Kupor, Montenegro

One of the stops on the cruise was in Kupor, Montenegro. It is a country which was part of the former Yugoslavia. Just like Croatia, Montenegro was a victim of the Serbian war in the 1990's.  It became it's own independent country after the war. Despite the rain pouring down on us the landscape was breath taking. We did not plan an excursion on the day we ended up in Montenegro and we were pretty much at a loss of what to do. Luckily, we ran into a man named Nenad. He was a cab driver. He said he would drive us around. 

I was admittedly skeptical. He had a license, written in Cyrillic, so I could not read it, he had some laminated pictures of the surrounding area, and he was basically standing around near the dock looking for people to drive around. When he said he had Wifi we could use and he shielded me from the rain with his umbrella, I deduced he was a good person.  (I am not endorsing anyone ever do this, because he was after all a stranger, albeit a nice one) He drove us to Budava, which is a town in Montenegro, we didn't have a lot of time, but he stopped along the side of the road to let us take pictures of the sea and the mountains. I lost my camera cap somewhere along the way, which was is ok because I have a UV filter on it so the lens wasn't going to get scratched.  I was too caught up in all the beauty of the country side to worry about it.

Budava

Nenad drove us around the mountains and we saw some really amazing views of the inlet the ship sailed in on and he was very informative about the lay of the land. He showed us places where old hotels were and places which had still not recovered from the war. There was graffiti all over in some areas, but it was really good graffiti. They must have some talented artists in Montenegro. He told us about the island with a church built on it, half of it's man made. This seemed to be the big selling point if you visit the church on the island. They are all very proud of this man made island.

He took us back towards our ship and we paid him 50 Euros for our tour. It was completely worth it.  Overall, he was really, really nice and I still hear from him occasionally on Whatsapp.  He's a very nice person, we were very lucky to encounter him.

 

When we returned to the port we went inside the old city for a brief tour, they have old city walls too, just like Dubrovnik.  We saw a farmer's market with vegetables I was unfamiliar with and that always excites me.  They also have this really cool ancient looking clock. The entire place was buzzing with tourists, but it still had an unusual charm to it. Possibly because its nestled in the mountains, maybe because its surrounded by sea, or perhaps it's just people like Nenad making the entire place seem warm, friendly, and like a place worth getting to know better.