Jonesberries

We ended up behind a bus at the Macedonian border. The bus was having problems getting through and angry bus passengers were everywhere. We showed our updated car documents in a fancy plastic folder. Andrew noted before that the truckers show a plastic sleeve with insurance documents, listing the names of the countries, showing on one side and ownership papers showing his name on the other. Andrew organized his paperwork accordingly and handed over the car documents and passports, including the dog passport. We got through the border without being asked to pay anything extra – including the special truck insurance they were asking for at the other border. I think we have been going through too many borders lately.

We have finally made it to Macedonia. Andrew will have his meeting and we can slow down the pace a bit.

His meeting is at Lake Ohrid. We spent the day in the town of Ohrid. Food is cheap here – even restaurants.

Saw some fun signs. Should we show it to Sam or do you think it will go to his head?

All the locals recommended staying at camp Gradiste about 30 km from the town. WOW!

Not too shabby of a campsite eh? When we came into the campsite we asked how much. He said he normally charges 10 euro for 2 people and a camping car. Andrew said, “we also have children and a dog.”

“Ahhhh, that’s ok, 10 euro”.

Oh yeah! 10 euro for this!

The facilities are pretty basic. We have electicity, washing up facilities, squat toilets, hot shower (notice I say singular hot shower, there are also 2 cold showers and 3 non-functioning showers). As we have noticed this seems typical for the post-communist world – the facilities can be a bit old-fashioned and run-down but it is very clean, inexpensive and run by people who are friendly and wonderful.

Had an amazing day. Taking out our little blow up boat on the lake and hiking around the coast.

There are these small areas along the coast connected by small, rickety bridges. In these little areas We found such great treasures.

There are clubs in some that open up for 2 months in the summer. If I was in my 20s I would love to discover such hidden clubs for hanging out with the locals. These clubs will start opening up in about a week. The only access to these clubs is the rickety bridges or the narrow stone steps leading up the cliff.

It was great going across these little walkways around the rocks. At one we found an old chapel. How old? Oh, only 1500s!!!

We lit some candles in there. Andrew said that he was lighting his for peace among religious people around the world.

The girls have spent alot of time by the edge of the lake.

and in the lake.

We have also spent alot of time in our little blow up boat. Even Inigo has gone out with us in the boat.

This morning me and Abi got up around 7 and took the boat to the town about 2 km away for groceries. Tomorrow it is Hannah and TJs turn with dad.

What a great place to spend a bit of time. It is beautiful, inexpensive, a bit rough and reasonably undiscovered.

So, we were now ready for another attempt to go into Macedonia but we had to go the long way around and try to get into Greece first.

Greece was so easy to get into.  The man looks into the front of the truck and sees all these faces looking, including the dog who was trying his hardest to look human, as he peers over the driver’s seat. The man chuckles and says “family!” We go right through. I love going into countries that love big families.

We drove through some mountainous, green, wooded roads for a place to stop and – nothing. Finally, after about a half an hour we found a couple of restaurants.

This ended up being quite a surreal experience. Me and Andrew went in to get a drink and ask permission to park for the night. We walk in to find 3 stoic greeks clad in black. Each person was sitting at a separate table. They were intently watching an old movie about Greece from America with Greek subtitles. After our drink. Andrew was paying and asking permission to park. I was looking around in social fashion. I saw a birdcage and thought I would go see the pretty bird. The bird was laying down dead in the bottom of the cage with its legs curled up underneath. OK, weird.

The next morning Inigo had a good play with the local dogs while Andrew got a coffee. Unfortunately they did not see fit to start up the coffee machine. Andrew had what the locals were having – Nescafe with sweetened condensed milk. We drove on. After 3 days of being together we left Will at the biggest crossroads we could find in Greece. We headed, once again, for the Macedonian border.  As I was not sure if the family would make it across the border I was checking out places in Greece to stay out while Andrew was at his meetings in Macedonia.

Albania, just the word brings questions and fear. Stories of the poverty. Stories of the horrible roads. Fear of the unknown. Excitement and wonder of the unknown. You might find this hard to believe but me and Andrew have both been intrigued by Albania since before we knew each other. Something about what grows in the dark and in isolation. So Albania has always held a special place in our hearts. The “most closed of communist countries”. The “poorest country in Europe”.  It also had this “familiarity to us. Sometimes reminding us of our beloved Czech Republic, that we lived in for a few years, and sometimes of Morocco, still very dear to us.

