Sea Change

August 11 - 16 Montenegro

(if you are from Owairaka Kindergarten looking for photos of Kate, look in the photograph albums on the right above)

Soon after tying up we had an enormous thunderstorm with torrential rain and thunder directly above us. We realised how much we used the outdoors when we had 9 of us inside, like a caravan in a rainy campground. When the storm passed, we went in three taxis up to the old town to an Ottoman restaurant Angela and Kate had researched. Delicious food and very different by obviously still devout Moslem (no alcohol and no pork anywhere on the menu).

The rest of Montenegro though seems very Christian with lots of Churches and lots of English spoken. At least on the coastal areas we have seen tourism is the only industry.

After a couple of days in a marina in Bar we were keen to get to some clean water so we headed to a bay Fez near Budva expecting it to be relatively empty but found it covered with 2000 umbrellas and lounge chairs. Though we were buzzed by jetskis all day it was quiet by night as we saw a traffic jam trailing, miles around the cliffs of the beach goers going back home. It was quite a contrast at our next stopover in the bay Bigova, full of very nice holiday homes, and swimmers who clearly owned the bay. We ate well at a local restaurant with its own fishing boat and strangely waiters with Montana t-shirts on and Montana on the menu(one staff member had worked in NZ). We were a little sad to leave the next day but we didn't get far before alarms sounded on the port -engine and we were heading back on the starboard engine to anchor manually and discovered the Corfu electrician had over tightened the alternator belt and it had broken. Our fish restaurateur from the night before called a mechanic, whose promised half hour arrival turned into six hours later. Clearly he was a land based mechanic, he gave a thumbs up and a great toothless grin when he got it fixed, and when I dinghied him back to land, he leapt off the dinghy with great enthusiasm but no skill leaving me to lift his enormous toolbox up to him.

Kotor is our last stop and we are anchored at the end of 16 miles of fiord like inlet, all very built up. Kotor first settled in the 3rd century BC and it too is a UNESCO world heritage site. It has been fought over and owned by many empires since. Kate, Angela, Jenny and Vicki climbed the mountain behind this morning to the fortifications high above us. Financial collapses and war fallout has resulted in tourism being all that's left, leaving a hollow but beautiful town. We have an amazing berth, just below a mountain with churches and forts rising vertically to well above the snowline.

Happy to report Deborah's new knee is performing extremely well.