Well I had wanted to visit Montenegro as it looked very pretty and I felt that this was the furthest south that this trip would take us. This was a bad decision followed by bad decision and we wasted a whole day of the trip for very little.

We were up and out of our campsite early (for us) and on the road towards Montenegro knowing that we had a few borders to cross to get there. We started in Croatia and were quite quickly at the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina - this is where the trouble started. When we arrived on the border we were asked to produce our passports AND our papers for the motorhome. This should have been no problem we had put together a pack with the identication and insurance etc. that we should have needed. However, and eagled eyed Sarah (whilst queuing at the border) that the Green Card had been dated incorrectly by the insurance company... 1 month out! this meant that it was not valid for any of our journey. Fortunately, the border guard did not notice the error and let us through.

Highlights of the Bosnia Border.

Once over the border, we headed straight through the country and on towards Montenegro. As we approached we noticed that a queue had formed before the border suggesting that it was going to be a lenghty wait. Actually, it didn't take more than 20 mins but at the Montenegro border control, the guard noticed that our document was out of date. With some discussion, they made us buy their insurance for €20 (€15 for the insurance and we think the other €5 went in to their pockets!). We dutifully paid the fee, took the hand written document and were soon on our way. Not long after leaving the border we hit roadworks. It was chaos. Drivers were driving down the wrong side of the road towards oncoming traffic narrowly avoiding casuing an accident. We waited in the traffic for at least an hour an moved about 200 yards. This was so frustrating. After what seemed and eternity we started to move towards the traffic control lights, everyopne seemed to be ignoring these and trying to drive through getting stuck with big vehicles coming each way. The road looked a lot like it had been chewed up and spat out so was a deeply unpleasant 3 or 4km throught he rutts, ramps and potholes. As we left the dust behind us we headed towards the Bay of Kotor. Sadly, although it has the potential to be a lovely stretch of coastline, the surrounding building were either run down, falling down or looking deserted. this continued as we headed around this stretch of water. By lunchtime, we were both not feeling the love for Montenegro so were already making plans for a quick cycle, followed by getting out of the country before nightfall.

Bay of Kotor, Montenegro

We found a nice layby, off the main road, unloaded the bikes and found a quite road along the edge of the water. Still all we saw for the majority of the ride were more derelict and delapidated. It looked as though everyone has simply moved away. There were some sad looking shops that would have sold trashy tourist momentoes, but otherwise no sign of life.

So once the bikes were quickly loaded back on, we quickly set our destination for Plitvice Lakes in Croatia deciding that we would make good headway that afternoon and hopefully get to within 100 miles or so before stopping for the night. The borders had something to say about that.

We followed the sign posts away from the Bay of Kotor towards the border passing through many mines, a few goats, a couple of sheep but little other signs of life. When we finally arrived at the Bosnia border we again queued for some time. Once we eventually got to the border control, the keen guard noted that our paperwork was out of date. He insisted that we must have a valid permit (insurance for Bosnia) as they are not an EU country. He explained that this was difficult as it was a weekend and we didn't arrive there until late in the afternoon, so we would be forced to wait for them to arrange for a notary to drive to us at the border, we would have to pay for a permit for a minimum of 7 days. As we looked over the border there was no sign of a town for miles, so we wondered how long this woudl cause us to be stopped. However, 30 minutes later, this yound man came speeding up the road and promptly jumped out of his car. He strolled over to us explaining that we had to pay €40 for the permit and €5 for his petrol! he and the other guards were very friendly about it but we were losing travelling time AND hemorrhaging money.

With the formalities out the window, we again got on the road. Initially the scenery was quite barren and very sparsely populated. However, within the hour, we summited one of the hills on our route to be greeted with some stunning scenery. The mountains and valleys rival those that we saw when in New Zealand in 2015.

View from the roadside, Bosnia

When we finally made it to the border between Bosnia and Croatia on the outskirts of Dubrovnik we were greeted with yet another queue of traffic. This time it seemed to be that cars, busses and motorcycles were queued at the Bosnia border AND again at the Croatia border some 1.5km further down the road. Without dragging it out we lost another nearly 3 hours getting through the checks. We were becoming really deflated as we had wasted over 5 hours sitting in queues at borders... we learnt that Montenegro could not have been pretty enough to waste that much of our time.

So having passed made it through Dubrovnik and on to the Bosnia border once again, we finally crossed our last border for the day at around 9pm, 4 or 5 hours later than planned. This meant we had to change our travel plan as we would never make it close to Plitvice that night. So we swapped over the driving and continued travelling until just after midnight and stayed in a rest area in the motorway services. It was functional and not too much road noise, but we were ust pleased that the day was finally over.

The sun setting as we left Dubrovnik, Croatia