Dinner didn't help. After dinner I strolled in the opposite direction of the renovated castle - another spit of land jutting out into the sea that surrounds the little beach where my room is located. It's covered in trees and thick vegetation and looks as inviting as the castle wall did earlier. So off I go. Only to once again discover that unregulated construction is not a pretty sight. I cant believe what I see. Those delightful rocks which jut out into the sea? Why, they're too difficult to walk on without falling off so they've been cemented over with nice, large flat concrete platforms. Trash litters the wooded slopes. More ghastly hotels blight the view - Hotel Belinda for Goddess' sake. Ugly as a concrete bunker.
On the way back to my room I'm approached by a strange young man. The area is deserted and he rides past me twice on his motorbike. Something about him makes me uneasy so I decide to cut down some concrete steps which will take me quickly to the more populated beach and forego the longer walk along the road. About halfway down I turn around and discover that he has parked his bike and is following me. He's slender but young and I'm not sure if I'm his match if it comes to a struggle or what he's thinking, but his demeanor tells me he's scared-excited-nervous and has something not to my liking in mind. He passes me and turns around to face me. I also turn around to see what or who is nearby. Fortunately, another, older man is now coming down the steps. So the young man continues on. When I reach the bottom he whispers hoarsely, "Come with me." How disgusting and unnerving. I suspect that he thought I was one of those older foreign women who go to such places for the purchased pleasure of a young man's company. I heard of this while in Turkey (where I was approached by a male prostitute) and I also saw the same in a movie once. Ugh. It sickens me and leaves me liking the place even less.
Back in my room I hope to be lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves on the sandy beach just a few hundred feet from my window. Unfortunately, there's a bar and restaurant between me and the shore so by 9pm the waves are drowned by the sound of shrill drunken laughter which continues on into the wee hours. Not every day on the road is a bowl of cherries.
Surprise, surprise, the following morning I head for the bus station - conveniently placed about 40 minutes walk from the center of town so that one must spend $4 for a taxi to get there. I walk anyway. I'm looking forward to Kotor. . . .
It's now noon. How to describe the ride in a few sentences? The scenery is indeed jaw-dropping stunning. However, I must use my imagination to see it. I must erase all the god-awful 8-story luxury(?) hotels blocking my view, and forget the cars and concrete. And where do they get all the concrete, you might be asking? No problem. If you scrape away the vegetation and the top soil, just below is oodles of delicious rock which can be ground up into sand and concrete. No attempt is made to hide the scars. I particularly enjoyed the the landfill across the bay, difficult to see in this photo. It must be a few thousand feet long.
If all that wasn't enough, they've also discovered billboards here. And. . . . if you run out of places to put billboards you can always paint ugly ads on the concrete retaining walls that line the highway. I really felt like I was about to suffocate as I rode through all that.
Fortunately for me the bus driver didn't drop me in Kotor, where I intended to go. I knew I was there but I didn't get off the bus. Instead, I went to the end of the line with him, Herceg Novi, which the book described as less developed. True. But it hardly appeals either. It's close to the Croatian border so I bought a ticket to Dubrovnik and will leave Montenegro soon. I think there is some stunning landscape here but the bulk of the tourist crowd is herded into this coastal area and I don't have the energy or desire to find out differently. There are difficult roads and no transport to some of the interior parks and wild lands. If I had a car I could explore. But I'm ready to move along. I'm looking for a place to settle into for a few days and this ain't it.
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