top of page
bertrand006

#50. Montenegro: 19-26, 2024

If the five days in Dubrovnik had lacked for setbacks that made for good anecdotes, Montenegro did not disappoint.

 

After five days of close to perfect weather in Dubrovnik, we woke up to threatening skies on the day we were to transfer by bus from there to Montenegro. We struggled to navigate our luggage down the 96 stairs from the Airbnb to street level but made it from there to the bus station via Uber before the skies opened. Once on the bus, the rain pelted down with occasional claps of thunder and flashes of lightning. We counted our lucky stars that this downpour was occurring on our transfer day and not while we were on the trail.


The bus had been advertised as taking 2.5 hours, with no mention of possible delays at the border crossings. The driver spoke little English and offered no explanation of the 30 minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic approaching the Croatia-Montenegro border. Once there, we mindlessly followed the crowd as they descended from the bus and huddled under the one available canopy to avoid the rain. One by one, each passenger approached a small window and presented their passport before returning to the bus. We continued another 20 minutes before repeating the drill for our entry into Montenegro. The bus did make a 15-minute rest stop (no announcement to this effect), no restroom on the bus. Worse yet, few signs were in English, though fortunately a few fellow passengers on the bus helped us out. In sum, the bus ride took at least two hours longer than advertised, and we were plenty glad when we finally arrived.


We had arranged for a self-guided tour in Montenegro, the first half of which would take place on the dramatic mountainsides surrounding the Bay of Kotor. The company had reserved lodging in the heart of Old Town in Kotor. (We soon came to learn that each city of any size had its own Old Town, with mazelike cobblestone allies, churches built in the 16th century or earlier, buildings made of stone, and thick stone walls surrounding the city.

 

Neither of us knew much about the country, although people had said that it was the undiscovered corner of Europe. According to Wikipedia, it had five languages: Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian, and Gheg, which seemed like a lot for a country slightly smaller than the state of Connecticut. It turns out that they are all the same language, but each country lays claim to its own name for the sake of national pride. It was humbling to know none of the local language, nor be able to correctly pronounce the names of local places, written in Latin and Cyrillic alphabets.

 

 

If we thought we were escaping the tourists of Dubrovnik, we were wrong. Kotor receives the passengers  from at least one cruise ship per day. The streets were filled with people from many countries. Tour group leaders navigated the narrow allies with the universal tourist flag held high. Souvenir shops and gelato stands abounded. Every corner had an appealing open-air restaurant.

 

On our first evening in Kotor, Klaudio, a representative of the tour company, came by to give us an orientation of what to expect over the next six days. He confirmed that we had downloaded the self-guided hiking app “Roadbook for Discovery,” understood the instructions for getting picked up at the start and end of each day, and most importantly, had the phone number of Drazen, our human contact who would troubleshoot all aspects of the trip.

It was fanciful thinking that we might get to bed early in preparation for our first day of hiking. Our hotel room was directly above one of the narrow alleys in Old Town. From the time we took occupancy, the noise never ended. It peaked from 9 pm to midnight and then again at 2 AM, as hordes of bar-hopping visitors living it up in Kotor passed below our window. At midnight, we could hear the wailing baby from a nearby room. The city bell rang out boldly at 1 am, 2 am, 3 am, and 4 am. Street washing began at 3 am, with the workers shouting instructions and exchanging jokes in loud voices. At one point it sounded like the water would come through our windows. The street cleaning eventually gave way to garbage carts rumbling across the cobblestone pavement. Bleary-eyed, we stumbled out of bed for a 7 am breakfast, thankful that we’d packed our hiking gear the night before. 


