Pirates and Travel in the time of Corona

Pirates of the Caribbean - I mean the Balkans. Wine in Dubrovnik. Greek salads in Albania. Running the covid gauntlet. Where was I on lockdown day? I have never read Love in the Time of Cholera - perhaps I should - but ever since the covid stuff started the name has been in my head, but as Travel in the time of Corona. 

It’s early 2020.

In hindsight there was a very strange atmosphere growing.

Australia was an inferno. The bushfires had been raging since September 2019 – a surreal horror of its own, my country being burnt from the north to the south, all the way down the east through the forested areas of the Great Divide – a mountain range…

At least, us resident in the ancient and worn away land we now call Australia like to think that. Even world babies like Mt Fuji in Japan are higher than Australia’s Mt Kosciuszko. But we do have snow – a little bit. A skiing season – very short, and not exactly flashy by world standards.

Gum trees in the snow - not your typical view of the cold places, but this is how it looks in Australia. I lived above 1000m above sea level. It didn’t snow often (too dry), but when it did, this is how it looked.

It’s got its own magic – gum trees pock-marking the snowy white slopes in a way that seems ethereal compared to the usual images of our arid red landscape. The Man from Snowy River – a classic poem written by iconic poet JB Paterson – made into a film several times, conjuring images of wild brumbies racing down the snowy mountains.

This is a more typical view of much of Australia. Ok, so this is very deserty - and not many people are out there. Even me. But it’s a hot dry country with a lot of empty arid space.

The Australia I know is blue. Almost anywhere, looking out across the landscape, that is the dominating colour, because of the gum leaves – the eucalyptus trees which are the Australian landscape. The leaves are a grey-blue colour, and from a distance the landscape looks blue. Hence place names like The Blue Mountains west of Sydney, where The Three Sisters watch over the surrounding bush.

The Three Sisters of Aboriginal legends, looking over a foggy morning in the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney.

But this eastern fringe of forests was being incinerated in arguably the worst bushfires in Australia. Ever.

My country was crying.

Maps showed the area being burnt as way outsizing greater London, or large parts of Europe. I think at one point they covered the same area as all of Belgium with some spare besides.

Even worse than that, the koalas were in trouble. Even before the fires they were saying that koalas would be gone – extinct – by 2050, just 30 years from now. How long do they now have?

Then there was the photo of a man dropped dead on the street in China from a new virus. Of course we now know that photo and story link was fake, since anyone that close to dying from covid isn’t capable of moving from their bed. But in January 2020 it was just a report from afar.

There were horror accounts of 3000 dead in China. When I first read this I frowned. In a country with a small population like Australia this would be catastrophic, but China has a population approaching 1 ½ billion. A quarter of a million dying from an earthquake or floods is barely newsworthy. A flood in 1931 resulted in a death toll of 3-4 million.

Meanwhile, in Bari in southern Italy – worlds away from Wuhan in central China – I met a lovely lady in a hostel.

Bari old town, Puglia in southern Italy.

Shafaq was in her 20s, lying in her bunk feeling crap from a flu. As we chat she tells me about her family and shows me photos of her husband and her beautiful two year old daughter, neither of whom she has seen for 6 months.

She is a long way from home in Pakistan. She has been studying her PhD in Italy with her husband, and had still half a year of hard work before she would be able to go home to them. She is alone and doing it tough – like so many international students.

Even though the new virus was in China – and there have been reports of a virus of one sort or another every year or two for decades – Chinese restaurants were being shunned. Even though Shafaq wasn’t from China, and hadn’t been anywhere near that part of the world for over half a year (her home in Pakistan is almost 4000km from Wuhan), she is also being shunned. People were crossing the street to avoid walking past her, and her boss told her to stay away while she was sick.

I am sad that this is not a unique experience – alone in a strange country, working hard on limited funds, and shunned by all those around including those who know you – a situation far more people have been put into over the past 2 years.

I did the only thing that I felt was appropriate. I crossed the room to her bunk and gave her the biggest hug I could.

While I was still in Italy I visited her several more times – and I’m glad to say she is now back home with her family – and PhD, and a new baby boy.

But as February progressed, stories kept spreading. Cruise ships were being held offshore, and the virus had reached northern Italy. Milan, Turin and Venice had been closed.

But Milan is a long way from Italy’s instep.

