Montenegro, Albania & Macedonia who'da thought!!!

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Trip Start Aug 07, 2008 Previous
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  Ohrid, Macedonia
Friday, September 12, 2008

We were sooo happy when we got the call - Randon is fixed...

The taxi arrived to take us to the garage and we were full of the joys of spring, well autumn if one is going to be panicky about these things or summer would be a more apt way of looking at it considering the heat
anyway I digress....

We got to the garage and Ned checked the work - the fan belt looked and sounded fine, the clutch had been adjusted however the exhaust had been bodged and I mean BODGED big time, they had cut it in 2 and then just kinda stuffed one pipe into the other and if this wasn't bad enough they didn't even put gum gum on
to seal it (gum gum is some sorta exhaust sealy stuff??? Ned's area, not mine!) so a battle pursued between me and the (chauvinist) Croatian mechanics well you can all imagine how that went...
meanwhile, while this battle was underway, Ned was trying to sort out the week old full loo and realized the foreign
bleach wasn't bleach at all and was costic soda so the loo started smoking in that chemical way and he was convinced the loo was going to explode so he quickly pulled me to one side while the 3 mechanics were 'discussing' the exhaust.
I suggested taking the loo out of its box and putting it nearer the garage so if it did explode, the horrid, smelly poo would go all over these cowboys and not on our beloved Randon but Ned wouldn't allow me to do it so he put
it under Randon and how boring..

Yeah right it's fixed!

. it didn't bloomin' explode! 

The battle continued between me and the mechanics and after much toing and frowing between us, which really meant me shouting and swearing a lot - well there is no taking to these guys and especially when they keep trying to talk to 'the man' as women don't know about or deal with these things, this attitude only made me worse so a total freak out was the only option I had and was after all, my trump card! Think you can mess with me? bring it on boys! and boy did they concede...
The mechanics, yes all 3 of them, quickly fixed the exhaust while Ned watched and I sat and drank (their) coffee and smoked fags!
As you can imagine we got outa there fast and hit the coast road and headed towards Montenegro!

More windy roads, beautiful views and a million fags later it was time to stop and we quickly found a lovely park up by an in-let on the coast. It was lovely with the evening drawing in and the fishermen on the water and after my long drive Ned poured some wine and started dinner, it was good to be back on the road and soooo good to be away from 'holidayhellville'.
As night fell I saw a light flashing on the other side of the water and was convinced it was morse code so called Ned over who thought I was truly loosing my marbles but he had to agree that this wasn't random flashing and then another 3 lights came on and it looked like they all started talking to each other... what was going on? were we in the middle of some international smuggling deal..

The views are amazing

. then a boat appeared in the not so distant distance (I'm being totally serious here guys) and it had a spot light on the front and was trawling the edge of the water obviously carefully, slowly looking for something...... what was going on!!! So we dashed inside Randon and stealthily peered out the window, I mean if this was some sort of illegal shit happening we didn't want to be (visible) witnesses. The boat passed by our door and went a bit slower then it had before, we held our breath and I almost broke Ned's hand by squeezing it so tight.... where they going to see us?  and thank god it passed us but was still combing the edge of the water! This went on for about 20 minutes and as nothing exciting seemed to happen, we got bored and went to bed not knowing what was happening on our door step dundunDUNNNN.
I have to say I was more then a little worried that the bandits would come and get us, the only witnesses to their crimes!!!!  I found it hard to sleep so Ned assured me he would fight to the death to protect me and I fell asleep. We woke up the next day much to my relief!

Ned reckons I must stop watching CSI when I get home...

