Budva

OK, I got into Budva yesterday afternoon and immediately went to the beach. It's hot and sunny here in this resorty town, and the beach is still hopping even this late in september. Although it's got nothing on the beach at Negril, this one is still enjoyable. It's quite pebbly, but I aquired a bamboo beach mat from a girl in Sarajevo and its been great. There's a string of fast food and other cheezy businesses all behind the beach walkway, so everything is close at hand.

While I was at the beach I arranged a rafting trip for today through a small travel agent. I was up before 6am to catch the bus at 6.20. It was about 4.5 hrs up and the same coming home for a 3 hour river rafting trip. The ride was interesting for the most part, although the trip through the Tara River canyon near the raft point was spectacular. Very, very cool stuff. This whole country is incredibly mountainous. I guess that's why its name literally means 'black mountain'.

The rafting was fun but relatively uneventful. There's been a long drought here so the water levels were really low. I knew this beforehand, so I wasn't expecting too much. I really just went in order to see the canyon and the mountains. I got what I wanted out of it, and I also caught a few little thrills on the raft. I had a spot at the front - I think they put the strong paddlers at the front, as its the only place on the raft where you can get a good strong stroke in. We smashed into a couple good swells and all got wet. Minor note: when someone from the Mediterranean tells you that the water is "really, really cold", what they mean is: it's cold, but not as cold as the San Juan River. I went swimming during a break and everyone thought I was nuts. ha! We had shorty wetsuits on and it was hot and sunny, how cold can you really get?

Anyway, this hostel is another gem. The owners are a young couple, one American, one Russian, and they've bought this house and fixed it up for people to stay with them. There's a separate entertainment room with a big tv, nintendo, dvd player and rack of movies, plus a big outdoor patio, barbeque and a nice, proper communal kitchen. Everyone's quite friendly, although I haven't really had much time to spend around here as I've only been inside the place for a couple hours since checking in yesterday. Tomorrow I may lounge around and take a 'do nothing day'.

My plans to travel east through Kosovo are looking a bit sketchy at this point. I realized after looking further into it that Kosovo does NOT actually share a border with Bulgaria. That's a big problem, because apparently if you enter Kosovo from another country, you have to leave it via a foreign border: you can't go up through Serbia and then out. So, I may have to backtrack, enter Serbia normally, then decide whether to dip into Kosovo or not. I have NO idea how the bus connections are going to work trying to move around between the small towns that I'd need to go through in order to follow that path. Another option would be to backtrack all the way to Belgrade, which is a city I decided to skip on my way to Sarajevo. From there I could easily make my way to Sophia in Bulgaria and then east to Istanbul. In terms of distance it would be quite a haul, but it might be the simplest and possibly the fastest and cheapest way to go. Maybe I can find a half measure where I head for Belgrade but stop short, and then re-route to Sophia. Hrmmmm.

Anyway, I'll look into it more tomorrow. Right now I'm just tired and worn out. I think I'll pull my book out and just spend a little quiet time this evening. Or I'll walk 30 feet to the 24 hr shop across the road and buy a couple 1/2 litre bottles of beer for 60 cents each. They're even refrigerated!

cheers,
bms