Cycling From Croatia To Montenegro

On May 12, 2009 I left my third story apartment in Orebic, Croatia and cycled for three days down the coast of Croatia and Montenegro to the small city of Tivat where I will be spending the next 30 days.

It’s always a little hard to say goodbye to a place you’ve called home for the last 30 days. Especially when you know you may never come back. In the photo below I am looking back at my temporary home in Croatia. The city of Orebic is on the right and the island/city of Korcula is on the left.

The first ten kilometers leaving Orebic were the worst. There was a huge hill I had to climb and the heat was incredible. I did eventually make it to the top though, and the view of the Peljesac peninsula was fantastic.

After about five hours of riding, I finally reached the city of Ston, which is a small walled city that lies at the end of the Peljesac peninsula, where the peninsula meets mainland Croatia.

It started to get dark around 7 PM, I was still on the road and I didn’t know where I was going to sleep for the night. My original plan was to simply roll off into the bushes and set up camp wherever I could, but the bushes along the side of the road were so overgrown that climbing into them would have been a terrible struggle. Plus, I was covered in sweat and a shower sounded like the best thing in the world.

So as I approached the small town of Trsteno, I found a campground and asked the man sitting outside the camp (who had a squinty eye) how much it would cost for me to sleep there for the night. He told me it would be 30 Kuna (about $5.50 USD). I gladly accepted, set up my tent, took a shower, and walked across the street to order some pizza from a nearby restaurant that was just closing down for the night. By the time I got back to camp with the pizza, it was completely dark, so I sat under a street light and ate my pizza. I was the only person in the campground.

I took my time packing up and hitting the road the next morning.

After just an hour or two of riding, I reached the city of Dubrovnik. You can read more about my visit to Dubrovnik here.

After leaving Dubrovnik as fast as humanly possible, I cycled a short distance further, planning to find a place to camp near the city of Gruda, Craotia. But onced I reached the city, there was no campground available and because it was so early in the day (only 3:30 PM) I decided to ride into Montenegro a day early. The photo below was taken just moments before I cycled out of Croatia and into Montenegro.

The border patrol official in Croatia didn’t ask or say a thing to me. He just took my passport and stamped it. Then I cycled about a mile down a steep hill before reaching the Montenegro border station. After a short wait behind two or three cars, I pulled up to the patrol booth on my bike and the man inside repeated my name back to me. “Darren William?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. (William is my middle name)

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I’ve rented an apartment in Tivat,” I told him at first. “But I’m riding all the way to Greece. Or that’s the plan at least.”

“Greece?” he asked.

“Uh huh.” I mummbled.

He then looked up at me, grabbed his stamp and checked me into Montenegro. I had made it to Montenegro!

The terrain after the border crossing was mountainous and I hadn’t eaten hardly a thing all day, so I hit the wall as soon as I entered the city of Herceg Novi.

After just a few minutes of wandering around town, I found a house offering apartments. I asked a man standing outside the building is he could help me. He said he couldn’t, but he went and found a woman, who then went and found a man who brought me into the house and showed me two rooms. The big one, he told me, was 45 Euros per night. The small one was 30 Euros. I took the small one and was happy just to have a shower.

I spent the rest of the day walking around the city, which was really a neat little place. I ordered another big pizza from a nearby restaurant and ate it back in my room while watching a Greek sitcom on TV.

In the morning, I was served a vegetarian breakfast of fruit, bread and jam – which was included in the 30 Euros I had paid for the night.

After checking out of the apartment around 11 AM, I continued cycling down the coast and reached the ferry crossing well before noon.

My plan for the day was to meet the owner of my apartment in Tivat at the ferry crossing in Lepetane at 6 PM. The ferry only took about 10 minutes to cross, so if I were to take it, I’d be 6.5 hours early. So instead of wasting an entire day just sitting around and waiting, I decided to spend my day cycling around the Bay of Kotor, one of the most famous and prominant landmarks in all of Montenegro.

On the north side of the Bay were some caves, which I stopped to explore, but didn’t go too far inside because it was pitch black and I didn’t have a proper flashlight. Plus it was kind of scary because every once in a while a pigeon would come flying out of the dark, its wings flapping right over my head.

In the middle of the Bay, on two small islands, are the famous “Our Lady Of The Rocks” and St. George Monastery.

All around the Bay there were fishermen – Some with simple poles and line. Some with massive nets and buoys.

It was so hot out that I used every chance I could to get out of the sun. In the photo below I am crouched down in the shade of a small church north of the city of Kotor. I used these shady spots as an opportunity to cool not only myself down, but to also cool my computer and other electronic devices, which were surely warming up inside my panniers.

I cycled through the city of Kotor and was really very impressed by the city. It was the third walled city I had seen in the past three days, and not being able to enter the city with my bicycle, I’ve vowed to come back on foot so I can properly explore the city.

Leaving Kotor I headed down a narrow road. So narrow in fact, that only one car could get through in most parts. Here, two buses try to pass one another and the drivers get in an argument over who should back up and who should drive through. Eventually, the bus on the left ended up moving to the side and letting the bus on the right drive through.

As I cycled back to Lepetane where I was to meet Ratko, the man who owned the apartment I would be staying at in Tivat, I was able to look across the Bay and see the small villages I had cycled through earlier in the day.

And finally, around 5 PM, I reached the Lepetane ferry, where I waited for an hour before meeting Ratko in the parking lot, loading my bike and belongings into his car, and driving back to his home in Tivat. I had made it to my new home in Montenegro!