Mostar, Bosnia - Zabljak, Montenegro

Mostar to Zabljak

Bosnian countryside.

We left Mostar and Bosnia this morning to head to our next destination of Zabljak which is a town bordering the Durmitor National Park in the North West of Montenegro.

220kms through the backroads of Bosnia and Montenegro and approximately 4 & 1/2 hours of driving which is always a fun way to start the day.



Only two things of any real note happened today that were interesting / funny.

About half an hour from the border a car coming in the opposite direction flashed his lights at us so I slowed down to about 60km/hr.  As we crested the hill and saw the policeman with his speed camera Nicki says to me 'you know I think the speed limit is 40 here.' 

What!?  Nothing like a stitch in time and all that.

Resigned to the fact we were nicked I watched as the policeman slowly walked onto the road with his little stop sign to flag us over.  As we got closer to him I slowed down and started to pull over.  The policeman took one look at the magnificent Grand Kangoo, the French number plates, the 3 kids in the middle, the crazed look on the driver's face and the crap packed to the rafters in the back of the car and waved us on through.

Sometimes it pays to be mental cases.   

The next funny thing to happen was when we got to the border post.  Aficionados of the blog would remember that we got pinged by a stationary speed camera as we entered Bosnia 10 days before.  All through Bosnia I was wondering whether that might appear on our 'record' as we left the country as they checked our car registration papers on the way in.

Bosnian border crossing.

Anyway we stopped at the border post and the guard comes over and grabs our passports and our car registration papers and heads inside his little hut.  A minute or 2 later here comes another bloke to tell us we have a 'problem'. 

Bloody hell we've been done for our speeding but no, apparently there's a 'problem' as we are crossing at a 'non-international local' border crossing?!  A what?  

In broken English the guard tells us there are 2 solutions to our 'problem'.  We can either back-track about 2 hours and cross at a bigger border crossing or pay 'cafe money' and they would be able to sort it out.

'Cafe money', what the bloody hell is that?  Anyway I quickly worked out that he only wanted a smallish payment and I offered him €5.00.  A bit too low on the tourist 'problem' payment scale so he came back with a counter-offer of €20.00.  I knocked that back and offered him €10.00 which seemed to be an acceptable amount.  

I knew I had a €50 and a €10 in my wallet so I didn't want to pull that out in case he saw it so I asked the kids if they had any half expecting one of them to yell out "yes dad, we've got heaps".  Fortunately Max answered that he had €10 and after that the passports were returned and we were through.

Montenegro.

To the Montenegran border post!

Out comes old mate and I was already thinking here we go again, both of these crossings will be in on the act but to our delight our mate the Montenegran stamped our passports, wished us 'sretan put' (happy travels) and away we went.

On the road to Zabljak.

Drove through some more of the endless beautiful mountain scenery.  Nearly all of the way there was thick forest and now that we are deep into autumn the trees are showing off the greens, oranges, and reds of their leaves.

Arrived at our little chalet in Zabljak which is probably our best accommodation to date for the princely sum of €50.00 / night.

Zabljak is primarily a winter ski resort but the mountains are supposed to be a site to see, on the UNESCO world heritage list and have hundreds of kilometres of walking tracks.
  

Zabljak accommodation.

The weather forecast is not promising but we have our fingers crossed. 

Stray observations:  Don't be scared to haggle with a border guard.

Not an observation but exactly what is a "non-international local' border crossing?