BALKAN Part 4/4 - NORTH MACEDONIA, ALBANIA, MONTENEGRO // KTM 1290 Super Adventure R

Wow, look at this. Aren't you on YouTube? I think I know you. That's where I spent the night and I got here pretty late last night, so it's kind of nice to see this now coming alive in the sunlight. I think Kotor is still in the shade. It's over there. We're going to pass it real quick. So this is the other side. That would be the west side and that's where I spent the night. I didn't really want to be in the old town area because it's too crowded and I didn't know where to park my bike and, you know, store my stuff. So I picked a place that was a little bit outside of Kotor and then I went back to the old town yesterday to check it out and it's one of the most beautiful old towns I've seen and I've seen tons of them. There's tons of them here in Europe, obviously, but it's a really nice place. Especially at night, it looks really nice. It has fortified walls that go all the way up the mountain. That's quite unique. And then, of course, you have this sort of relatively small old town center that's very well maintained and then you always have these chance encounters that make these trips so special. I mean, I had, you know, these wonderful guys that I met yesterday and then last night I just roamed around looking for a place to eat and I picked a place that looked most appealing to me and I was sitting there enjoying the first sip of my beer and then a guy comes over and was like, aren't you on YouTube? I think I know you. I'm like, yes. And, you know, it was the owner of the place, Marco is his name, just came over to say hi and, you know, we had a pretty long chat and it was just nice. So Marco, if you see this, thank you for your nice company last night. It really made my day because you don't meet a lot of people anymore this late in the season. So it's really, it makes every encounter that you have now, makes it quite special. So that was pretty cool. So I spent a couple of hours in the old town and then just went back to the place. So it's really hard to see. I think it's on this side. I can hardly see it like this. So today is going to be the longest riding day of this tour. It's 450 kilometers, 465 it seems. And I'll be crossing two borders to see if this is going to work out. So I'm in Montenegro now. I will be going into Albania and then to North Macedonia. That's where I'll be spending the night. I have two routes planned. I have a shorter one and a longer one. I can still switch around if I feel like I'm running out of time. Since I've been skipping lunch anyway, this should help with the timing of it all. So it's day eight of my tour. It is Tuesday, I believe. It's good when you start to forget the days of the week when you really know you're on vacation. But no, it's Tuesday today. Yeah, this place is coming to life. It had a fair amount of tourists here yesterday. Talking to Marco, he said when the cruise ships, they can actually get into this small bay here, they can get these big cruise liners in here. And it's one of the top three places that the cruise liners would basically go to along with Venice. I think he said split in Croatia. And then here, Kotor. So they will get lots of tourists in here throughout the year, but there haven't been many cruise liners this year. So chances are it's going to pick up next year. I mean, there's a lot of tourists, but the tourism, you know, keeps this place alive. The walls going up the mountain are crazy. So anyway, the tourism, you know, brings money to the area, but also that money helps to maintain the old city. And then it's not far. And then you got this kind of stuff. You have a lot of this here. They just leave it sitting there. It's a little bit of a shame because there are so many beautiful buildings here. And then you've got a truck with you. All right, let's hit the mountains. Beautiful overview of the Kotor Bay. And you can see the old town is just kind of that long pier sticking out. It's to the right of it. It's a small little right behind that big rock sticking out. So the scenery keeps getting better. Well, it's 1200 meters right now in the mountains, so it looks like a billion. Look at this. Again, the colors is the most spectacular part of it. Sunshine, beautiful waterfall colors, and then this great rock. And look at this. All the way, you can see this is just mountains here. So let's see if I'm not running out of time today, because most of the roads are like this. It will take a while. That's beautiful. The setting is beautiful here. Also know that it is 11 o'clock and I'm on the road now for more than an hour and a half. And I make very little progress on the small roads. So I will have to get out of mountain range and then I will have to cut the route a little short from the 460. It's completely impossible today without getting there very late at night, which I don't want to do. So I'm going to enjoy this beautiful part and then in Albania I'll just use the shorter route to get me straight to Lake Gord in Macedonia. Wow, that's a huge lake. I just saw the tip of it when I first came in, but wow, look at this. Damn, that's really a nice view. So I'm descending down the panoramic road number 3B, and I want to get on some larger roads. I'll be heading to the border of Albania. And once I've crossed the border, I will see how much time I've left and