Day 43 - From Kotor to Petrovac

Lara and me started around 11am with our ride back to the coast in the direction of Shkodër in Albania. We initially had to climb a very steep hill with slopes >10%, which was quite challenging but worth it the final last views on the Kotor bay area. It's such a beautiful strip of land, I will certainly come back to it!! 😁 The ride down on the other side of the mountain was fun as usual, we were pretty fast and enjoyed not having any cars on the road. ;) We got back to the coast near Budva with stunning views on the coastline. The light was amazing, with a dark sky and rain over the sea nearby but some sunshine coming through still, love this combination of dark and bright. We also met two other German bikepackers just before Budva, Sina and Chris, who also went into the city. Budva is a bigger city with a nice old town in which we stopped for a look around and some lunch. Sina and Chris left before us though and we found a nice little note of them by my bike. :)
Lara and me didn't need to rush this day and had many stops along the road to enjoy strolls in the coast cities anytime we passed one. The only rather annoying thing about this plan is the fact that we always had to cycle up the hill again to get back to the main coast road. So we accumulated quite some elevation as we were riding along the coast. 😅
Our second stop was Sveti Stefan, a cute little town on a peninsula in the sea which for some reason we couldn't enter. It seemed like it was only accessible by boat from the sea, there was no way for us to enter it from land. It was still nice exploring this place from the outside and we enjoyed a nice swim in the cool water on the peninsula beach. 😊
Past Sveti Stefan, on another climb up the hill, we met Chris and Sina again. We decided to team up since we all kind of had the same plan for the night: finding a nice spot to wild camp. Lara and me wanted to cook something, whereas Sina and Chris wanted to eat out. It was already a little late when we went into Petrovac for a pretty cold fresh water shower by the beach. Sina and Chris went off for a restaurant, whereas Lara and me started searching for a nice wild camping spot outside Petrovac. Since Montenegro is mostly very hilly, it wasn't easy to find one without having to go up a hill for another few hundred meters, which is quite exhausting with the bicycle. We checked out some side roads just outside Petrovac, but couldn't really find a suitable one. Either they were too close to neighbouring houses, or dogs were on the property that wouldn't stop barking at us aggressively, or there were thorne bushes everywhere. 😅 So eventually we gave up since it was dark already and went to a campground nearby, were Sina and Chris joined us shortly after. On the campground we met another bikepacker, Dan from England, who cycled a the way from Portugal. Lara and me invited Dan for some pasta since Dan didn't have a stove and hasn't been eating warm dishes much. No clue how he could survive like this. 😅 It was a nice evening sitting together, talking and having fun. :)Read more