Montenegro: Beaches, Monks & Canyons.

Kotor, Ostrog, and Durmitor; 3 places that we knew nothing about a few days before going there, all in a country that we knew close to nothing about. Montenegro is in the heart of the Balkans, one of the countries least affected by the recent Yugoslavian war. Considering how small it is, it manages to pack a bunch of cool stuff into it: beaches and bays to match Croatia’s, mountains as rugged and beautiful as the alps, and food as good as anywhere else in Eastern Europe.

Arriving from Croatia, we spent a night in Kotor, a small town at the tip of the Bay of Kotor with an old town which was reminiscent of Dubrovnik, but surrounded by mountains that rose straight up out of the sea. No lack of beautiful scenery here on the Adriatic coast, let us reassure you.

The view over the Bay of Kotor from the ruined castle. One cruise ship away from perfection. With views like this, we were in love with Montenegro from day one.

 

We had heard whispers on the wind of a sacred monastery in the heart of Montenegro, a monastery built into the cliff on which it stands, a place of pilgrimage and solitude called Ostrog. Determined to get here we tried our hand at hitchhiking from Kotor. 2 hitchhikes, a bus and taxi ride later we made it to the upper monastery. We decided to go for the full experience and spent the night sleeping in front of the monastery with other travelers and pilgrims, almost all of which were Serbian or Montenegrin. We definitely felt spiritually out of our depth, but it was a unique experience. Something different.

The gleaming white monastery is visible the whole way up the Ostrog valley, but you can't really tell what it is until you get to the foot of it. Also there's no public transport to the monastery, only the odd tour group during the day. Hard to think of a more peaceful place to build a monastery.

The only bad thing about spending a night here is that the monks begin their chanting when the sun rises, at 5.30am...

What happens when you want to prepare salad-in-a-sack, but your sack has hole in it? 

We present to you: salad-on-a-sack. Much messier.

From Ostrog we hitchhiked further north to Zabljak, the main centre in Durmitor national park. We were mainly drawn to Durmitor when we heard there were heaps of bears and wolves in the forests (we laugh in the face of danger). We didn’t encounter any fluffy carnivores, but we did do some exceptionally beautiful hiking, and even a spot of canyoning to keep the appetite for extreme sports sated. Durmitor is home to two impressive canyons: The Tara Canyon which is the second largest canyon in the world (after the Grand Canyon), and the Nevidio Canyon which was the last canyon ever traversed by man, in 1965. We chose the latter for our canyoning expedition

 The Black Lake. All the best things in Montenegro are 'black', hence the name. It looked decidedly green to us, but maybe they named everything at night time.

 Meet Ragnar, the cutest puppy in all of Montenegro/the world (told you the best things in Montenegro are black). Born on the 3rd of July, Ragnar is a resident at the Hiker's Den Hostel in Zabljak. The hostel was awesome and reminded us of the Ginger Monkey (see: Tatras Mountains blog).

 

Tramping in Durmitor! We crossed some kiwi blokes from Southland (we didn't ask for more details) who were tramping up the highest peak in Montenegro in their jandals. Absolute top blokes.

We found some snow and pretty beautiful ice caves... Montenegro has it all! Felix was so stunned by the beauty and magic that he turned into an ice prince, hence the white face.

The man who guided us through the Nevidio Canyon was none other than the son of one of the first men to traverse this canyon. They did it without wetsuits and spent a month in hospital afterwards (the water is ~7 degrees). The whole experience was enhanced as the guide didn’t speak a lot of English, which made it feel like an authentic Montenegrin experience. He had the basics: “Stop”, “go go go!” and “photo”. “Go go go!” was easily his favourite. It was our belief that what happens in the canyon, stays in the canyon, until we found out the guide had a go-pro… We're trying to work out how to capture still shots from the videos he took, but these are a bit of a taster:

 

 

 

Next time: We head to the land of Greeks, Gods and gyros.