Zadar, Croatia

Sat 5th – Tues 7th July

Walking up from the beach on Sunday, we nearly doubled over in laughter as we spotted the Badger parked next to us. The Badger belongs to Pete & Kristin, two Aussies that we'd met in Lake Bled a few weeks ago. They had spotted our purple van parked at the camp site and we were reunited once again.

There's no description for the ecstatic feeling that you get when you actually recognise a friendly face after 3 months of encountering strangers and befriending them for mere hours. Kristin and Pete are from Sydney and have been on the road since April (same as us!) in a white and black camper van nicknamed the Badger. They're the type of travellers who meet friends wherever they go and their photos tell stories of the individuals and locals they've met along their trip, whereas our photos tend to tell more about the local architecture. Along with their hilarious stories from meeting bikers in Poland and being hit by a semi-truck on a German autobahn, they also shared the harrowing news that Albania has a slightly bad reputation for travellers.

One of the churches in Zadar's old town

Albania is the next stop on our itinerary and whilst I didn't expect to be living in luxury camp sites, I felt as though the wind had been knocked from my sails as Kristin & Pete described the horror stories they'd heard from other travellers. Evidently there were only around 600 cars in Albania during the Soviet occupation, so the roads are now in terrible shape. Lonely Planet warns against driving there and advises carrying a flash light at all times, as the pot holes are large enough to lose small children and the power outages average once an hour.

We were all sceptical of the stories. After all, we'd heard that Slovenia was uncivilised and it had turned out to have more Western shops and services than most of the countries we'd visited so far. But there were also reports of guns and banditry in northern Albania... were we just plain stupid to be driving old vans into such a country??

Bevan is worried that I'll take better photos than him so he's running a sabotage campaign of dancing in the background

Kristin & Pete have little choice. They had planned to drive to Greece and Turkey through Albania but choosing another route would mean driving all the way back to Italy to catch a ferry to Greece. Australians need a visa to travel through Macedonia so it was hundreds of euros and hours getting back to southern Italy, or risking the short drive along the Albanian coast.

For us.... well my sole goal for this trip was to see these places before a Starbucks springs up on every corner. I travelled Western Europe in 2000 with my sister Teresa, and I've been devastated by how much it has been commercialised and wrought with tourism in just 8 years. I wanted a taste of this place before it was turned into just another copy of a Western European holiday destination.

So we've decided that a convoy is the way to go and we're meeting Kristin & Pete in Dubrovnik in a few days to get started on the adventure. Safety in numbers...

View Zadar Photo Album