Two guys dressed up as old ladies for the festival in Montescaglioso

My last week in Montescaglioso – this province of Basilicata on the southern end of Italy was probably the last one to be touched by cases – and though there were still none reported there, noticeswere starting to appear on shop and business windows creating a weird atmosphere.

But my agenda was far more immediate than that. I was running out of visa.

Oh – and funds.

Again.

My plan when I left Australia had been to improve my finances with a teaching English job (in Asia). While gaining more time to work on my stories.

So I stayed for the 3 day festival in Montescaglioso at the end of February and found myself running for the nearest border crossing on the last day of my Schengen visa. I spent a night in Matera (of the cave homes), the only guest in an eerily empty hostel. Normally tourism would have been starting to build up with the end of the winter coming, but not in 2020.

Meanwhile I had carefully calculated that I would be across the border from Italy by midnight on the 28th of February.

A ferry from Bari.

And the only ferry which went to a non-Schengen country in winter, went to Durres.

Albania.

I watched the news anxiously for the 3 days from booking my ticket – a lead time that was to become much shorter over the months. News was getting increasingly disturbing with reports of the virus spreading, its fingers slowly creeping down to the heel of Italy, another cruise ship quarantined offshore somewhere.

Would my ferry still run?

The Diamond Princess – an Australian cruise ship – had been quarantined offshore. There were reports of people talking about difficult and distressing circumstances being locked in their rooms.

I boarded my ferry in Bari for the overnight trip.

I’d booked the cheapest cabin – a share 4-berth. And got a whole room ensuite included, all to myself – an echo of the night in the hostel in Matera.

With the stories of the Diamond Princess, and then another cruise ship, I had no booking for a hostel in Durres. In this strange world was there a possibility that I too could end up stranded offshore? I didn’t want to risk losing payment for a night and never making it.

But the ferry arrived without drama. There were temperature checks at the Albanian border and lines for staff to fill out forms with your ID and contact details. But all went smoothly.

Durres terminal found me doing an 8am hostel booking, hoping it was open and functioning at that hour of the day.

The Hostel Durres was one I’d been eyeing off for a workaway – a pretty little hostel near the old amphitheatre, roman ruins and colosseum.

But wait – didn’t you say Albania?

Byzantine Forum Durres, Albania

We are so tuned into ancient Rome being in Italy (oh, and the UK), and Ancient Greece being in… Greece, that we overlook how far these cultures and their influences spread.

I was again the only person in the hostel – besides a Workawayer already there for electrical maintenance and upkeep. And believe it or not – in this corner so distant from Australia, the one other staying in this hostel in Albania, was another Australian.

We spent our time between evenings of shared cooking in the kitchen, beers and wonky wine bottles, and a week to remember my one and only word in Albanian – falamindeiri – thank you. I must have worked hard at remembering that one, since two years later I can still remember it.

Portal lookout from the pirate den above the cliffs giving a view over the Adriatic

So I marked time in Durres, with daily trips to a café with a distant snippet of sea view and the best Greek salad ever (well, they are across the border from Greece). I continued to edit my children’s story (Sneferu’s Curse, a time travel to ancient Egypt for 12-year-olds). I checked out the amphitheatre and colosseum remnants, a private school, and spent half a day being entertained by the efforts of a bunch (who I seriously hope were not professionals, based on their efforts) trying to rescue a marooned and waterlogged and very expensive yacht on the waterfront.

To the south and near the Greek border there is some beautiful coastline. To the north on the shores of Lake Skadar I visited the countryside in its basics (courtesy of a fantastic organic hostel called Mi Casa es Tu Casa in the town of Shkoder) helping the hostel owner with collecting supplies, and saw farm life in its rawness in one of the poorest countries in Europe.

But I had 8 days to wait for a workaway I had arranged in Ulcinj in Montenegro, the next country north along the Adriatic coast.

This workaway was at a pirate den. Yes – the real thing!

The Caribbean may currently have the name, especially after Johnny Depp’s Pirates of the Caribbean – who isn’t inspired by the adventures of Jack Sparrow!

But pirates were everywhere (and unfortunately, still are, cos while we romanticize them, their reality is and always has been a vastly different animal. Shoulder parrots included.)

They appear in my story set in China – a female who around 1800 had a bigger fleet than Blackbeard. Pirates were also rife in the Adriatic.

Zheng Yi Sao, or Ching Shih, active in the South China Sea in the early 1800s. Is claimed to have had the largest pirate fleet ever.

