#139 Sweating and queuing, wild bears and snakes

June 2-3, 2022: Zlatibor, Tara National Park

F. Huch, we have now crossed a national border and have not written a conclusion. However, we were only in Montenegro for three and a half days and only in the hinterland. There is definitely more to discover there.

Our entry into Serbia was delayed by almost 2 hours. 1.3 km before the border crossing, we had to stop and join the queue of trucks and cars. The end of the queue was not visible. None of the people around could tell us what the problem was. So after 20 minutes of no movement in the queue, I set off on foot to explore the problem. After a 5-minute walk in the scorching heat past many trucks and cars, I reached the cause of the problem. The road to the border was completely closed because the last 500-700 meters were being freshly tarred. A delivery of fresh tar had just arrived on the new section of the road. However, the responsible people from the construction company said that the road would be reopened within an hour at the latest. Well, let's wait and see. Actually, the entire queue moved forward after 45 minutes. However, only until the two border gates were filled. The processing of cars went relatively smoothly - also because all trucks were currently not being processed and had to wait again in front of the border.

The next morning we drove to Zlatibor to get some information about Tara National Park. Zlatibor is the tourist hotspot of Serbia. The place feels like a huge amusement park with many hotels and attractions for leisure activities. Mainly Serbs seem to go on vacation here. The woman at the tourist information office could only tell us very little or nothing at all about Tara National Park, so we drove to the next tourist information office in Mitrovac. Here we were already much better helped. In the end, we decided to take hiking trail 9.

On our hike to the Banjska viewpoint, we came across signs explaining how to deal with bears, snakes, and wolves. Our travel guide also mentioned that if you stay in Tara National Park for a longer period of time and go on longer hikes, you should definitely learn how to deal with wild brown bears. After all, out of the 60 Serbian brown bears, 40 of them live in Tara National Park.

We didn't encounter any bears on our hike. We did come across a snake, but it was faster gone than we could look. The short ascent to the viewpoint was rewarded with a beautiful view of the Drina River.

We spent the night on the bank of the Drina and the next morning we continued north. We passed the monasteries between Požega and Čačak and actually wanted to visit a large monastery from the inside, but unfortunately the access road was closed due to an obstacle race. It was over 40°C in the sun once again, so we skipped the walk to the monastery and just drove past a few small monasteries by car.

Day 231 - Total tour 17,304 km

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