Pluzine is a very strange place. It is located in an utterly beautiful location below towering rock cliffs by the side of a lake. We were expecting it to be a small tourist town with sidewalk cafes overlooking the lake and smart tourist shops. In reality it seems to be composed almost entirely of dilapidated social housing for what appear to be low income families. Men sit around smoking on benches and dogs roam the deserted streets in a slightly eerie way. There are no shops visible other than a couple of small convenience stores. We passed a communist era style hotel which appeared to have closed down quite some time ago. It had narrow tall slit windows framed by dirty concrete facing the street and looked like the architect had taken time out from working on gulag prisons to try his hand at something new.

We wandered around the streets followed by a pair of rather mangy looking dogs anxious for some company.  Eventually we found a restaurant overlooking the lake and booked a table for that evening. 

When we arrived the owner brusquely ordered a woman and her small child to vacate their table by the window so that we could sit there. We felt somewhat embarrassed but the woman seemed quite sanguine about her treatment.  The restaurant reeked of cigarette smoke as smoke free areas are definitely not a thing in Montenegro, or indeed anywhere in the balkans.  The apartment block we are staying in has stale smoke smell pervading every corner of the building.

We ordered trout and waited while the TV showed a football match which seemed to consist of rather more writhing on the ground by ham-acting players than was strictly necessary.

The owner came with placemats, cutlery and condiments. He positioned the mats with millimetre precision to align with the edge if the table. The cutlery was carefully placed and after he had set the condiments down he moved them twice by a few millimeters to ensure their accurate positioning on the table. 

When our meals arrived he meticulously placed a plate with a single trout in front of Gill and a plate containing two trout in front of me. We spent quite some time over dinner discussing whether this was simply a manifestation of the seemingly male dominated culture in Montenegro where it would be perfectly natural to give the man twice as much food as the woman. Further research will be necessary I feel to explain this unique phenomenon.

There does seem to be quite a lot of testosterone around in this part of the world. This manifests itself most obviously in the driving habits of the locals. Tailgating at extremely close quarters is the accepted way of communicating that you wish to pass and passing is best done at very high speed preferably approaching a blind corner. Some drivers also play a fun game where they put their offside front wheel slightly over the central line particularly on narrow tight corners just to see if it makes the oncoming car swerve to avoid it. After the first few heart stopping moments you sort of get the hang of the game and just move a tiny bit to the right. I suspect it's a bit like apes banging their chests to see how scared they can make the onlooker.

The other thing we noticed generally in the Balkans is that, unlike New Zealand, strangers never greet each other. Quite the contrary. The gaze is averted as you approach and if they do look at you, it is with a blank stare. We have assumed that this may be a symptom of the tribal, ethnic and religious differences that are found everywhere in the Balkans. If you have no idea whom you are greeting it's safer just to look away.

Today we went for a drive along Piva Canyon. It's a dramatic and wonderful place and words cannot do it justice. I'll just put some images up. Gill came face to face with her greatest phobia at one of the photo stops. A small snake slithered close. Gill calmly, if somewhat shakily, walked back to the road. I'm so proud of her! I wasn't expecting snakes to figure anywhere on this journey but that's the joy of travel. The unexpected!