Thursday - Friday, July 25 - 26, 2024, Plav
Plav isn't very large but we were staying in the Muslim side of town with two nearby mosques that compete for their Adhans (calls to prayer) to be heard. The apartment was only €30 per night. We don't see any backpackers here, even though we're much closer to the "Peaks of the Balkans" route.
For dinner we went to "Swiss Doner", a small cafe/restaurant on the main square. Patsy had trout and I had beef ribs, both very good. As we started walking back to our apartment we noticed the police had closed off the main street. We were informed that closing off the main street through town is a regular evening occurrence so the children can play in toy cars. Sure enough, there was a line of small electric cars and soon little kids, some barely tall enough to sit in the driver's seat, were driving these cars up and down the closed road. They were surprisingly adept drivers and took turns sharing the cars. We never saw any arguments about sharing.
Then the girls in costume started showing up as part of the 24-day-long blueberry festival. Tonight was the night when they'd be performing the traditional dances of all the Western Balkans, not just of Montenegro so we had to hang around to watch. There must have been about a thousand people there out of this town of 3,000+ but, as far as we could tell, we were the only tourists from outside the Western Balkans.
It's quite the contrast to the large cities in Europe where the residents are becoming (understandably) hostile to (over)tourism. People engaged us in friendly conversation and expressed both surprise and delight that we'd travelled all the way from California to visit their little town. It was quite charming.
Saturday - Sunday, July 27 - 28, 2024, Plav to Vusanje
Initially, we planned to backpack today along the Peaks of the Balkans route to Vusanje but yesterday evening Patsy said she didn't feel up to it so I bought bus tickets (€2.10 for both of us) for the 12:10 bus to Gusinje. We arrived at the Plav bus station around noon, but the bus never showed up.
We thought we'd wait for the next bus but a taxi showed up and the driver quoted us €15, so we said okay. It was a good idea to take the taxi because it was hot and walking from Gusinje to Vusanje would have been miserable. The taxi driver didn't speak English and didn't know exactly where to drop us off so he overshot and dropped us off at an intersection from where we had to walk back, downhill thankfully.
We were the only people staying at the guest house. Our hostess asked us if we'd prefer a double bed or twin beds. I told her a double would be fine but, later, I realized this was probably a mistake because I think we got the smallest room. It felt really cramped, especially after the apartment in Plav.
We've found that the best places to stay are the older apartments that have been modernised. They're a lot larger than newly constructed apartments and tend also to have better amenities.
Our hostess, Marietta, said half board is €35 per person so I asked her what was for dinner. "Traditional food, Chicken". Oh, sure. I paid her €70. She showed us to our room and we took showers.
Dinner was so enormous that we couldn’t eat it all. Salad, grah corba (bean soup), grilled chicken with fried vegetables, burek, rolls. We went to bed stuffed.
After an enormous breakfast, we set out to climb Mt. Bora (2,106m). We would have traversed this peak if we'd backpacked here but we decided to do an out-and-back hike. It was quite a climb and we didn't see anyone else until we neared the summit. Then we ran into Dutch, Danish, Polish, and British hikers, in addition to a shepherd and his dogs herding a flock of sheep. These dogs were very well-behaved towards us. They basically ignored us as we melted into the middle of their flock.
Dinner tonight consisted of trout with carrots and potatoes, chicken pasta, and salad. I managed to eat my three plate-fulls but Patsy couldn't manage all of hers.
12 miles, 3,800' gain.
Monday, July 29, 2024, Vusanje to Grebaje
Yesterday being Sunday, before I could kick her under the table, Patsy asked our hostess, Marietta, if she'd gone to church. "Mysliman", Marietta reminded Patsy. Mysliman is Albanian for Muslim. Albanians don't like to speak Serbish and the're two distinct languages. For example, "thank you" is "hvala" in Serbish and "faleminderit" in Albanian.
Marietta advised us to go to Grebaje. We walked the 3 or 4 miles to Gusinje, where we stopped for cappuccinos in the pedestrian-only main street before shopping for drinks, fruit, and vegetables. We thought we'd take a taxi to Grebaje but taxis are never to be found when we're looking for one.
We started walking. It was warm, but not unbearably hot. Eventually, a German couple, Stefan and Ulica, stopped and gave us a ride the last 3 or 4 miles to the lodging we'd booked for the next two nights. In return, we paid their park entrance fees (€3 each).
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