First of all, the border. We get to the border and handed over our, ever decreasing, wad of passports and vehicle papers. He asks us to go over to the side to the bus lane. While we are waiting a couple of nice men come up to my window and start chatting. I thought they were bus drivers because they had tags around their necks. While I am chatting with these friendly men the Montenegro man brings back the passports and says we are finished. The man I was talking to asked us if we had our passports now and bid us well. Andrew was shocked. Looking for another border crossing to enter Albania and it wasn’t there.  We realized the men I was chatting with WERE the Albanian border officials. When Andrew realized this, turned around the truck and went back to the border to buy insurance from the shacks on the Albanian side. He remembered that our insurance policy for our truck specifically mentions Albania as a country that they never cover. After chatting with the nice man in the booth for a while and handing over 27 euro he emerges with a very official document that declares us insured.

Lots of animals on the road.

and everywhere.

Sometimes the road here – well – just changes. Sometimes a new road starts sinking into the swamp it was built on or sometimes it is just gone.  I think I can sum up some of the road problems with this quote from TJ. “Dad, where did the road go?” Perhaps there is a new fancy road and then it is just gone. We went on a divided highway with cars going both directions on both halfs.

Andrew had a boyish fascination with the Albanian “for sale signs” signs.

Look closely.

Now we are not yet in the habit of picking up a lot of hitchhikers but this guy – well, we just had to pick him up. We saw him first in Montenegro. Apparently, when he sees a full vehicle that has no room he is in the habit of stretching out his arms and giving them a big smile. He did the same to us, not knowing we actually had room. We thought, “what a nice young man. Andrew added, he looks british”.  The kids really wanted us to pick him up but we were looking for a place to stop. An hour later we saw him AGAIN! Hitchhiking on the side of the road with his big pack. STILL, we didn’t pick him up because – well, surely we will find a place to stop soon. The next day in Albania. WE SAW HIM AGAIN! Yeah, I know, we are travelling at the speed of a hitchhiker. We pulled up to give him a ride but the horse and cart ahead of us gave him a lift first. “Well”, said Andrew, “I think we will see him again. And sure enough, several hours later, there he was on the side of the road again!. Weird huh! His name is Will. He is from Stirling, Scotland and just as nice as he looks. I mean, look at this face – could you resist?

So, after picking up Will we went into Tirane.

We found some amazing apartment buildings. Never seen apartment buildings painted like this. I love it. Without much money for remodelling you can make even  the most run down and mundane of apartments into a work of art. Abi took just a few photos.

Driving through the middle of Tirane we meticulously followed signs to Ebanese until there were no more. Apparently, sometimes they just start ripping up roads with no indication of where to go. After circling the town and finding lots of really great painted apartment buildings we could only find signs out to Durres. Figuring out that sometimes the quickest way to your destination is the opposite way we went towards the coast instead of Macedonia in an effort to take the LONG way around the capital of Albania.

We found a very nice campground down 5 km of crumbling road going through a drained swamp. The campground itself will be great but the road there would probably ruin a white plastic. The only other campers were in 4 wheel drives, for some reason. The campground owner was friendly and wonderful. Dang, we have yet to meet an unfriendly Albanian.

On our way to Macedonia – We got a great meal at a tacky roadside restaurant.

Got some puffy pillow cheese things from the bottom of a woman’s house and practiced English with her young daughter. Bought some Turkish delight and ice cream from a village shop.

Got our car washed.

We must come back! We went to the border. Left Albania, Were refused entry into Macedonia. Turned around, re-entered Albania. Went around the lake. Waved to some dutch people we met the nite before. Went to a village at the bottom of the lake. Found an internet café. Printed off more car documents. Met more nice people. Bought Elizabeth a condensed milk tin with a panda on the side, we collect the strangest things. Went towards the Greek border and left Albania again.

You see,  Albania loves us to. They welcome us back again and again.

Didn’t know exactly what to think of Montenegro. We were just passing through really. Spent about 24 hours there. No more. It wasn’t as touristy as Croatia that seemed to have a campground every 5 minutes.  We only counted 6 campgrounds on the entire coast. It seems a lot of people never seem to venture south of Dubrovnik. Thinking they would fall off the end of the world.