then sort of route accordingly so I can get there before sunset ideally. So hitting another tall road. Oh, hi. Can I pay with card? Yes. Okay, cool. Wow, four kilometers long tunnel. Holy cow. Check out that church. Wow, it's like sparkling in the sun. Hello. ID card? Okay. This is the border to Albania. Thank you. Thanks. That was a friendly customer. I think they go through a keep a serious face score before they take on a job like this. So I've been in this country only for a short while and I've passed so many gas stations since crossing the border. It's crazy. They must need a lot of gas here. All right, speaking of gas, let's give it some. So I'm starting to get into the section of smaller roads and I just had a large group of motorcycles come toward me. That must have been easily 12, maybe 15 motorcycles in a large group. I didn't see any other motorcycles, so not a lot of motorcycles on the road still. So far it looks good. It is a bit bumpy but the pavement looks good. Yeah, good to have good suspension here. Wow, sand in the corner. See, that's exactly in the shaded area That gave me a little scare here. I mean, it wasn't so bad, just like a quick loss of traction there. What's happening here? Security? For what? So if you look around, it's quite interesting. We're quite a bit further south now and some of the leaves are starting to, you know, turn a little orange and yellow. It's not nearly as pronounced as it was in Montenegro, just a little bit more north of here. But just looking at all the trees, it's still very much just green. It could be here in the summer that it would look exactly the same. Good pavement. Oh man. There's a car that's going home. Oh, one of those again. Check it out, what happened here. It's like the earthquake hit it or something. Is that it? So I just was pulled over by the police again. First time the Albanian police. They saw the license plate, smiled at me and just let me go. Didn't want to go through the whole spiel of driver's license and all that. So that's nice. Check out these beautiful mountains. Look at the colors. It's got the red up on top, a little bit of green and then goes yellow at the bottom. I'm still in Albania. I should be very close to the Macedonian border by now. And just saw the group of kids greet me, which is really cool. Just gonna let me go. Thanks. Another police stop. Good thing I'm going slow. And yeah, it's pretty cute. These kids run up to you and want to high-five you on the motorcycle. Yeah, it's pretty cool. They're waving you, the girls. So I'll make a right turn and I'll head straight to the Macedonian border from there. Hello, e-card and papers. Thank you. Bye, thank you. That's weird. So most of the times it's two border places. You leave a country and then you enter another one, except the border from Montenegro to Albania. That was just one, so go figure. Okie dokie. That's the first time I had to show the insurance card. Good thing I got it because that's not normally something you get from the insurance. I requested that a while back just to have it for national trips. All right, here we are. Macedonia. Okay, where's our traffic jam? All right, I'm in Urd. Yeah. Oh, you're on a bike. Yes, I'm on a bike. Hello. I don't need this? No problem. Okay. No problem. This is basically where it is, right? Yes. And I can just take the bike there? Yes, in front of our door. Oh, that was a long day. Guys, that was a long day. First time. Oh, okay. First time in Croatia, first time in Bosnia, first time in everywhere. A Balkan tour. Exactly. Really late in the year. So guys, I'm just walking alongside the lake. The sun already set probably about half an hour ago. There's still some light in the sky left. That looks really, really cool. And there's no wind. I missed the sunset, but the twilight is still with a place that's really just a few minutes walking distance. And so I had a quick breakfast and I took my bike here, which was possible because it takes a while to load it up. And it's nice to have it ready to go, which it is now. So it's warmed up to nine degrees. It was actually minus one this morning. See, that's the way to do it. Sorry, people out here. They don't like KTMs, it seems. Beautiful morning. There's hardly any wind. That's why it doesn't feel so cold. And there's a good amount of sunlight. So I got a little glimpse of the town of Ord. Obviously, it's the historic center. You can tell it's also a very popular tourist destination. So today I have to catch the ferry at the very latest at four o'clock, three hours before the ferry leaves. You have to check in. So I definitely have to be there a bit early. So I'm going to be pushing it about an hour and 15 minutes safety in there. I also have some parts in the mountains that I want to see in Albania, not just go fast roads. That would be kind of boring. But I know these can take quite a while, as I saw yesterday. So the owner of the apartment actually suggested to go the east loop around the lake, which is the nicer way. Also, the border is supposed to be less busy when entering Albania. And it's chilly eight degrees, so still quite chilly out. But the air has this sort of cold smell. You know, you get the occasional whiff of burning wood. There's a lot of wood stoves, obviously, here. So that always reminds me of skiing somehow. It's just being in the mountains and skiing, despite