He's pulled the bike over and is looking serious.
'Why are you laughing when I point out a snake to you?'
'A what?'
'Over there. A snake! So you don't run over it!'
I look where he is pointing. He actually isn't lying. A long silver snake is sunning itself on the mountain road.
There is precedent for my laughter. The previous evening, we arrived at Rijeka Crnojevića as dusk was falling. It was cold and we were damp after a long day of climbing. We pulled in at the first building with a texta sign in the window advertising 'Sobe - Rooms - Zimmer'. A dark, wood lined pub, owned by an older gentleman named Ivo who was at a bit of a loose end with no customers and a wife currently in Russia awaiting the birth of her first grandson. He had lived in Burnley for a while and was happy to chat about Australia, politics in Montenegro and Serbia, various folk remedies for liver ailments and the finer points of rakia making. He poured us a rakia upon arrival, which we politely sipped. Then dug out bottle after bottle of brews, some filled with nettle leaves, some with plums, some plain. His favourite, he explained, was the one he had the most of at any given time. Several shots later, I plead cold and head to find a shower. Upon my return, I find Matt has valiantly tried a few more. We go for dinner, and return to find Ivo waiting with 'just one more' glass lined up. He has an odd understanding of the concept of 'one'. Several hours later, I find myself taking photographs of Matt, who wants me to get his best 'pointy monkey' angle in tribute to a cartoon character.
So I don't think it unfair that my first assumption is that his pointing is a reprise. But nothing is funny for Matt today. Having valiantly accepted Montenegrin hospitality, he must now valiantly climb 1100 metres up in order to ride the dizzying serpentine road down to Kotor on the Montenegrin coast. Poor pointy monkey.
We entered Montenegro after a night in Foca near the Bosnian/Montenegrin border. After Foca, which carries the weight of a long and particularly unpleasant history, even by Bosnian standards, it was refreshing to cross the border and wheel through the spectacular Tara River Canyon. The second deepest canyon in the world, with the road running halfway up through a series of tunnels that open out onto spectacular vistas. We stop a night in quiet Niksic, then on to Ostrog Monastery, built high up on a cliff. There I don my most monastery appropriate clothing, which makes me look Amish, but no-one complains. They are too busy kissing stone walls in search of good health. From Ostrog, we head to the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica. (It is not a picturesque old capital. It feels a little like Canberra, only in Podgorica it is possible to get a decent coffee...) On then for a brief detour into Albania, around Lake Skodar, through forests of pomegranate trees. We stop two nights in Albania, where we explore ruined castles and stay in a transformed spanish style villa. Back, now, into Montenegro, where we see the sea for the first time in weeks.
