TravellingStrom

Mayan Prophecy Countdown

It was a late breakfast as you would expect, then getting stuff sorted and packed, being here three days I had spread out a bit 🙂 We headed off with a basic plan of riding up the coast a ways, but on the way I would show Anthony to that river scene view from the other day as it was on the way, but first the very cute scenery of Danika from the Hotel Lovcen, hi there, I think that suits you 🙂

So I left Danika behind and took the not so nice looking Anthony on his brand new Triumph Tiger XC800 and we headed to River View, it was once again a great ride and we posed for a few photos, after I introduced Ant to the sport of Geocaching, he will have to get used to it while riding with me 🙂

From here we headed to Cetinje where this road comes out and were going to take this small winding road and pick up another couple of caches on the way to the border area of Croatia. The GPS shows the road quite well, but we stopped at a small place to get some lunch first and just as it was about to be served, three other riders going past stopped for a chat. Now, for those of you out there who thought I carry a lot of stuff, well, meet Dennis from Germany who has the same bike and carries more than me, I certainly got some ideas from his set up. The other two, Alexandra and Patrick were riding beemers as you might expect 😉

Out of all that gear he produced a bit of magic, a battery powered photo printer and printed out a few photos for us, what a great idea thanks for the tip. He told us that going through the far eastern bloc areas, giving an instant photo to the people you meet is like magic, I may have to source one for my Russia and China leg and obviously my bike can carry more gear 🙂 After a smoked ham and cheese roll we headed off and did some more hairpins up in the mountains, we met a family up there also taking photos and they wanted to sit on the bike, so why not, hi there, nice to meet you 🙂

This is what this country is all about, heaps of these 🙂

After while we found ourselves at the entrance to a cave right next to the road and here was another cache called Smugglers Hoard, and a nice view of the lake near Kotor, the cache was easy to find and Anthony’s first without my help 🙂

We were way high in the mountains, there was a bit of haze around blocking the clear views, but that was fine, because to get down there we had many many corners to play with and they have very nicely numbered them for us 🙂

That last one was number 18, it started at around 26 and between them were many winding traverses across the face of the mountain brilliant 🙂 But, we had another cache to find and took a diversion up a different hill to find Dome View where we met up with part of a Russian family who were up here for a picnic, they spoke excellent English, hi there fellas, nice to have met you 🙂

Dome View This is one of a group of six geocaches, the first to be placed since Montenegro gained its independence in 2006. All are located around the Bay of Kotor.

Park car at – N42 23.746, E018 45.818
The fort is an amazing example of Austro-Hungarian military architecture dated 1886. Surrounded by a dry moat, it has an enormous steerable gun emplacement guided by lookouts in protected bunkers using speaking tubes to guide the gun aimers. The cache is hidden within the boundaries of the fortress which dominates the approaches to the Bay of Kotor. A torch will be required and some exploration first inside and then outside the fort will be needed. Take care and do not attempt to scale the broken spiral staircase to the turret operators’ position which is particularly dangerous.

We had to be careful of the Russians as they are classified as Muggles in Geocaching terms. This is from Harry Potter and basically means those without the knowledge should not be shown the hiding places(or the magic), because sometimes if people see you looking around rocks and stuff, they may look later and find it and trash it or remove it, which spoils the game 😦 Not that these guys would have, but anyway, we found the cache and it is a great place for one, with a bit of history and nice views.

After that as it was late afternoon, we headed down the mountain to the town of Kotor, where as you can imagine it was very touristy, but we just rode up the coast for a while and kept our eyes open for a place to stay. Many rooms/apartments for rent signs all along here, but we also wanted security for the bikes. We eventually found a place where the owners were having what looked like a family gathering, but the price was right, it had internet and brekky was included. 🙂 We have this feeling someone was kicked out of the room we got because it looked very lived in, with lots of personal stuff, but it had a great view and we sat back with a beer while the room was prepared and the owners even served us up fresh baked fish that had just been caught, brilliant 🙂

After that we wandered down the road for a beer or three and mellowed beside the lake while the sun set 🙂

Cheers from Montenegro
TravellingStrom