Montenegro — The road liss traveled

There are just not enough old towns in the Balkans, the small town of Kotor has another nice one. Although by now I’m just about through with them, I think I’d spend about all 20 minutes in Kotor’s. But fortunately the town has the benefit of being at the tip of a beautiful bay and sandwiched in between rock walls on both sides with plenty of hiking, bicycling, and swimming opportunities around! I arrived at 2pm and it was off to find a good place to swim. Not very difficult! I certainly wasn’t going anywhere near the old town while the huge cruise ships were still around.

Everywhere on the bay is pretty damn scenic

Eventually that first evening I was off to the old town to get to the famous hike to the fort overlooking the bay, which you have to pay 15 euros for the pleasure. About a 45 minute hike, a nice spot for sunset, although it slips below the mountains rather early. The fort was built in the 6th century during the Byzantine empire, then eventually controlled by the Venetians, then the Ottomans, then the Hapsburg Dynasty, then the Russians for a bit before going back to the Austrians after the Congress of Vienna in 1814. Then it was taken over by the Axis powers in WW2 before being liberated in 1944. So a lot of history!

After walking back down from the fort that evening I did some cooking and met other people in the hostel and played some cards, no poker though! People were impressed with my one pot meal, sauted onions, peppers, carrots, sausage, reduced with some red wine, add in some water and goulash broth mix, lentils, cook it down over 30 minutes and violia, you’ve got yourself a stew! And lunch and/or dinner the next day. And the one pot meals are always nice so you’re not taking up too much room in the communal kitchen. Cooking is nice to have something besides the usual grilled meat platters!

The next morning I caught the bus about 7-8 miles down the road to a cute little stoney village where there’s fancy boutique hotels with $6 cappuccinos and boats that take you out to the the two churches in the middle of the lake. Nothing exactly amazing, you walk around and say, ‘yep it’s a church’, but the location is quite alright. That afternoon I rented a bicycle, which was a pretty fantastic idea, and rode through the villages and found nice spots to swim. That was all before the clouds rolled in and I got stuck in a solid downpour for the last mile. That was actually the first heavy rain of the whole trip!

Next up was Durmitor NP, which I’ve heard is one of the more underrated hiking destinations in the Balkans, so I was eager to check it out. I booked a private room in a hiking hostel, and was basically out the door with my pack the moment I arrived, off to see double lake, perfect distance for a late afternoon hike. Nothing amazing, but also just two miles from town. The place I was staying was one of those pretty social hostels where everyone hangs out outside on the all the picnic tables. It’s honestly amazing how many small groups of young Brits and Aussies are in some of these hostels, they’re everywhere! It really does seem like western Europe has gotten a bit too crowded and expensive in the summer and more and more people are choosing eastern Europe as an alternative. I guess I was expecting more an older crowd in a hiking hostel far from the more happening scenes along the coast, but nope!

The next morning they organized a shuttle for some of us to get to one of the hikes, 4 Brits, a Kiwi, and myself. The scenery in this part of the park looks a bit like how I’d imagine the Scottish highlands, green, shrubby, and windswept with no trees, plus some odd sheep hanging around. It was definitely a bit different mountain scenery than I was expecting, but still fantastic. Lots of the hike was up high along ridgelines, so the scenery was pretty much non-stop the whole time hiking. The very last 15 minutes there’s a nice bit of scrambling, with some cables to hang on to, just to add some extra adrenaline rush for the final stretch. You are rewarded with some incredibly 360 degree views of the whole park. And soon we met the trail dogs at the top who, make this trip every day! They also came down with us for a bit, but got bored quickly of the slow and clumsy two legged things.

So all in all in was a fantastic six hour trek. Now the tricky part was getting home, we’d have to hitchhike from the trailhead. I asked some older (apparently German) couple at the trailhead and I asked if me and the Kiwi girl could get a ride, he looked like was he going to say no at first (those German sensibilities) but our winning smiles won him over, and they let us hop in. Our hiking crew then went out that night for dinner, for some classic Balkan food, yay. You just can’t go wrong with the mixed grill, some sausages, grilled pork kebabs, French fries, salad, bread, red pepper sauce, etc.

The next day I could have hiked with a big group, but I’d rather just wake up early and have the mountains to myself rather than wait on a bunch of slowpokes. This hike was about 14 miles, there and back, but with a loop once you get out of the treeline and into the alpine section of the hike. It’s unique feature being an ice cave. You follow some ropes down on steep, slippery ground into the cave where it stays freezing all year round. Now what you see on your everyday hike. Also the nice thing about today’s hiking was the absolute lack of people, I only saw a few a people the whole day, while the hike yesterday was pretty slammed with people, being the most popular hike in the park.

The last day I rented a mountain bike and did some cycling around the countryside outside the park. There’s a few different things to do, a chairlift to take you up a mountain, a canyon viewpoint – the canyon is apparently the deepest in Europe? And also a lake for swimming (it was too cloudy though) that also had some herds of sheep around it. I was getting kind of close to sheep and one of them is kind of staring me down, so I stop and assume everything is alright. Then it starts walking right at me, and now I’m briskly walking backwards trying to make it clear I’m no threat. He really looks like he wants to charge me, and those horns are looking sharp! I’ve now probably gone 50-60 feet backwards away from the lake, we are nowhere near the sheep anymore, and this asshole is still following me and glowering at me, making grunting noises. I am pretty much freaking out at this point, getting gored by a sheep was not one of the things I had on my checklist for the day! At some point it finally left me alone, but that was by far the scariest part of the whole trip hahaha. I’ve seen youtube videos of villagers in India getting attacked by a pissed off ram, it does not look fun!

So anyway the countryside was really nice, I finally found some people more my age at the hostel to hang out with, a couple of Belgians and an Aussie. We went out to the fancy restaurant, which is like 15-20 euros for a main instead of 8-15 or something, veal tenderloin in mushroom sauce for me, pretty tasty! Next up would be the longest travel day of the trip, 9 hour bus ride to Belgrade, Serbia. Don’t forget to print your bus ticket! One of Montenegro’s weird (annoying) quirks is you need a printed bus ticket. It’s 2024, come on!