Wow! What an adventure; a thrilling and long day we experienced today. We had been anchored at Budva, Montenegro, for a few days so far. We planned to go to Virpazar Skadar Lake National Park, which the border between Albania & Montenegro cuts in half. Even though here in Budva there are tourist agents that can arrange our tour of the lake, we wanted to avoid that and just tried to explore the place with our own style and freedom. Our mission today is to go there with public transport and rent a kayak to the lake. This was a recommendation from some other sailors we met back in Tivat, who had done the tour but this option sounded cool.
We started the morning when Pooky’s (our dingy) engine doesn't want to start. Captain Tim kinda has a guessing game what the problem is here when engine not starting. And first guess is, maybe the spark plug. So Tim cleaned the spark plug and guess what happens after that; oh yeah, the engine starts roaring again! We headed to the marina to tie up and get moving.
We continued our mission by walking from the marina to the bus station. It took about 17mins / around 1.3km. It is a nice walk on a Sunday morning. I enjoyed it. While we are walking near the bus station, we heard loud music coming from a hotel/restaurant, and yeah, it is a wedding! Look interesting. The whole street just feels so alive, despite only early in the morning.
When we arrive at the bus station and want to buy tickets, the guy told Tim that they don't have a direct bus to Virpazar, so we need to take a bus to Sutomore which costs us 9 euros for 2 people. And from Sutomore we can take a bus or train to Virpazar. So with some guessing, we figured it out. The bus departs at the exact time.
Since today is Sunday, the bus has a different timetable. We don't want to wait for the bus from Sutomore to Virpazar, so we decided to take the train which leaves a bit earlier than the bus. And the distance between the bus station and the train station was not far. We are walking to the train station while eating a freshly-baked meat-filled Burek, which is like a traditional Balkan pastry I think. We are crazy bout it. So good!
From the Virpazar train station we need to walk again to the entrance of the lake which is like 1.1km or around 13mins walking. While we are walking, suddenly there is one car stopping next to us. There is one Montenegro guy asking where are we going. We say we are going to the lake. And he says come, come inside, I can send you there. It's free. It's our "Montenegro hospitality to the tourist."
We both are hesitating at first to go inside a stranger's car; is it a scam or what? He also said yesterday a tourist got into an accident while walking to the lake, because there is no walking path. After a while, we think it's a small town, and maybe this guy really meant what he said, and he looks nice. We do try to think the best of people, and not write them off immediately, even in these tourist-filled places. So we say ok, and I was like, hell yeah - no need to walk! Let's go. So inside the car he said he can walk with us to the tourist center. He can show the lake's map to us. When we arrived, he brings us to a restaurant. And he says sit sit and offered us a bowl of donuts. He says It's like courtesy to the guest. We politely say no because we already ate Burek (which truly is so filling!).
So he starts showing us the map of the lake. He says alot blablablabla, and suddenly he turns into a salesman. He says we should take a 2 hour boat trip with him, which costs 50euros for 2 people. And we say no. We say we want to take the kayak. He said now is low season, so no kayaks. Too windy. And the waves are going to make us seasick - Derr we live on a boat! After that, he says ok 25euros for 2 people. He suddenly half price, so obviously we are now onto the game he is playing. And again we say no to him, we say we want to kayak, but atleast look around town first. He started to get very offended with us, because we keep saying no to whatever he offered, whilst being polite and saying thank you. From a nice guy, he instantly turns to asshole! He even makes fun of us like we have not appreciated his gesture to help us. He said something like ‘we got control problem here’. Me and Tim are like... What?? It's a sign! We better get out of this restaurant. We say thank you for his help and good bye. When we walk to the town, Tim told me it's just a way of local guys trying to screw up tourists. The key is to get the tourists in the car first before they go to the town and sugarcoat them with his "nice service" .Its all business! Maybe we have forgotten about this type of process - but now reminded! While walking around, within 5 minutes we found a place to rent a kayak. So what the guy said before was totally bullshit.
The guys with the kayaks were a little more chilled and the old fella couldn’t speak much english so put us onto his son Ivan. Ivan explained about the lake and process. We tried to negotiate with him on the price, but he wouldn’t budge from 20euros for unlimited time & including the national park fees (although we would be surprised if anything got passed to them). Considering this was now about 1pm, it was pretty pricey for a floating piece of plastic for a few hours, but we settled on it. At least we have the freedom. His last words were ‘here is my phone number if you have trouble, I have speed boat, but I'm sure you won't need it’. He explained where to go and showed us on the map, but never gave us a map. Only later we thought it would be useful to have one! Stupid us!
We start paddling the kayak, and I didn't get the rhythm to sync paddling yet, so we do like a zig zag with boats in and out of the tight channel to exit the river leading to the lake. The chance to get into a collision seemed pretty high, and the other boat captains and passengers seemed to think it was funny making their waves as big and close as possible to see if we would capsize. So I let Tim do the paddling. The channel was about 2km long - when Ivan mentioned that we hadn’t really considered how long that was. The river water wasn’t clear and surrounded by mangroves and thick reeds, so I keep on thinking is there a croc or snake underneath the swamp-like water.