We tatted down and then hit the road once more and we decided to go to Albania, well why the hell not! But I hadn't reckoned on the roads being quite so windly, steep and bad so we weren't getting many miles under our belt so we needed to find a park up as it was getting late. Ned worked out a route that would bring us down to the sea

Spot Randon

. We drove through a little village and stopped to get some essentials and when we go back into Randon our ducks were bright pink!!! It was so hot our ducks had turned pink!!!
OK let me explain... my mum bought us 2 little purple plastic ducks for the bath at home and they are heat sensitive so when you put them in hot water they change colour (they are really for kids but then again Ned and I are big kids) and the bathroom in Randon was so hot it had turned the ducks bright pink, it was that hot!!! We were totally delighted at this... I know we are barking mad....

Anyway we headed for the water and Ned spotted an old ship yard so we drove down the track and stopped, 2 old fisher men came out and in my wonderful sign language I asked them if we could sleep there. They were lovely and totally bemused by the motor home but the further East we drove the more we were getting used to being a novelty, a woman driving this mental machine!

So here in this cove again we had found a paradise only this time we called it heaven! We were right on the water and alone with the sea and the stars, the views and each other. We stayed for 3 days in this magical place, we caught up with the laundry, gave Randon a mighty clean ready for the
last leg of the journey to Bulgaria and just chilled out in the shade
and the sea....our little heaven in this new country called Montenegro.
After the 3 days were were ready so we said goodbye to the fishermen gave them some wine and headed for the boarder.

We got to the boarder and the customs guys were fascinated by the motor home, no they didn't search it they were just fascinated by it and with a woman driving it...

I enjoy the view, Ned empties the loo!

. I mean how many motor homes let alone UK license plate motor homes do you think they get at the Montenegro/Albanian border!!!! I flirted and chatted with them as this was the right approach and they let us on our way.

As soon as we crossed the border the roads were worse then old Irish boreens I couldn't believe it, we were truly in no mans land, like nothing either of us had experienced before... it was desolate and filthy! and THIS was the ONLY main road thought Albania...
As I plodded along dodging pot holes along the way, we met a HGV coming the other way... I just froze! 'Ned what am I going to do' I was truly freaked as if I moved out of their way we were over a cliff and it kept coming for me.... NED WHAT AM I GOING TO DO!!!!! Ned remained calm (but told me later he was shitting himself too) and told me to just stop and let the HGV driver to the work, so this I did and the driver could see I was freaked out so made calming gestures and was totally non pulsed by this scenario and managed to drive past us with ease! Well thinking about it he properly drives along this road every day as it's the only main road through the country!
And there were nothing but Merc's on the road... right old bangers but they were all Merc's??? We were in the grave yard of the worlds discarded Mercedes it was very strange indeed... and my gawd the driving.... fucking hell.... they have no regard for personal safety... while one car is taking you over another car is taking them over whilst a car is coming the other way - or the other scenario is, right in front of you as you are driving along minding your own business but keeping an eagle eye on EVERYTHING going on around you, in the opposite direction they decide to take over each other so you have a car heading straight for you!!!!!!! Luckily I had already driven on Swiss roads, experienced Italian drivers, lived though the coast roads of Croatia and dogged the random people and pot holes in Montenegro so was not too fazed by this new form of driving technique, in fact I was becoming a bit of an expert according to Ned.

Oh something I forgot to mention before..

Fire Station in Montenegro for Aaron

. Ned broke one of the keys to the motor home, the one that opens the main door, the loo box door, the gas box door etc but I had a spare (good ol organized Shikha strikes again...) so we were using the spare but as we were leaving Montenegro he broke the spare so we needed to get a new key... in the friggin' back arse of the world we had to find a Fiat key cutter!!!
So just as were hit Tirane I spotted what looked like the kinda garages that would be able to sort us out, I mean I have lived in India so knew what kinda places to look out for, Ned on the other hand was a bit more perplexed as to how we were going to sort this out.
As this fiasco was created by Ned I made him go over on his own to sort it out - he's a bit shy about coming forward in situations he is not familiar with and this was his doing so he could bloody well deal with it and because I love him I thought it would do him some good.