Montenegro was beautiful. The border was more difficult, and expensive, than we ever imagined. He was quite quick at the border to say that we were not in Europe anymore. Funny because they use the euro and have European Union placards everywhere. First we were asked to pay an “ecological fee”. Turned out it was some kind of road tax sticker for your car. They said that would put us back 80 euro.  Cars are only about 10 or 15 but we were no car. We got them down to 50 but that was only the beginning. We needed insurance because “they were not Europe”. They wanted 138 euro for insurance. Cars and “white plastics” cost 10. Andrew pleaded hardship. He showed them the papers that said that our vehicle cost a tenth of the cost of a “white plastic”.  They said no we were a truck. We took out our maps out and calculated the cost of petrol to circle Montenegro. We paid. We spent one night.

Hannah braved out sleeping on the roof in the rain and this was her view in the morning. Not too shabby, eh!

Montenegro still seemed a bit touristy but more geared to tour buses than motorhomes. When we stopped at the campground for the night Andrew and Hannah went in search of food and were really disappointed at the amount and type of food they found. They said, “very touristy”.

The roads were pretty good until you got close to the Albanian border. We were told to stay close to the coast. Forget the look of that big green line (road) on the map – it is a lie. It is just a tiny mountain road. We didn’t stay right on the coastal road all the way. We think we made a mistake at Bar and turned inland. We ended up on another small mountain road.

A big adventure, for our truck, on this road was this “cave/tunnel”. We were no longer on the same road as the trucks and buses, always a concern. The closer we got to Albania, the smaller the road got. Then we saw the cave/tunnel. We weren’t sure if we would fit through the tunnel. We pulled the truck over to the “side” of the road.

Andrew broke off a stick to the right height and walked the distance of the tunnel with it, checking it for our height. He determined that it was passable but not without some “tricky bits”. I walked ahead of the truck to guide it through.

All in all, we didn’t spend much time in Montenegro. Really not enough to discover the wonder of it all but it didn’t grip us and ask us to look closer. The border was quite expensive. The people weren’t the friendliest but it was “nice”.

Went thru Western Europe.

After the Dali Museum we dropped off Alana in Italy. We miss giggly, colourful Alana. Now we are only 5. Such a small group. So much less than the 9 we were just a short time ago.

We stopped off in Venice. Dad took lots of touristy pictures of the younger girls feeding the pigeons.

I took the girls to the Leonardo Da Vinci. There were all sorts of machines created from his drawings. We got to touch them and crank them and go inside some of them. Quite fun. We expected Hannah to be in heaven. TJ looked for bones, again, and found them on the wall in some of the paintings. We told her about how DaVinci opened up dead bodies to see how peoples bodies worked on the inside. She thot that was great and would like to do that as well if they let her keep the bones.

We saw some amazing masks in Venice. We bought some plain ones and painted them ourselves.

Andrew has been working on the car electrics. Mixed success.

Abigail got my attention at the grocery store. “Mom”, she said, “That guy is named Jesus”. I told her how that is a reasonably popular name in Spain and Italy. One night in Italy we were parked in one of the  really small and overcrowded rest areas in Italy and this truck driver told us a much better, hidden place to park. Later, we looked at his truck, It said Jesus on the side of it. Thot that was funny so took a photo.

We are now in Croatia. We love Croatia. Not much internet. Sorry for the sparse blog entries. We were last here before TJ was born. We have made it down to Dubrovnik this time. It is a great old city but way too many tourists. We kinda like the hidden fishing villages and the deserted areas best. We found one campground, north of Split, that only cost us 13 euros, no passports needed, no electricity, no trash. Just a couple of clean toilets and a solar shower. An old olive grove. Nice people. We liked that place. Took our blow up Canoe out into the crystal clear water.

We head for places beyond tomorrow. Getting closer and closer to Macedonia. We need to be there by the 9th.

So this is where we have been on this last leg – Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Croatia and Bosnia/Herzegovnia.

Highlights.

Spain – Dali Museum, Beneficio, Salami.

France – great picnic areas to stop at for the night, Motorhome shops, FOOD.

Monaco – well, didn’t see much of it, couldn’t find where to park our big truck – but we went through this tiny country.

Italy – Lasagna, Pizza, Pizza, Pizza – always great pizza – we love pizza – Venice – ice cream – food – downside, can they make their rest areas any smaller. We had to stop so early in the day just to get a spot to park at the rest areas for the nite – poor truck drivers.

Croatia – bakeries, small cheap campgrounds, crystal clear water.

Bosnia/Herzegovnia – we only went through about 7 km of it but it was quite thrilling it being in the news and all. We saw gunshots in a sign. Ooooooh! We saw a bolder in the road and the car that hit it. Ooooooh! What excitement!

What fun. Bit tired. lLots of driving. Looking forward to staying put some when we get to Macedonia. Also, looking forward to seeing some friends.