The hotel we stayed at last night in Bogetici was OK, except for the noise caused by some young loud mouthed Americans. I went out and told them that 2 old men wanted to sleep and that they were not helping the cause at all. After our brief exchange of words, things did quiet down.
We got up nice and early, packed the bags and headed down to the restaurant for breakfast. I think it is a restaurant with one of the most amazing views in the world. We had bacon and eggs, something I haven't had for a long time, washed down with a cup of tea.
Brian our driver from yesterday told us to ride back up the hill a kilometre and take the alternate route to Niksic as it's much flatter. Well Brian is a complete idiot when it comes to flat roads. This road went up and up for 1 hour of riding with a belly full of bacon and eggs. The one good thing about the first hour was the magnificent views back into the valley behind us. Once again no photos as the wifi in the town is very slow.
After climbing for an hour we rolled down into the town of Niksic, confirmed our directions north to Zabljak and kept going. We eventually stopped for morning tea at a small cafe and met the son of the owner who could speak some English. Noval, that's his name, told us the road from his cafe to Zabljak has 2 big climbs and then downhill to the finish line. Well, another mountain to climb, that's a real surprise.
After 5kms on the flats the road went up. To make this story brief, we climbed from 450 metres to 1450 metres up 2 huge climbs. This was the highest point on the tour thus far and thank God, the weather had dropped somewhat for us handle the ride. We rode uphill for 4 hours until we reached the summit overlooking the town of Savnik. This is a beautiful little village with 1 hotel that is run down, and looked after by a female ogre.
On the way down the mountain, we were asked to stop by a local family. We pulled in to have a chat and found out the women had a sister in law living in Sydney. I told the lady that we must be next door neighbors as I live close to Sydney. I didn't tell her it was 80kms away. The family live in the town of Zabljak, where we wanted to reach today but due to all the hills we were going to call it quits in the town of Savnik.
The family invited us to stay with them in Zabljak tonight, or at least call in for morning tea tomorrow on our way through. Peter and I will definitely be calling in for our Aussie morning tea and to get some great photos. Not sure if we'll make it out of the house tomorrow or the next day. Who cares.
On the issue of our hotel tonight, the TV didn't work, and the hot water system was turned off. That meant I had to have a cold shower and boy was it cold. I argued with the lady of the price of the room because we had a TV that didn't work and the hot water system was not available when we wanted it. After some brilliant negotiations we got the price down form 36 to 30 Euro for the night and with breakfast.
We went for a walk up the road and found the local cafe had wifi. So it's time to update the blog, have a light dinner and get a good night's sleep, because tomorrow we're going to see my next door neighbors sister.
We had a terrific day riding in the mountains, very demanding, but the rewards were just amazing. Views that you could look at for hours, and not from the seat of a bus.
Tomorrow we are heading closer to Serbia.
Until tomorrow, safe riding.
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