KEY POINTS:
Call me a computer nerd if you will, but Google Earth is good for killing spare time. What it's not good for, as it turns out, is planning a holiday. Three of us have booked a villa on Corfu for a week and Melissa is flying there direct
from London. Kim and I have adventure in our hearts and are seduced by Google Earth into travelling via the Balkans.
The map promises this is perfectly sensible, as Corfu is just off the Albanian coast. In hindsight perhaps this fact ought to have been researched further before we set off. But things go smoothly to begin with, as we potter round Croatia then make our way to Mostar in Bosnia.
Beautiful, ravaged Mostar. The Serb shelling, followed by the city's Croat and Muslim defenders turning on each other, nearly destroyed Mostar. The fighting has been over for 15 years and Mostar's famous bridge has been re-built but we can see all we need to know about the depth of healing on the night Croatia plays Germany at football.
On the Croat side of the bridge, the pavement outside every café is crammed with fans dressed in red and white, urging their team to victory. Across, in what is now the Muslim side of town, loud support for the opposing team fills the hot night air.
We're staying with a woman in her early 40s who spends all day waiting at the station for backpackers to arrive. She doesn't speak English and seems resigned to seeing the younger English-speaking touts beat her to the trade. She is delighted when we elect to stay with her.
On her dining room wall there's a framed photo of a young soldier in combat fatigues. It's a short step from working out that she's on her own to realising he must be lying at the foot of one of the thousands of pointy Muslim headstones we passed on our way into town.
According to the map, a cemetery we can see in the distance is an old Serbian orthodox graveyard rather than one from the recent conflict. A pleasure stroll amongst fresh grief doesn't sit comfortably so we head to the hills where mourning took place outside living memory.
We climb past residential houses and the foundations of a ruined cathedral. Someone's erected a pergola where the altar used to be and wilted flowers entwine its poles. We turn to admire the view and watch a curtain of rain sweep toward us across the neighbouring hills.
A black-cassocked priest running from the rain almost collides with me at the entrance to the walled graveyard. He invites us into the church hall for coffee and a chat under the drumming tin roof. We leave him a small donation towards the rebuilding of his bombed cathedral. He leaves us with the impression that the wrong side of history is a lonely place to find oneself.
Outside, we wander among the shattered gravestones for a while. The Serbs bombed Mostar from the hills above and when they were routed their cathedral and graveyard took a hammering from below. We're quickly learning there's no such thing as safe ground in this sad, stunning place.
From Mostar, we catch a train to Sarajevo. The journey makes me understand why rail enthusiasts rate it the highest form of travel.
The carriages have compartments with windows we can open and the train winds through green hills alongside a river.
In Sarajevo we realise that Bosnians don't go to Corfu. If they did, there'd surely be an easier way to get there than the options we had. Our guidebook is silent on the subject and the travel agents we consult can only suggest flying via mainland Greece for a big sum.
With no direct route, we jump on a tram to the bus station, passing Hotel Sarajevo and sniper alley on the way.
The bus we want to catch will take us into Montenegro and from there we can hop on another bus to the Albanian border, get down to the coast and catch a ferry to Corfu where our villa awaits.
Which is what we do. Except it takes three days.
Montenegro is much like Bosnia's lush landscape until we get to Kotor, where the road winds down the hills and slithers round the edges of a fjord. We make it to our first stop to find we've missed the last onward bus and the next one isn't until midday tomorrow.
We get a $30 hotel room for the night and wander to the beach to check the fairground. I'm dismayed they don't have candyfloss. Or toffee apples. The next day we explore the old town and then catch our bus to the border.
A loud Texan whippersnapper takes it on himself to organise all the foreigners into an all-together-now group. Eight of us pile into a couple of taxis to cross the border into Albania. We zip down little country lanes and are in sight of the border when we pull up.
Without explanation our drivers want us to transfer to a minivan on the side of the road. Amid reassurances of, "No problem my friend, no problem" we make the switch and trundle the last few yards to the border post.
We stop in the heat for an age, in a van with windows that don't open. I'm starting to wonder if our New Zealand passports are holding up proceedings when one Texan mentions he was born in Iran. He gets his passport back at the same time Kim and I get ours but we decide (under our breath) to blame the Yank anyway.
Inside Albania we try to get a minivan driver to get us to Saranda, from where the ferry departs, tonight. Eyeing us in a manner that suggests he thinks we're crazy, he changes his tune to "Not possible".
Most of the negotiation is conducted through charades and figures scrawled in my notebook, until he waves over a group of school kids to interpret for us. They impress on us that the road is very bad, it's too far and no one will take us. We have to go to Tirana, the capital, and find transport from there.
We give in but as we're driving into Tirana our driver decides he will go on to Saranda after all, for less than the price we agreed to. It's all a bit odd but he seems sound so the deal is struck.
Everyone is happy, the sun is shining, the windows are down and Albanian hip hop (much better than you'd think) is pulsing through the van. Our guy stops and buys peaches, which we munch while we cruise past fields and along a coastal highway.
Curiously, we're also passing lots of concrete septic tanks buried up to their covers in the ground. A quick check of the guidebook tells us we're looking at bomb shelters that Albania's late dictator built all over the country. One for every four head of population.
The story goes that when the prototype was presented he made the designer get inside. And then fired a tank at it. The thousands of mushroom-domed concrete shelters studding Albania's beaches and farmland testify that the design must have come up to scratch.
The sun is getting low in the sky as we leave the fertile flatlands and start to wind up a bit of a gradient. The hill keeps going up long after the sun has gone down and we crest the top in darkness. I don't need Kim shifting nervously in her seat to tell me that the road has taken a turn for the worse.
More than once we round a corner to find rocks in our path. I'm grateful it's dark so I can't see just how high we are but the tiny lights on the coast far, far below give enough of an idea. There's also no barrier separating us from the sheer drop. No railing. No trees. Not even a hard shoulder.
Our driver is tired. After 16 hours of driving we're tired too and are trying desperately to stay awake to make sure he doesn't nod off. I'm certain we've pushed our luck too far and are doomed to plunge to our deaths.
So it's almost anticlimactic when we roll into the outskirts of Saranda at 4am. Greeting us is a little triangular roadworks sign.
The first and only warning sign we've seen at the end of hundreds of kilometres of terrible roads. We're still snorting with laughter as a cop flags us down.
He looks horrified at our plan to wait at the port for the first ferry of the day. Jumping in with us, our new friend directs us to his house where he puts Kim and I up for the rest of the night before sending us off to catch the ferry at a more respectable hour.
We're sitting travel-stained and weary on the terrace of our Corfu villa, when Melissa arrives by cab from the airport, perfumed and serene. Lightweight.
WHAT YOU'LL FIND: Corfu has a mild Mediterranean climate, with hot dry summers, excellent beaches and over two million olive trees. Tourism and olives are cash cows.
HOW TO GET THERE: Flights pour into Corfu from all over Europe. Try this website to find the cheapest available: ww.travelsupermarket.com/c/cheap-flights/greece/corfu/
WHERE TO STAY: The island has all types of accommodation - from self-catering villas and rooms in the homes of locals to all grades of hotel. Try these websites for starters: www.corfutoday.com and www.corfuonline.gr.
