Kolasin, Montenegro

Hello from Kolasin, Montenegro! 

We had a fairly quiet day today, as our major objective was to get from Dubrovnik into Montenegro, and we weren't entirely sure what to expect… in preparation for the trip we had read about people's experiences crossing the border between Croatia and Montenegro, and there was a very wide range of experiences (everything from “it was a breeze” to “we were stuck in line for 5h”). Likewise we had also seen some comments about people getting shaken down for 50-euro “fines” from corrupt border guards. 

So we headed out early, arrived at our car rental place at 8am sharp, and were on the road shortly thereafter. Fortunately, things were incredibly smooth; we drove a tiny bit further than necessary to the smaller Karasovici border crossing, and were through in less than ten minutes. 

After that we had a ~3.5h drive to our Airbnb located just outside of Kolasin. Our drive was punctuated by heavy rain (and one crazy-ass detour down a two-way, single-lane road in order to get onto Montenegro's motorway).

WTAF

In the end we arrived safely at our Airbnb, where we had an entertaining conversation with the woman who met us to show us around; she spoke zero English, but hand signals go a long way, and we were essentially warned how to avoid almost-setŧing-the-place-on-fire like the previous guests apparently did :D

Home for the next two days

Compared to busy Athens and Dubrovnik, Montenegro has a much more rugged and off-the-beaten-path feel to it, not unlike the islands of the Azores. The scenery is gorgeous, the landscape (that we've seen thus far) is more rural, and the roads are... well, they are keeping me on my toes!

A long section of our drive north was on the nation's sole motorway. The section we were driving on was completed ~2 years ago, and consists of a series of impressive bridges and tunnels through the mountainous terrain. I lost track of exactly how many tunnels we traversed, but Zoe said it was 19 or 20 (each of which was ~500m to ~3.9km long). With every passing kilometer we were more and more shocked by the massive cost and effort that it must have required to string together this modern motorway - especially when considering that every tunnel was twinned (ie, each direction of traffic has its own tunnel through the mountains, 2 or 3 lanes wide). 

Now, I have to go on a bit of a side tangent here… I brought a book with me on this trip called “The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman” by John Perkins.  It's a fascinating read of practices in the 70s and 80s (although they continue today, and not just by the United States) where poor countries would be coerced into accepting huge development loans for massive infrastructure projects. The loans would be justified by economic projections - written by U.S. consultants - showing how the projects would modernize the country, bring wealth and prosperity to its people, and of course leave an incredible legacy for the ruler making the commitment. The money from those loans would go to U.S. - based engineering firms to build highways, ports, electrical grids, and other infrastructure. 

The problem was that those economic projections were always overly-optimistic, because the real intent was to leave the nation in massive debt in order to give the U.S. all kinds of leverage to do things like demand that the host nation cede territory for a US military base, extort trade concessions, coerce UN voting in line with US policy, and so on. To make things even worse, these projects often involved corruption so that the party in power benefitted while the rest of the country was saddled with unsustainable debt. 

So, to tie this back into our trip today: after our eyebrow-raising trip on the motorway today, Leslie did a bit of googling and basically said "Brad this sounds a lot like your book." You can read about it here: The billion-dollar motorway leading Montenegro to nowhere. 

If you want the short version: The motorway is one of the most expensive in the world. It was initiated on the premise that it would increase trade and bring prosperity to the poorest of the Montenegrin people. The work was entirely financed by a loan from China. Chinese contractors are performing the majority of the construction, so the loan from China flows right back into the coffers of the Chinese government. Moreover, in order to secure the loan from China, the Montenegrin government agreed to give up sovereignty of certain parts of the land in the case of financial problems. Sure enough, Montenegro is struggling to pay back its loans. And finally, there are widespread allegations of corruption and a lack of transparency around the contracts that have been awarded to Montenegrin subcontractors, who have ties to the President who signed the deal.  Sound familiar?

There is also a great video about this available on YouTube.

OK, tangent complete :)

Tomorrow I was hoping we would be able to hike the Volusnica Loop trail in Prokletije National Park, but alas the weather forecast is calling for some pretty severe thunderstorms and rain. Our plan is to assess again in the morning and make a judgment call from there. Fingers crossed!