The Adriatic roadtrip

After spending a day in the incredible shrinking city being smothered by the incredible growing number of tourists, we decided to rent a car and go for a drive down the southern Croatian coast into the country of Montenegro. The destination was the Bay of Kotor, an allegedly dazzling snake-like body of water surrounded by mountains on three sides. It was the southernmost fjord in Europe, said our guidebook, and it ended with the city of Kotor, a smaller and less touristy version of the walled city of Dubrovnik. And it didn’t disappoint.
It was a tortuous two-hour drive along the narrow strip of flat land between the mountains that give Montenegro its name and the Adriatic, but it was fantastic. I’m a natural beauty type of guy and aside from the snowcapped Swiss Alps, this was the most beautiful landscape I’d ever seen. Sure I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon or the Yangtzee Valley or Nepal. But I’ve been to Alaska and the Sahara and the Caribbean, and this, by far, was better.

After a coffee and a walk around Kotor (which was cute, but, eh), we were back on the road going south along the coast of this country, which had just gained its independence from Serbia 15 months prior.

The vistas never stopped.
Eventually, we got to the town of Sveti Stefan (St. Steve), a small dot of land at the end of a sandy causeway that just sticks out perfectly into the Adriatic. Almost every map or guidebook of Montenegro had a picture of Sveti Stefan on the cover. So, we had to check it out.
Unfortunately, some businessman just purchased the entire town and closed it to tourists because of renovations. Disheartened but not despondent, we got some gas and found a shady spot near this outlook to eat our leftover pizza from the night before.
Here we made a plan to take the indirect route back – through Bosnia. Why? Well, it wasn’t completely out of the way (according to our map, which we later found out has a hard time showing altitude). It was a different country, offering slightly different food, culture, architecture, language, script (Cyrillic), etc. It presented an alternative to the heavily trafficked route back into southern Croatia. And, to be honest, it was exciting.

Unlike Croatia, Bosnia still conjures up images of bombs, war, and poverty. Was it that different from Croatia? No. But NATO and the U.S. military had made a bigger stink of the atrocities there than in Croatia because of the “ethnic cleansing” that occurred. See, it’s OK for Christian folk to bomb other Christian folk, but as soon as the Christian folk start beating up the Muslim Bosniak folk, well, then we gotta step in.

So, Bosnia it was. Although only a couple kilometers away as the bird flies, as the car drives it took us almost 1.5 hours to enter this, my 23rd European country. But, although the steep mountainous inclines and the rocky, twiggy, potholed roads made driving difficult, it made the views fantastic.
Once we got far enough away from the water, it was obvious that there, indeed, wasn’t a lot of money in these parts. To be sure, I even questioned the word “town” when we passed by some of the Montenegrin hamlets along the way.

But after a mountainous one-hour drive on one-lane roads around steep, hairpin turns, we were in Bosnia. It was sunset and we were in the southern lake district of this wartorn country, driving through the rocky mountains to the town of small town of Trebina, which had a old bridge and Disney-esque church.

We didn’t want to do much in Bosnia, just get some money (Marakas), spend it on drinks (fanta and coffee), do a little shopping, and get the hell out. And that we did. It wasn’t that much different than Croatia or Montenegro. In fact, we all thought the roads were of better quality. Not what you’d expect, huh?
The next day we went to the leper island of Lokrum, just a 10-minute ferry ride from Dubrovnik to take dips in the beautiful Adriatic and to watch dummies jump of sheer cliffs. The island itself was pleasant, filled with tourists, ice cream stands, and peacocks.
The water was warm, the rocks were flat, and, heck, I had a great time doing absolutely nothing (except breaking my flipflop and then walking around for the rest of the afternoon shoeless). It was, in my opinion, the best way to end a busy, busy trip.