It's been months now since we came to Montenegro in our camper van and have started really living the traveler's life in full. It had ups and downs and was and still is a marvelous experience but one of the things that keeps reminding me just how much I enjoy it is that we get to drink actual water.
Not water from a tap that has been standing in the pipes for days but fresh clean drinking water coming right out of the gigantic mountains that make up the Montenegrin landscape. There will often be a drain pipe at a central point where people can come and freely fill up on water from the mountains above!
You can find springs anywhere in this country and what a pleasure it is! We draw about 35 litres per visit which will last us more than a week in our van. It's free, it's publicly accessible and it just tastes amazing. It carries so much energetic quality that it's sometimes hard to stop drinking it even after you've had a big gulp. When we have run out of water and are in need to refill we have had it happen that we drank too much on the initial getting to the spring, being so thirsty for cold fresh water - and it's just soooo good! Loaded with information and life.
At the beginning of the week we got a chance to compare! We were offered bottled water by some people we had visited and while it came out of the fridge and should have been a pleasure to drink - it was weird. My stomach got upset a little, which came as a surprise because there aren't many things that upset my stomach. It tasted weird and it seemed... dead. Like it had sparkled all its energy and vibrance into the plastic that soaked it all up.
It's likely the reason the gang want to turn humanity into plastic bottle addicts - it leaves so much to be desired if you are used to fresh water form a mountain spring.
And when I speak to my friends who stayed "home" and tell them how we are getting our water and how good it is they would love to taste it. Freshness isn't only relevant to food, it seems impeccably relevant to the water we drink on a daily basis as well. What a surprise right?
And while the traveler's life remains a daily challenge in many aspects, the benefits of doing this came as unexpected as they came unbelievably rewarding.
Drink more spring water from a mountain - if you can find it somewhere! If you check openstreetmaps and the respective apps they will always have springs on their maps! It's how we find most of ours in a place like Montenegro.