being here. But this crisp, clear air and then the smell of burning wood just triggers that memory, I guess. So it kind of makes sense that this is the nicer area of the lake, in a way, because it is the west side. It's usually your preferred side, you know, the side where you can see the sunset. Or it is actually placed really well in the north, because it gets the morning light all the way to the sunset. You can see all of it from there. Hello. Albania, and then I'll take the ferry and then I will go to Italy. Thank you. Now, I expect there to be another checkpoint. Welcome to Albania. Exactly. And there is the checkpoint. Okay. You know, with the European Union and being able to just freely travel and we're within the Union, you kind of forget how it used to be, where you had to do exactly this. Every country you had to enter, you had to show your passport, you had to be checked. And now it's here every country. And because you're crossing so many borders, that's happening all the time. It's not a big deal, but it just kind of reminds me of the good old days, when that was completely normal everywhere in Europe. So, I've entered the smaller roads that I want to take today. There will be sort of mountainous roads to the countryside, just to kind of experience the country a little bit. It does look like a fall day now here, with the colors turning. The pavement conditions are pretty rough. Not that that's usually a problem for this bike. The biggest deal are actually potholes. And especially now with the shade and the sunlight, it's really hard to see them. Yesterday, or I think the day before, I hit one really hard. That's the kind of stuff that can mess the tire up. Maybe it gets better. Maybe not. I'm not gonna hold my breath. This is good on the map and planning it, but of course you don't know anything about the road conditions when you do. This is going alongside a river. You can see the drive too. And it's very long, so once you're committed to the track, there's no way out of it. You either turn back and, you know, retrace your steps, or you just make your way through it. So, that's what I'm doing. I'm just gonna go for it. It has not gotten better. This is what it looks like now. I'm probably 20% into the track right now. It was not listed as an off-road track as far as I believe. This would be a non-paved road. It should be. Or maybe it just had the option turned on to use also non-paved roads. Because I said at a point to go through a certain location where only this road goes through, I wanted to go on this road. But I have no idea what the conditions are on a paved road. This is much nicer on the road. I was hoping to do this and not that off-road track or whatever that was. It's still a bit dirty, but it's slippery. But it's a little nice. So, that dirt and gravel road turned into this. And that is kind of what I was expecting. This seems to be a relatively new road. Looking at the guardrails, this could be kind of nice and new. So, chances are that someday the entire track will fix. But the beginning of it was just an absolute horrendous shade. It was barely... It's not a paved road anymore. It's just a dirt road in the end. And since this is a relatively long way to go without having the option of, you know, going off the track or going another route, this is it. This is the only way through. This is what I was hoping to see. And I'm glad to see it. I hope this is gonna stay like this now. So, I suppose this is the point of highest elevation. It should be... I don't know what it is. I have to pick it up. A thousand meters. I'm pretty smacked on. But look at this. That reminds me of a France tour in 2019. We had a lot of the rides were alongside rivers and with the canyons. They just go on forever and forever. And the roads are beautiful. But also that scenery having the cliffs on both sides. It's just gonna go straight up. from the ferry terminal. And I made it here by two o'clock. And I got gas. And that was because the last bit was a relatively fast road. Hello. I hope I'm in the right place. Trying to take the ferry to Italy. Ancona. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Ferry terminal. So, I have to see what happens with my ticket. Time to board the ferry. Ancona. Ancona. Yeah. Akrapovic. Akrapovic. Oh, you're here. Yeah. Sounds good, doesn't it? Yeah, it's good. Just over there? Okay. Thank you. Hello. Absolutely. There you go. Thank you. Akrapovic. You do it. See you, guys. Thank you. Bye. This is it. My ferry. Boat. I think this one. Hi. Did you see the boarding pass? I'm gonna put it up here. It was my same clothes. Yeah? When I took my last motorbike, I was thinking about this one and mine. And then I decided to take the BMW. Yeah, everyone has the BMW. I got this one. This is really good. I had the BMW, too. I really liked it, too. They're both good bikes. But it's this one now. So, where do I go? Tickets. Oh, tickets. Sorry. The helmet is like taking... Are you doing vlogging as well? Yeah. Your website. Yeah, it's on YouTube. I love the shape. Yeah, and also the coloring. This is... I got this from South Korea. Yeah, I like the design and it was really a pain in the ass to put this on, but that's just... Where do I go? I didn't look. Is it the right-hand side? Right there. Oh, yeah. I can see it. Cool. Thank you very much. You have a good one. Thank you. Bye.