Bus Ride from Hell

Today, we left Dubrovnik and Croatia and headed toward Montenegro. The obvious option to do this was to go by bus. But once our bus arrived at the station, it was clear it was going to be a shit show. It was chaos as people were trying to get on the bus, get their luggage on the bus, and get their tickets checked. This didn't even begin to hint at what we were in for throughout the bus trip, though. The buses aircon didn't work, and with a bus packed with people, in the middle of Croatian summer, it was literally a sauna. To make things worse, the Uber driver on the way to the bus station had told us that there was a multi hour wait at the border. Not even 10 minutes into the trip, I was literally dripping in sweat. Knowing we may be in this bus for 6 or 7 hours was literally scary. Jack and I had begun to look toward the cost of an Uber or taxi, but we figured that they couldn't go across borders. The next plan was to get through the border and then check again for the costs of a taxi. It was that bad. The air was thick and gross, and you could barely breathe. There were no windows that could be opened, the driver couldn't drive with the door open, and so we literally cooked. It was a borderline human rights violation. Eventually, we reached the first border check, and there was a clear queue of cars that matched what the taxi driver had told us this morning. The bus driver, who had also seemed to have had enough of the heat, proceeded to drive on the wrong side of the road for a couple of kilometres to skip the queue and get us through the checkpoint as soon as possible. When the bus stopped for the checkpoint, people were just about fighting to get off the bus as soon as possible. To make things worse, we had run out of water at this stage of the trip, and there was no toilet on the bus. To be fair, I think my body was void of any liquid even if I had to piss but we needed water to survive the trip. Luckily, a scandavian couple were nice enough to give us a frozen water bottle they had brought with them. Eventually, though, we had to get back on the torture chamber and continue the journey. At this stage, people were laying in the walkway of the bus to give themselves some space and cool them even a tiny amount. Eventually, though, we made it to Kotor, and the bus driver organised for us to get on a different bus for the last 40 minutes or so to Budva. This was a life saver, and eventually, we made it without dying from heat exhaustion.

We met a French-Canadian along the way, who was staying in the old town of Budva. We dropped off our stuff and then walked her to her hostel. We then walked around the old town for a while, popping into shops and patting the hundreds of stray cats that line every alleyway. We then got a feed and went to the beach for the afternoon. We stayed there until it was dark and then headed back to the hostel for the night. As this was mostly a travel day, and I was focusing on not dying on the bus, I didn't get many photos, unfortunately.Read more