#3: [08-May-22]

#2: [13-May-17]

16-Aug-2004 -- In the middle of nowhere or the centre of the world? Most of the confluence points are on the oceans and the seas of the world, or according to my friend Jan in the middle of nowhere. According to him it also applies to confluence point 43N 20E where we arrived at 15:20, 16 August 2004. For me, however, this point and its immediate surroundings are the centre of the world, as it is so, to speak, in my Montenegrin backyard.

After I got acquainted with the Confluence Project, I discovered to my surprise that one of the points not visited was less than 7 km, as the crow flies, from the place were I am building a house. It was also a convincing motive for buying a GPS (is this project sponsored by the producers?).

Coming from Beograd or Podgorica, near Bijelo Polje, you will take the road to Berane (Ivangrad on the older maps and even on some new ones) and turn to the left after 14 km in the village of Srdjevac (Restaurant Montenegro). Then you start ascending the lovely mountains turning right and left curves and passing scattered villages in semi open landscape with beautiful vistas. The people are extremely open and friendly to visitors and the chance that you leave the vicinity without coffee, rakija, and making new friends is small.

David Guier in his report of the visit of 43N 19E is much too pessimistic about the situation and missed an easy point because of this misinformation! Montenegro has a great future in tourism, because of the terrific landscape and the wonderful heartily people.

My friend Jan Plantinga and I left the house in Crhalj (42.58.xxx/19.55.xxx) (8 km up on the road from Srdjevac) by car after a wonderful lunch with home made bread, kajmak, young cheese, dried meat, on Monday 16 August. My Montenegrin relatives thought it a strange idea to go to photograph a point somewhere without knowing what you were going to do exactly. So, the two Dutchmen went alone. None of the maps which we had gave a correct location of roads and paths or the confluence point. We had to trust the GPS.

We drove to the village of Korita, where we parked the car not far from the mosque. We noticed at that moment that we probably had to be on the other side of a mountain, which was covered with a forest on this side. Most of the walk was easy to do over paths with enough clear sky. The point appeared to be on a steep but walkable slope in a forest. Contact with the satellites was possible until we had our most important pictures. By trying to get all zeros on the GPS, we lost contact, due to the density of the forest.

But the pictures were made! And for the birdwatchers among us: a nutcracker at 60 m of the confluence. Some gliding through the forest to get to a small stream and we easily found another path to return through open fields to the car along the other slope of the mountain.

Coordinator's Note: I have masked the last decimal places of the vistor's personal residence GPS location