They had a castle, palace, mansion – let’s settle with den – on the rocky cliffs above the sea in Ulcinj, Montenegro. And I had arranged for a workaway there. I was very excited. The owner was renovating the pirate den into a classy hotel and restaurant and wanted me to write pirate stories for his menu.

View from the pirate den over the town of Ulcinj, Montenegro

By now the spread of the virus had become a fixture on the daily news, though there weren’t yet any cases in Albania, or in Montenegro.

The workaway guy didn’t turn up. No sign of him. I went to the hotel on the designated date and had a good look around and a  roam with my imagination, stepping in the footsteps of the pirates. But they told he was still in France, (and I believe has since sold the hotel - so if the new owner still wants those menu stories, I’d still love to help!!!). But no amount of messaging was getting me any responses.

Tunnel leading up to the pirate den, Ulcinj, Montenegro

Suddenly this new virus seemed to have become an excuse for everything. I am sad to say this was only the first time this happened. Over time I had several people agree to have me stay for a workaway and make all the arrangements. I would sort my situation and pack my bags, travel to the area, then suddenly when the date was close and I needed details like exactly where to meet or how to get there – nothing.

So I went back to my hostel in Ulcinj. In 10 minutes I had packed my bag, and in half an hour I had jumped on the next bus north. My daughter had suggested a weekend together, so I booked a flight from Dubrovnik airport to London.

Budva, my writing view, Montenegro. And yes, those tables next to the water were an excellent place for a meal with a glass of wine.

I spend a few days in the old city of Budva on the coast in Montenegro. It had a calmness to it I really loved, and a hostel in the middle of the old city. Plus a photo opportunity of palm trees with a snowy mountain backdrop.

I was even looking up some workaways there – one was dog-sitting while the owner was away, thinking around options after my time in London. Would I come back here and fill in 3 months waiting to get to Greece, or should I stick with plans and head to Asia for work?

Writing in the evening, Budva, Montenegro

I have been very brief about this part of the world, but to be honest, it is a truly beautiful area which is very worth a stop. The bus ride from Shkoder in Albania to Ulcinj in Montenegro followed around the beautiful Lake Skadar – one very worthy of a slower wander - incuding rocks just big enough for a single dwelling, and duly occupied. The coastline around southern Montenegro, around Bar and Kotor and the islands look idyllic. I wrote to many Workaways in exceptional spots (just a bit of bad timing, being 2020 and all).

The old city jutting out into the water, protected by the sea and its steep walls.

Then there is Dubrovnik – an extraordinary walled city jutting out on a spur into the Adriatic. Courtesy of a forgotten bag I spent half of my time in Dubrovnik walking for miles backwards and forwards to the bus depot and only managed half a day in the amazing fort city of Dubrovnik. 

But there was no escaping the weird shit that was going on.

As per my usual, in London I booked a room for my daughter and me to share. The plan was to spend a week together, then my daughter would head to a new room and job, and I would head to a hostel in central London for the day or 2 while I booked a ticket to Asia for that job – detour time was over.

The week we spend watching movies we did our best to ignore the constant news of doom. Trips to a coffee shop got hampered by its need to close on the last couple of days. We booked to see the musical Matilda on the Wednesday. I would go to the hostel on the Thursday and maybe fly out to Asia on Friday.

The cafeteria at the hotel had already closed, so our meals became visits to the nearby supermarket, and mostly consisted of bread with cold meat and salads. By the fourth day of this it was becoming a little tedious, and we were wondering how to get some hot food. After begging, the hotel staff finally permitted us to use the staff microwave on the last day.

Matilda got cancelled, so I headed to a hostel in central London – ground zero for the virus in the UK – on the 23rd of March and started the process of looking for flights to SE Asia.

Even as I found them the logistics were becoming increasingly bizarre. Flights were no longer 1 or 2 legs, but 3 and 4. Countries were starting to ban flights from the UK. And the prices were beginning to go crazy. By the time I’d managed to confirm that all legs were possible, the price had jumped, or the flight gone altogether and I’d have to start my search again.

Because the day I arrived at the hostel in central London to book my onward flight to that job in Asia was the 23rd of March.

It was lockdown day in London.

My week-long visit to see my daughter in London would see me stuck in London for 5 months.

I had arrived in Travel in the Time of Corona.

Sunset at Dubrovnik