Montenegro: I should be graduating right now, but instead I went rafting

Happy graduation to everyone who walked on Sunday! I'm not *that* sad that I wasn't around to get my diplomas, but all the facebook pictures did make me a little homesick. Instead of putting on a graduation cap, I put on a helmet and went rafting down the Tara river, but I'll get to that in a minute.

I started out my Montenegran journey in Bar, along the southern coast of Montenegro. There's not much to see in Bar, and since I had just gotten off a night train which involved very little sleep, I spent the whole day lounging on the beach. The beach wasn't anything to write home about (well... beyond this sentence that is), but it was nice to relax for the day and recoup from Serbia. I was literally the only guest at the hostel I chose, and I didn't even take any pictures of the city - that's how low key it was.

The next day, I took an early bus northward out of Bar, to Budva. This is where the real adventure begins. Budva is the most popular destination for tourists in Montenegro, and for good reason. The old town is like a little minitaure Dubrovnik, with a wall that completely encircles it and comes right up to the ocean. My hostel was right in the middle of the walled-in Old Town, which made exploring really easy.

The beaches in Budvah are really nice, and I decided after all the bus and train travel that I needed to get a bit of exercise, so I took an evening run out of the old town along the bay, and went for a dip in the ocean to cool down just as the sun was setting. Sitting on the beach in the warm evening, tired from my run but cooled down from swimming in the clean blue waters was just what the doctor ordered.

I made my way back to Old Town and dropped off all my things (including my camera, dangit!), and took a stroll to the seaside walls, where I sat and ate some Burek from a local bakery. I was totally in a relaxed state, listening to music on my iPod, when I looked over and saw Senator John McCain, along with a horde of suits, standing right next to me looking out at the ocean. I was so startled that I nearly fell off the wall I was sitting on into the ocean. McCain turned away and started shaking hands with a bunch of young men I later found out were Navy personnel on vacation. By the time I got my wits about me he was already walking away, entourage in tow. I found out later through googling that McCain was in Montenegro to discuss Montenegro's transistion into the EU and its increasing presence in NATO and other security forces. This is one of those moments where I really wish I was travelling with someone to share the oddity of it - I definitely didn't expect to see John McCain 10 feet away from me at any point on this trip, let alone during a zen moment in Montenegro.

The rest of my stay in Budva was relaxing and enjoyable, albeit lacking in major political figures. I did find myself lucky that night for another reason, however. There was a cultural festival that night; an annual celebration of traditional dances from the region, with dancers of all ages.

It's always great to see a celebration of culture, especially in this mode. Everyone was having fun, and the audience was dancing and cheering as if it were a rock concert.

After Budva, I headed to Kotor for two nights. Like Budva, Kotor traces its roots back to the ancient Illyrians, who first built the fortificaitons (that were later taken over by the Romans, then Byzantines... and so on) in the second millenium BC... that's a long time ago. Kotor is built on the Bay of Kotor, which is a huge bay with massive Fjords all along its perimiter. This made it a great place for a castle, obviously, but also makes Kotor unique among these big foritified cities I've visited so far, because it's built right up the side of a mountain.

Besides the nice Old Town (which is extremely similar in feel and function to Dubrovnik's and Budva's Old Towns), Kotor is in close proximity to a lot of interesting places. The first one I visited was Perast, an ancient town along the bay that looks like it could have been a little chunk of Venice and floated over on an iceberg and got stuck there.

Just off the coast of Perast are two little islands. The smallest is a natural island that houses a very old monestary.

The slightly bigger one, however, is much more interesting. It was made by the people of Perast in the 15th century, when a local fisherman fished out what he claimed was an icon of the Virgin Mary and Christ from the bay just off the shores of the monestary. Sailors began taking rocks out to the site where the icon was fished out, and they would drop the rocks into the ocean (there was a reef that came close to the surface here), with the promise that one day an island would stand there, and they would build upon it a church to honor the Virgin Mary. This eventually turned into a celebration on July 22nd, where each year the sailors would scuttle a ship and drop rocks on the site to build its foundation. It still took 200 years (the Perastians were nothing if not persistant), but eventually there was a platform there which was strong enough to hold a structure. They built a church there, as promised, and continued to drop rocks to build the island around the church. The tradition still continues today (minus the sinking of a ship).

On the artificial "Our Lady of the Rock Island"

The day after visiting Perast, I decided it was time for some adventure, so I signed up to go rafting in Durmitor National Park in northern Montenegro. We started early, and it was a lot of driving throughout the day, but the payoff was really sweet.

The Tara Canyon, carved by the Tara River, is the second biggest canyon in the world (after the Grand Canyon). At its deepest (1300m) it's even deeper than the Grand Canyon, but on average it's slightly smaller. The similarities to the Grand Canyon end there, however. As anyone who's ever been to the Grand Canyon can attest, it's a pretty dry, brown place. The Tara Canyon is nothing like that. It's green and wild.

Also unlike the Grand Canyon, which requires a 3 year waiting list and well over $1000 to raft down, the Tara Canyon can be rafted for around $50, including breakfast, lunch and a beer, and you don't even need to call ahead. To say I was impressed by the scenery would be an understatement. It was well and truly the most beautiful setting I've been in yet, and that's saying something after Slovenia and Croatia.

The next day I reluctantly said goodbye to Kotor and started the long trek to Tirana, Albania. Unlike basically every other country in Eastern Europe, there is no easy way to get between Montenegro and Albania. It involved taking a bus all the way to the very south of Montenegro, then hiring a taxi for a ride across the border (during which the taxi driver has to pry off the taxi light on top of the car and hide it at a market, since taxi rides across the border are technically illegal). Then, when you finally get into a town in Albania, and you think you're going to a bus station like you would in any other country, you instead get dropped off at a street corner, where a line of furgons (a sort of minibus endemic to Albania) waits with a group of hawkers crying out the various destinations ready to pounce on you. Furgons are also illegal, but since Albania never really invested in a bus infrastructure and only one bus a day runs from any place to any other place, the furgons exist and get used out of necessity. None of it is a big deal, of course, unless (like me), the furgon driver tries to drop you off at your destination (invariably in the most inconvenient place imaginable), then realizes just as you're halfway out of the car that there's a police officer right on the street corner, and screams at you to get back in and peels away, only to drop you off 3 blocks away (at an even more inconveneint place). Lucily, the taxi drivers in Albania are honest and helpful, and will take you from the furgon dropoff point to someplace... you know... not inconvenient.

I'm here on my second night in Tirana. It's basically just a big, busy capital city. Not a lot to see, but the Hostel here is really great so I stayed a second night to relax a bit and plan my final few days before I get to Athens. Theres not reliable internet here, so I'll post this when I get to Berat in Central Albania - a UNESCO world heritage site, tomorrow morning sometime.

That's it! Montenegro rocked my socks, and I think the rest of Albania is going to be great as well - stay tuned for that story!

-C