Dumitor National park in Montenegro

Kelly with the mountians and Jack, plus one of Jacks dodgy looking friends
They stack their hay into real hay stacks here! In fact we saw hay stacks all through the Balkans
An old man and an old tree sharing a moment
I and Kelly at the glacial lake we walked to.
Kelly walking along the lake shore
The low foothills before the mountians reminded me of Scotland

A man and his dog, the man being yours truely and the dog our faithful Jack.

Tara Canyon, europes largest and the worlds 2nd largest, it seems quite a bit short of the magnitude of the Grand Canyon though
We stopped of during the rafting trip to see this waterfall, this is where is emerges from the bottom of a cliff after 70 hours underground!

Scotland won! Hurrah! Scotland beat Romania 42-0, pretty good performance although Scotland seemed a bit scrappy at times, the team will have to raise their game against the mighty New Zealand for sure! The Scottish pub was pretty interesting; run by a real live Scot it was festuned with Kilts, bits of tartan, pictures of Sean Connery and even a stuffed grouse. I had a Madras curry, which made a welcome change to bread and cheese. Actually we have managed to get away from the endless bread and cheese recently but a bit of spice was very welcome.

Well, so, where was I? Ah yes, Kotor, from Kotor we took the bus down to Bar but that place didn't really impress so the next day we pressed on to Dumitor national park (still in Montenegro). Hoping that some outdoors fresh air and mountians would refresh us and make a welcome chance from endless medieval buildings. First we had to take a bus to Podgorica the capital of Mont, which is a rather drabto say the least. It looks like it was pretty much completely built by communist architects....so we didn't dally there and took the next bus to Zabljak, the town nearest the park. We had to change buses on route to there and the 2nd bus for the last 2 hours or so was a tiny little bus with very, very little leg room. It also smelled very bad, or rather some of the older ladies on board were a jot on the wrong side of oderiferous, poor Kelly suffered during the ride. To compound things the ride was along a tiny and very twisty mountain road, at several points only a foot or two (it seemed less sometimes) from the edge of the road the ground punged away into a dizzying precipice. From the vantage point of the bus one could stare straight down the precipice and entertain oneself with the notion that if the bus did go over the edge there was about zero percent chance of surviving. When the precipice was tree filled I relaxed with the comforting thought that the trees would slow our decent. Well we made it in one piece and were picked up by a nice young woman called Vinka to stay at her house. I was nice and clean and her family friendly, hurrah! While up on the mountian we went rafting down the river and took a wee hike to a glacial lake. It was really a lovely place but we had to press on with our jounrney! We also made a good friend up there as well. Romania has many many stray dogs, really, they are just everywhere but seem mostly harmless. One which may or may not have been stray (he seemed clean but had no coller) decided he liked us and followed us up a hill on day one, he was most agitated at one point when he thought he couldn't follow us over a fence, trying to chew through the wooden posts and whining melodramaticaly! He was a happy little dog when Kelly called him over and showed him a gap he could squeeze through. On the second day who should be waiting to meet us but our faithful hound, whome we had named Jack after the town Zabljak, and two of his buddies who looked rather more, how shall I say this politely, stray. They again acomanied us on our short hike and even when the other two left Jack stayed with us, even waiting for us outside while we ate breakfast at a restaurant (a treat before the imminent 9 hour bus ride to Belgrade, Serbia). We finally had to say goodbye at the bus station, we both still miss you Jack! What is funny is he didn't seem that interested in other people not even a little kid and her mum who tried to play with him while we were in the restaurant.

Tonight we will check out a festival that is going on here in Brasov. And tomorrow we shall venture on the fields anew!

Take care all!

Craig and Kelly