Out of channel though - whoahhh, the view is different. The lake is so wide, and I can see a lot of birds just standing on the old branches or just hanging around on the water. This lake also known as an important reserve for wetland birds in Europe.
After me paddling and make us do the zig zag route again, it really made us tired, so we found this beach on the side after passing under the highway bridge. It had a restaurant and beach chairs. When we arrived at the beach, there was no one there, so we just lay on the beach chairs to have a rest. Suddenly like 5-10mins later, there was a boat coming toward the beach, and I'm thinking ‘oh please don't make us go’! Let us have a rest for a while! And yeah the guy actually is the owner of the restaurant and brought a russian couple there. Well, we can only assume that. He didn't say anything about us lying on the beach chairs, but looked at us a bit weird, so we just relaxed a bit and then went to speak with him and bought some drinks from him.
After a break for 45mins, we continued our kayaking over towards some small islands on the lake, and found a huge field of water lillies. Tim wanted to take pictures there, but to go between the huge field of water lillies made me think about the crocs and snakes again! I tried to calm and relax myself. Nothing happened pun; luckily the pictures turned out good! After that we go through the other island, where flocks of hundreds of birds were flying around like crazy. The sun by that time was going down a bit, so the colours are always changing and it gives you a different kind feeling, vibe and view. The silhouette of the mountains, the reflection on the water and the light of the sun. It is mesmerizing! For sure we couldn’t get this on a boat tour speeding around to 10 places in 2 hours.
On the way back to town in the later afternoon, people on the boat tours kept on taking our pictures. I felt like we are part of tourist attraction too. Or is it because they think these idiots are crazy paddling around, just like doing a torture tour. By the way we are paddling like 4hours! Alot for us, for sure not alot for other people, I know!
[It also reminded us of a few weeks earlier at anchor near Tivat, where a big group of tourists were swimming around the island and past our boat. They had 2 dinghies as support boats; we spoke to one of them and she said, like she also couldn't believe it also, that ‘these people pay for us to take them on a 5km swim in various places around montenegro everyday for a week’. We named this torture tourism (now in october the water is getting pretty cold!)].
In the final stretch at the sun was going down, we entered the swampy 2km river again, pretty keen to get back as the sun was setting quick. It would have been pretty scary in the dark out there! We powered down the river and got back to Virpazar town at around 5pm.
We celebrate our victory by eating some local lake trout and carp at a restaurant set out on an old wooden boat! So good! Here sunset comes quite early, so by around 6pm it is already dark. We planned to take the bus at 713pm back to Sutomore. And yeah, once the sun is down, the temperature quickly goes down too (so stupid, we didn't bring any warm clothes. With wet shorts, slippers and singlet. I felt like going to have hypothermia. Over tak?? Hahah.. Lucky got rain jacket. Ok la lil bit.)
Out to the main road to wait for the bus; it didn't have any road lights. So we were waiting for the bus in the dark and cold. In my mind, I'm having a thought is it going to be ok? We are not going to get robbed or killed ke? Its mostly because while we are waiting, there was one car just staying there and not moving. What the hell is he doing? But after a while actually he was waiting for another car to come and he guided that car to somewhere down the side road.
So back to waiting for the bus. On the website schedule, the bus will arrive at 7.13 but until 7.20 no sign of the bus coming. I said to Tim, should we just take the train, because the train will leave at 7.49. And we still need time to walk to the train station. Tim said, let's wait another 2min, just in case. And boom, after 2mins, we saw some big lights from a vehicle, and using our headtorch (luckily did bring that!) we signalled to the bus driver. This was the third vehicle we had tried to signal to stop, and this one definitely was a bus and not a truck! He saw us and stopped. Phew, lucky we got the right bus too!
The bus to Sutomore took about 30mins, then we had to wait for 30mins at the local grill cafe next to the bus ‘station’ (stop). We thought that would be better than inside the ‘automat club’ (a mini casino that are everywhere in montenegro) or the betting cafe watching the greyhound races. The bus to Budva came at 825pm on time, but there were no seats spare, so we stood the whole way to budva (a bit over an hour) - ready to scream at the bus driver if he missed seeing a corner, as he was speaking on the phone and to other passengers so much in the pitch black night.
We arrived in Budva, and walked from the bus station to the marina (via the supermarket) to get Pooky and get back to Ribellu. When Tim wanted to start the engine, Pooky makes a same problem like this morning. Starting at first, then dying after a few seconds then not wanting to start again. We don't feel like we want to paddle back to Ribellu. Enough paddling for one day! We both are so tired now. Tim tries a few things and after about 10mins, Pooky's engine starts roaring again (very wierd these issues as the motor has been really good all season. Maybe the fuel is getting bad after 3 months). We don't want to waste anymore time afraid the engine will cut out again, so we start motoring and off to Ribellu. Safe and sound back at home!
Luckily, all went well and we are in Ribellu again. We proud of what we have achieved today after long journey today. Got a lot of excitement and very memorable experience we had today. Love and enjoy every second of it!
Now let's go to sleep. Uh, nope! Battery almost 50%. So end up charging the battery until12am!
