After a quick catch up with Goran and Kire in the morning (where they invite us to spend another day in Ohrid on the boat with them – we’d love to but have to politely decline) we head north. We start the day without a clear picture of what will happen or where we’ll end up.
Not far up the road coming into the town of Struga (Ohrid’s arch-rival) we hit 10,000kms for the trip. This is based on Steve’s Lyubov’, because we’d already established that the bikes had different rates at which the speedo’s racked up the kms (Amand’s Nadia was still a good couple of hundred kms short at this stage, Sam couldn’t be bothered calculating it!). We head down a beautiful river valley with a couple of hydro dams and celebrate with a nice lunch in Debar, overlooking a hydro lake of the same name, while our clothes dry on a fence. The waiter is a bit grumpy that we put them in view of the patrons so directs us to the perfect washing line/fence around the corner in the bright sun, out of sight.
Here we spend some time mapping out the week ahead (there’s ONLY SEVEN DAYS to go). At this point we have a couple of options, either head straight through Albania to Montenegro and Croatia or detour and head up into Kosovo and then on to Croatia. Kosovo stands out to us what with its recent history. Again we decide to head to a country that’s not actually a country, although at least it’s recognised by a few more states than Transnistria. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, now it has gained recognition as a sovereign state by 110 UN members, but Serbia still refuses to recognise it. With its recent war-torn history we want to check it out and decide the ideal place to head for is a town called Prizren in the south of Kosovo.
From Debar, Steve spies a possible route through the Mavrovo National Park. It’s not an official border, and we ask a few locals who say there is no border post here. Online searching suggests it’s a mountain pass manned by forestry workers and armed border patrols, but Google maps says there’s a road through the border. If it works out and he can cross he might not get an entry stamp which could be a problem when leaving. He decides he has enough BS skills (true enough!) to concoct a feasible story for exit border officials and decides to give it a crack. What’s the worst that can happen? Well … is it a sign that we’re heading for a place called Prison, oops I mean Prizren!
Amand and Sam decide to take the longer and more conservative (AKA smart) approach by passing back through Albania and getting the appropriate border stamps. We agree to meet in Prizren in the evening and cross fingers we’ll all see each other again!
Using his GPS for directions Steve heads north into Mavrovo NP. He’s cruising along, comes across a lake and feels like he’s gone too far, and realises his GPS missed the turn off … damn! He takes this as a sign and carries on to Tetovo to cross over at a standard border post (where they tell him there is a border post in Mavrovo … damn). While taking a break in Gostivar he also meets a security guard who shares tea and his story of life in Macedonia.
Sam and Amand head back into Albania, and ride some roads that has more curves than the Transfăgărășan, although they’re not quite as smooth. We are dominated by amazing views with mountains all around us. As we pass through the small villages the kids run out to watch us ride by, they hold out their hands for high fives to which we are happy to oblige. After passing under this absolutely stunning rock wall (which we couldn’t even get a photo to slightly do it justice) Sam realises he’s been down these roads before on one of his previous trips. Amusingly, Amand has now entered and left Albania twice and not been in the country for more than four hours total!
We all arrive in Prizren (not prison) just 20 mins apart, and share our stories of the day over some whisky from the hip flask and another cut throat shave by a nice young Kosovan guy. He was happy to keep his shop open an extra hour to give us all a shave. We found out how little they earn in Kosovo and given it was only 1 euro for the shave, gave him a bit extra.
We were keen to meet with some locals, so found a nice local restaurant for some grilled meat. We’ve had so much grilled meat on this trip it’s getting ridiculous now! We then find a fantastic little bar with a selection of single malts, the first for pretty much the whole trip. We get chatting to the bar owner who is a biker too and part of the local bike club. He shows us photos of hundreds of bikers at his tiny little bar. We discuss life in Kosovo with him, the gist of which is that people are more interested in looking forwards than backwards. And fair enough we suppose.
We wake the next morning and again decide to split for a bit. Sam heads straight for Dubrovnik, Croatia so as to have two nights there. He heads back across Albania while Amand and Steve feel like exploring more of the Balkans and head north through Kosovo and into Montenegro.
Kosovo, a partially recognised state, is clearly still in a state of flux – for instance, road signs are written in both Albanian and Serbian, however most of the Serbian Cyrillic text has been graffitied over. It’s a constant reminder of Kosovo’s desire to separate itself from Serbia. Kosovo also uses the Euro rather than the Serbian dinar for currency, another obvious bird-flipping gesture to its neighbour.
Memorials to those who died in the Kosovo war of 1998-99 are everywhere. In Desan we stop to take a photo of a particularly stark memorial. A friendly old man says hello and invites us for tea at a cafe across the street. When we say tea, he has a shot of some unknown white spirit. We chat in our respective broken German, say auf wiedersehen, and hit the road once more. Just up the road Amand has a “moment” as a van brakes hard in front of him, but its brake lights aren’t working. He spots it just in time and locks up on the incredibly slippery roads and slides up behind the van, stopping just 1 inch from the back of the van. The heart was certainly pumping a little after that, whew!
From Desan we head back up into the mountains and leave Kosovo for Montenegro. It is the longest piece of no-mans-land between two borders we’ve seen by a long way. If we’d known, it would have been super cool to camp up there in limbo! The mountains continue to have that growing autumnal tinge and in the growing dusk the colour is spectacular.
After dusk we ride along some windy back roads past Chinese-owned industrial sites towards Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. We have a couple of pretty hairy moments along the way. Where all the trucks have been coming out of the muddy industrial sites onto the road there’s basically no grip. There was quite a lot of this and one particularly bad spot where Amand had a bit of a skate, fortunately just a scare and nothing worse. A little later Steve is heading around a tight corner and almost has a head-on with a car, fortunately there was grip so just another scare and nothing worse!!!!
As we enter Podgorica the main road is cordoned off by police. Ruh-roh! A protest or riot perhaps? Nearing the centre we see the lights of the stadium. Ahh! Probably a football match… Hmmmm… this could make finding a hotel awkward!
We try one hotel and it’s full. It’s then we meet Nemanja, a 24-year-old Podgorican, who tells us that Montenegro are playing against Denmark – a very important World Cup qualifier. He helps us find a hotel and decides to be our nightlife guide. We share the remainder of our whisky while he shares his fool proof way of getting girls to kiss him, then we hit the town. Montenegro loses 1:0, but the night is young. Long story short we return to our hotel at 5:30am. We’ll pay for this tomorrow/today!
