Welcome to Montenegro... country #49. Wow, what a drive!

We did a quick trip back to the grocery store before leaving Foca. Picked up three bottles of wine, among other things. As we're leaving the store, one of the bags slips out of Ruth's hands and crashed to the concrete. Now we only have two bottles of wine! Oh well... no point in crying over spilt wine! Although spilt milk would have been better!

And then we got on the road to the Montenegro border. We knew we were taking the backroads option. Most people would head down to the coast and go the easier route, but we like the road less traveled!

Stopped by the police in Bosnia

Monday, we left Sarajevo at about 9:30am, and headed south through the hills towards Montenegro. But first, we had to fill up with diesel and top up the propane. I found a station that sold both, and both at good prices. The diesel worked out to €1.18 ($1.70 CAD) per liter which is the cheapest we have paid since we've owned Max.

Then the LPG. Again, it turned out to be an easy experience topping up our refillable tanks. The station attendant had never done one in a motorhome before, so I kind of had to show him how! But we got it done no problem. The LPG worked out to €0.75 ($1.08 CAD) per liter.

A few hours in the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Sarajevo is known to the world for two things. One, the city hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, and two, it was badly destroyed during the Bosnian War between 1992 and 1996.

It is not really known as a tourist destination, although there are some things worth seeing.

We set off at just before 9:00am to walk down to the city to see what there was to see...

Drive to Sarajevo

This is today's second post. Earlier today I posted our October expense report. You can read it here if you haven't already.

On Sunday, we did the fairly long drive from Jajce to the big city of Sarajevo. Not really a long distance, but a fairly long time because we took the back roads and probably averaged about 60 km/h (36 mph) or less. 

October Expenses

A little higher than we expected.

We spent a total of $2,182 CAD ($1,762 USD, €1,525) for the month. The unexpected parts were mostly still related to getting our bikes from Canada to where Max was located. But, we also are going to have to up the budget a little for fuel, LPG (propane gas) and campgrounds, all of which were higher than originally planned. Here's how it all broke down...

Jajce, Bosnia... more castles and waterfalls

If you like castles and waterfalls as we do, Bosnia is definitely the place to be!

Saturday morning, we drove to the town of Jajce. It's situated in hilly terrain at the confluence of two rivers, with a waterfall and a castle overlooking it all. It's a really pretty area. As we arrived just outside of town, we stopped at Plivsko Lake where there are some walking paths and picnic sites.

Heading further south... and some good news!

We're in a bit of a race with the weather. We definitely don't want to be caught in any snow, so the idea is to keep heading further south! And we've got some mountainous areas to go through, so we want to beat the snow through those areas before we can get to the coast in Albania.

And, both Bosnia and Montenegro have snow tire laws that come into effect on November 15th, so we need to be in Albania by then.

An authentic Bosnia experience!

Once again it took a while for the morning fog to burn off. In fact, by the time it had cleared enough to make it worthwhile to go for a hike, it was almost lunchtime so we had something to eat before heading out.

Our destination was Ostrovica Castle, sitting high on a hill above the nearby town of Kulen Vakuf. In fact, we can see the castle from our campsite by the river.

The fabulous Štrbački Waterfalls, and a really nice campsite by the river

It was a bit cold and quite foggy when we got up Wednesday morning. We had two goals for the day... the first one was to see the nearby Štrbački Waterfalls, and the second was to get some laundry done!

We headed to the waterfalls right away. Good thing we did too, because there is an 8 km (5 mile) narrow winding road in, with very little opportunity for someone to pass heading the opposite way.

Welcome to Bosnia & Herzegovina... country #48

Travel days are always interesting, especially when it involves crossing a border. You just don't know what to expect!

After we finished exploring Tito's abandoned Villa Izvor (you should click the link if you missed that post) we headed to the Bosnia & Herzegovina border. There was a lot of truck traffic, and I was surprised because it didn't look like a very major border crossing based on what the road looked like on the maps.