The second happiest day of our lives

It is said that the happiest day of your life is when you buy a boat and the second happiest day is the day you sell it and in our case anyway, I think it was true. 

Although we felt quite sad as we drew away in our camper van from our beautiful catamaran Sunday in Preveza Marina in Greece, we both felt it was the right thing to do. 

The first day of the trip to the Netherlands we headed through northern Greece towards Albania. The drive was uneventful but punctuated with multiple stops to pay tolls which was rather frustrating, not to mention expensive. 

There was a long queue at the Albanian border and before we had even crossed into the country we received a taste of what was to come – in terms of the terrible and crazy Albanian drivers!  

A number of them (all of them in shiny black high-end vehicles) drove up the outside of the queue and then tried to weasel their way into the line of cars. When that didn’t work they used their wives/girlfriends/daughters to get out of the car and go up to the drivers at the front of the queue to sweet talk their way into being let in. It worked which was annoying for the rest of us who had been waiting for over an hour to go through customs!

Albania is a strange place – the countryside is mostly quite beautiful but can be very stark and unforgiving. I think this summer must have been extremely hot as we could see evidence of severe wild fires where vast hill tops had been burnt to nothing. 

We drove through the outskirts of Gjirokaster which brought back happy memories of our visit there with our friends from home, Cathy and Peter who came from Australia to visit us on our catamaran Sunday just over a year ago. 

Around 6 pm we started to think about parking for the night. We had no clue where to stop but Jonathan noticed on the satellite navigation map that there was a river nearby so we decided to head towards it as there are nearly always car parks where there’s water!

We followed our noses down a winding and narrow road and turned off into an even smaller lane and kept going along the bumpy track until we came to a massive and totally empty car park. 

In one corner there was a building that looked like it could be a restaurant so we stopped the van and went in to ask if it would be OK to stay there for the night. 

There were no patrons in the restaurant but we did find a guy who appeared to work there so we decided to order a beer and then ask him if it was OK to stay the night. 

He explained that the dusty car park was the site of a weekly market which we had just missed. Later on, the owner arrived and said we were welcome to stay the night. 

It was a great relief that we had found somewhere safe to stay – Albania felt pretty wild and lawless! We discovered later that while Albania tops the list for organised crime, apparently rates of petty crime are relatively low. 

After a quiet night in the car park – shared only with a small herd of sheep – we took off again the next day – destination Montenegro. 

The road was pretty good until we found ourselves diverted along a series of narrow country lanes with next to no tarmac and no signposts indicating where to rejoin the main road!  

We followed a line of cars (probably not the best idea but we didn’t have any alternative) and ended up having to do a very tricky three point turn in a narrow lane and then taking a turn off that led towards a fuel station and on to the freeway. 

When we turned into the side road  we found a boom gate at the entrance which we had to go through to get back onto the main road. 

Some enterprising person had erected this barrier so they could charge every vehicle trying to get back onto the freeway. A great money spinner as we had no option but to pay up!

We arrived at the border post between Albania and Montenegro (which was painted a delicate lilac colour – maybe in an attempt to induce calm in the drivers waiting to processed) at around midday.   Fortunately this time it only took ten minutes for us to go through passport control and customs. 

It was great to be in Montenegro again and we had a wonderful scenic drive along the coast road to Budva where we took a break from driving to take a look at the ruined Mogren fortress which was built by the Austrians in 1860. 

The fortress was perched on a really high wind swept cliff and although there wasn’t much of the original building left in tact, the views of Budva and the Adriatic Sea were truly spectacular. 

We drove on to the Bay of Kotor – a place we are very familiar with as we had wintered over there and had got to know this beautiful area extremely well. 

We arrived at the ferry which travels across the narrowest part of the Bay of Kotor, the Verige Straits, from Lepetane on the Tivat side to Kamenari on the Herceg Novi side. 

There had been many times when we had to stop to let the ferries cross when we had been aboard Sunday so it was a novelty to be on the ferry instead and watch the yachts bobbing up and down, waiting their turn to dash through the strait before the next ferry took off!

It felt strange to arrive at Lazure marina where we had stayed over the winter of 2023/24 and find our catamaran Sunday not tied up in “her” spot next to S/V Minnow!

We stayed the night in our usual spot in a nearby car park but when we woke up the next morning we discovered we had a slow puncture. 

Fortunately there was a garage over the road so were able to put some air in it and hoped that we would be able to find a tyre repair place quickly. 

We went online and found a tyre place nearby so we headed off with high hopes. By this time it had started to rain – not a light drizzle but a full-on downpour. 

We arrived at the tyre shop and Jonathan dashed out and used Google translate and sign language to explain our circumstances. Sadly he found out that they only sold tyres and didn’t fit them. 

So we kept going along the road towards Herceg Novi and after sitting in an endless traffic queue (it was still raining!) we arrived at a tyre replacement business only to find they dealt just with cars.  

We found another tyre place on the internet but it was on the other side of the Bay of Kotor so we drove through the pouring rain back to the ferry and then crossed over and made our way towards Kotor. 

On the way we had to go through the Vrmac road tunnel and as we entered we heard an ominous noise – the sound of a high-pitched siren wailing. 

The traffic ground to a halt and we sat in the dark tunnel in a long queue for almost an hour with a siren going the whole time. Just to add to the discomfort every now and then a frustrated driver would lean on their horn and then other drivers would join in until there was a cacophony of ear splitting noise!

Eventually we edged out of the tunnel into the most intense rain we had ever seen and we were feeling really anxious that our tyre was almost completely flat!

We managed to draw off the road and the tyre had gone down significantly so Jonathan decided to leave me on the van and walk to the next tyre place a few minutes away to see if they could help us. 

We were kind of desperate by this time but the proprietor said he was too busy and he couldn’t help! Despite Jonathan‘s pleading he point blank refused to book us in – even for the next day!

By this time the rain was so extreme that we were getting soaked from water that was cascading down the roof and finding its way through the glass hatch above us. We ended up putting up umbrellas in an attempt to keep dry!

We limped along in the endless traffic queue from just beyond the tunnel to the centre of Kotor.  It took us nearly two hours to travel a distance that would have normally taken ten or so minutes to drive!

We ended up having to turn into a building site as the turn off to the last tyre place was too narrow for us to drive down.  Also, we couldn’t go any further with the tyre being almost too flat to drive on. 

By this time it was 4pm so we were worried that the tyre place would be about to close. However, when we rang we were blown away to find that the owner (who we dubbed Saint Peter) was extremely helpful.  Within minutes he arrived and quickly jacked the van up, removed the tyre and took it away to fix. 

At six o’clock the tyre was fixed and we were able to leave the building site and drive to a quiet spot close to Tivat airport where we spent a very peaceful night.