Rest day in Prijepolje, Serbia.

Because we didn't' have access to the internet in our palace we're a day behind in our update.  Now for yesterday.

Last night was perhaps our last night in Montenegro.  Although I loved the beauty of the mountains, forests, valleys and the hospitality of the people, I certainly won’t miss the mountains.  They gave me the opportunity to push myself to the limit on occasions, but also rewarded me with just jaw dropping scenery around every corner. But the show must go on and Serbia is just over the hill.

Today we hit the road at 8am to ride up yet another mountain to the town of Prijepolje in Serbia.  The ride took us up a 20km mountain right from the start.  It didn’t faze us one bit, as that’s what we’re use to on this trip, mountains.

As we left the town of Pljevlja and rode out past the open cut coal mine we got to see and hear the mine letting off explosions to break up the coal seam. We could hear the explosions going off from at least 10kms up the climb.  Unfortunately there was a lot of haze around so taking photos was not going to happen.

As we reached the summit we rolled along until we came upon the Montenegrin border control.  This took all of 1 minute and now we were on our way to Serbia.  As I handed the passport to the Serbian officer he looked with a dead pan face at me.  I smiled and he did it again, so I smiled again.  He gave me back my passport and I was on my way.  Now we had a 15km descent into Prijepolje.  

Racing down the mountain at 50kph is just an adrenalin rush, and you can never go fast enough downhill in my mind. The road was pretty bumpy and being resurfaced at stages which brought me back to walking pace.  When we got into town we did the usual try and communicate that we wanted a hotel and after 15 minutes we arrived at a concrete building which looked like anything other than a hotel. I went inside and negotiated a price of 10 Euro each a night, and room for our bikes.  It’s not a bad place and only a 10 minute walk back into town. Tomorrow they’re having a wedding at the hotel so I hope Peter and I can go along for the ride.  I think they would be very pleased to have 2 Aussies at their wedding, and perhaps I could sing them a song or 2. 

 I had to get a photo standing in front of the welcome to Serbia sign.

The photo above is of the palace we're staying at.  

After a walk of the town, we returned to our isolated hotel, cleaned the bikes and now laying down watching ‘Blackhawk Down’.  No Wifi in the hotel, so hopefully we find a coffee shop tomorrow to post the blog.  We’re also having a rest day tomorrow our first since leaving Dubrovnik 7 days ago, and then we take the turn south to commence the long ride to Kosovo, Albania and Greece.

Until tomorrow, safe riding.

And now for my update on today's rest day.  Doing nothing except drinking coffee, relaxing and going to a wedding.