The guys pointed us in the right direction by drawing a map in the sand and off we went delighted that we were capable and worldly wise - we turned what we believed to be the right left but we couldn't see a key shop any where.... we were in Tirane center by this point and it was early evening! Then I spotted a few old men by the side of the road, ah I thought these guys will help so we showed them the broken key, they hummed and harred and then came up with a plan.... one of the little old men got on his bike and beckoned us to follow so we did! Well he was about 98 so we didn't feel threatened or that we were being loured into a trap where we would be bound, gagged and all our valuables stolen..

Emergency car in Montenegro!!!

. He guided us to a little shop and spoke to another little man and they discussed at length our broken key and the predicament we were in... But as with these places and parts of the world he made a match with ease and we had a new key, hurray! I made sure we got 2 made and then tried them in all the locks - they worked a dream in all but the loo box door??? So I sent Ned back to the shop and the man tried the key but nothing worked.... so off he went and got another little man who was also perplexed.... but again as in these countries, they managed to open the loo box door! Hurray we could poo once more (well Ned could empty the loo as I hadn't stopped using it...)

We left Albania quickly as I really didn't feel safe there, there was something about the energy and even thought the men had fixed the key and lock situation I didn't feel safe and Ned agreed so we headed for Macedonia...

The Macedonian boarder was to date the only one we have had problems with.... the bitch on the border gave us a really hard time, I think she thought she was in some 50's communist movie complete with peroxide hair and frown! We were totally ripped off at the boarder as our insurance didn't cover us here so we had to pay 130 euro to be insured for up to 15 days.. That's over a hundred quid for 15 days!!!! Our insurance for the whole year, mega cover, mega breakdown in EU etc is only 500 quid for 365 days!!! Bastards - no wonder Eastern Europe has a bad name for being corrupt, they are! But we weren't going to let this spoil our trip so we pulled over and had some rescue remedy and went on our merry way to Lake Ohrid.

The roads were just a mad and bad as Albania but lake Ohrid was stunning..

Our ducks are pink

. we drove into what looked like a dilapidated ex communist leaders holiday camp and parked up. I jumped straight into the crystal clear water of the warm lake and the troubles at the boarder were washed away.

As dusk started to draw in I noticed that the people at the lake changed and as the family's and couples left, lots of gay guys appeared... we were in gay pulling point central! I was in people watching heaven!  it was great fun watching them... there was the gay porn star who walked like a peacock and kept flexing him muscles, the fat guy with the long greasy hair in the purple G-string, the shy obviously married guy and all the fit young things in G-strings on roller blades ummmm, it was a blast and they didn't seem bothered by me and Ned being parked there with a front row seat!

We stayed on lake Ohrid for 2 days and were asked to leave!!! not for any other reason then "No Camping" and as this was the first time we were asked to leave anywhere,it was not a problem however, as it was getting dark and I was not driving on those road, with those drivers in the dark, we just went round the corner and parked for the night under the cover of the bushes and trees, I drove very slowly and asked Ned to keep watch as I didn't want to encounter any men getting frisky in the bushes and was soooo relieved that I didn't run any of them over!

The next morning we woke at 6am and left quickly as we didn't want to get into any trouble with the police especially after what we had encountered at the boarder and headed towards Bulgaria only 400 km to go! However we hadn't taken into account hitting rush hour in the capital, Skopje! It was totally mental with no-one taking any notice of the traffic lights, people and random animals on the road, the pollution and the vast amount of cars, cows, carts, trucks and home made vechiels! 
I calmly turned to Ned and said, this is just like Bangkok I can now drive anywhere baby, I can now drive anywhere!

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Normal ducks	Good morning swimming	Heaven park up	The old boat yard park up
The view from heaven	We've moved in...	My saint is pissed hahaha	The roads
How high up are we Ned?	Albanian petrol station	The man who saved the day (key story)	Ummm how many men does it take to fix a lock
And it's open	Oh shite!!!	Rush hour madness	City sights
How am I going to tackle this...	More rush hour madness	The roads, it's all about the roads	Mountains everywhere
Forest fire on route

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