely limited array of campsites on the eastern shore: no free camping permitted here.

We reach the ‘Car Camp Ljubanista’ at 5pm.  Its name, coupled with the entry barriers and large, slightly delipidated reception building should all have been sufficient warning.  But in our sleep-deprived weariness, we check in, and are told to camp ‘round to the right’, wherever we can find a space. 

Driving in – and now effectively committed – we realise we’ve entered the North Macedonian equivalent of hell on earth.  It's like the whole of North Macedonia has decided to move here for the summer, setting up camp in a chaotic array of permanent and semi-permanent mobile homes, along with motorhomes, camper vans, tents, cars and motorbikes.  It's like a paid-for refugee camp. Unsurprisingly, we are the only foreigners here: all the sensible Dutch, German and Swiss tourers have wisely steered well clear.

We find the quietest spot we can, at the edge of the campsite, where the grass meets the overgrown wilderness and mountains beyond.  Having set up the tent, we lock the car and weave our way through countless other pitches to the ‘beach’ on the same picturesque Lake Ohrid that we camped on last night.  Every square inch is covered in rotund, smoking, drinking, North Macedonian flesh. 

We manage to edge our way round the bodies and have a swim, then carve out a couple of square feet on the gravel that we can call our own.  It’s hard to believe that somewhere so dreadful can exist somewhere so beautiful. 

We don’t have much in the way of food, so we check out the campsite restaurant.  We don’t even need to look at a menu to realise we’ll be better off scraping the last vestiges of food from our fridge and food box and cooking it up into something – which is precisely what we do. 

We’re in bed by nine.  Thankfully, being a Sunday, there’s no music – and we sleep soundly.  How ironic.

Day 100, July 22nd.  Lake Ohrid, North Macedonia – nr. Pristina, Kosovo, 21 - 37C, sunny

Surprisingly refreshed, we’re up at 6.30am.  Nina, Laurie and I head straight to the lake for a swim and unsurprisingly have it to ourselves.  Now, it’s beautiful.

We cook up some poached eggs on toast for breakfast (our staple yoghurt or granola is finished) and pack up the truck as swiftly as we’ve ever done.  We’re in the car and driving, elatedly, out of the gates by ten past eight, just as the Macedonian masses are emerging from their tents and caravans. 

First stop this morning is the spring behind the Monastery of St Naum, just a little further south.  We stop by the side of the road and find the ‘old’ monastery – beautifully kept and bordered with immaculately trimmed rosemary hedges – and go in search of the spring. 

Beyond the monastery, we follow a track towards the sound of running water and find some elderly locals going about their morning routine, filling numerous five litre bottles with water from the stream.  They wave us further down the path, but after ten minutes’ walking along an increasingly warm, narrow and fly-ridden path, we conclude that we’re probably almost in Albania again and unsure if we’re on the right track, or have passed the spring entirely without noticing. 

We about turn, return to the car, and head to the ‘main’ part of the monastery – largely a hotel and restaurant now – which is gearing up for its daily influx of tourists.  Beyond a quick paddle in the crystal-clear lake and a happy audit of the monastery’s many tortoises, there’s nothing to keep us here.  We jump back in the car, past the Bay of Bones (inexplicably still closed), and make with all haste to Kosovo.

We can’t make any conclusions about Montenegro, Albania or North Macedonia.  It’s just been too bloody hot – and we’ve spent barely any time exploring them properly, or meeting their inhabitants. 

Eastern Montenegro’s mountains are magnificent, Ulcinj is a lovely place to visit for a week; we wish it had been cool enough for us to visit Kotor as well. The Montenegrins appear to have an insatiable penchant for importing expensive motor cars.

Albania and its super-friendly people are bravely recovering from four decades of brutal dictatorship, and half a century of international isolation.  They still drive like possessed maniacs though. We’re sure their country has many more lovely features than what we saw, but we weren’t going to search for them in this heat. 

All the North Macedonians we meet are hospitable and friendly, despite a seeming tendency to spend their holidays like sardines. Their country feels wealthy and organised, despite its damaging and entirely unnecessary twenty-year spat with Greece over its name.

Onwards to Kosovo, where hopefully it’ll be a little cooler, we’ll meet more people, and perhaps we'll learn a little more.