The self-guided tour was a marvel of modern technology. Before leaving the United States, we had downloaded the app that gave us specific instructions for each of the six days of hiking in Montenegro. For each day (“stage”), we could click to obtain a map that showed the exact trail. It also indicated the total distance in kilometers, estimated duration of the hike, elevation gain, degree of difficulty, and expected time of arrival at the destination. We might as well have been inside our car with the GPS voice giving instructions along the route. With my iPhone in my pants pocket, I’d be jolted out of my hiking reverie by the female voice indicating the next turn or landmark. If we strayed from the trail, Madame would announce: “Warning: you are out of track since 20 meters.” The dreaded orange dot would appear on the map, showing our exact position and extent of deviation from the trail. This app is similar to AllTrails, with the difference that the routes have been preselected and Drazen’s number is readily available.

 


The first three days of the six-day hiking trip took place on the green-grey mountainsides overlooking Kotor. From street level, it was hard to imagine how we would ascend these steep slopes. Fortunately for us, in the late 1800s the Austro-Hungarian military had constructed a network of roads that allowed access to forts and other strategic locations in the area. The switchbacks crisscrossed the mountainsides, gradually leading to the summits and ridges along the top. Although the footing was solid, the path was often overgrown with long dry grass or prickly bushes. One needed to remain clearly focused to avoid toppling off the side in a moment of distraction. It wouldn’t have been fatal, but it would’ve been made for a nasty fall. Elsewhere we’d find ourselves hiking through groves of pine or beech trees, with a welcome canopy of green providing shade overhead and pine needles cushioning our steps below. Occasionally we’d connect with stretches of asphalt or gravel road. We were constantly treated to glimpses of the Bay of Kotor in the distance with its shimmering blue-green water and bright white V-shaped wakes left by motorboats.


 

The destination for Day 1 was Mount Vrmac, estimated to take six hours and labeled as medium difficulty. The driver from the company dropped us off at the trailhead, and we began our crash course in using the app.

 

As we ascended the trail, Charlotte and I quickly fell into a pattern we had developed during the previous week in Dubrovnik. I’d take the lead on the uphill, allowing Charlotte to drop back to inspect a new plant or capture a photo of a particularly alluring view. (Many of the photos in this account are hers.) On the downhill, Charlotte took the lead, allowing me to follow at a more cautious pace.

 

I marveled at Charlotte’s complete fascination with our surroundings. She poked around in each monastery or chapel that we passed. She was constantly commenting on the pomegranate trees and other bushes along the trail. She frequently pulled out the app on her phone to identify a new type of vegetation. She had the Merlin app ever ready when unfamiliar birds flew over. I loved that she knew so much about the flora in our midst, and I wondered why I – who adore being outdoors – had invested so little in learning these details.

 

By Day 1, I had part of the answer. What I most loved about the experience was the physicality of hiking. I enjoyed taking the hills at the maximum pace I could muster, filled with exhilaration that I was even able to hike. Four months earlier I could barely walk down the back steps of Walnut Street without depending heavily on the railing. My knee was still not 100%, but it gave me almost no problem on the uphill. I had always enjoyed hiking, but now I felt a heighted sense of euphoria, gratitude, and relief that I was out in this stunningly beautiful setting.

We pretty much had the trail to ourselves, except when we reached the summit and were joined by a group of 26 French tourists. I became an object of curiosity: an American who could speak French.

 

 

Fortunately, their group photographer volunteered to take our picture, which gave us the first of numerous photos of the two of us with the extraordinary beauty of the Bay of Kotor in the background.


 

If I had confidently strutted up Vrmac mountain, the return was a different story. Halfway down, the old shepherd’s trail deteriorated into a winding rutted path that made footing very unpredictable. Deathly afraid of re-injuring my knee after eight months of physical therapy, I became a wimpy scaredy-cat as I edged down the slope, relying heavily on my trekking poles at each turn. Worse yet, a section of the map near the end of the trail was marked in red, signaling danger or increased difficulty. Self-doubt began to creep in, even before we reached the red zone. Had I overestimated my hiking ability? Should I have exposed myself to the risk of re-injury? Did I have any right to be on this hiking trip? If this were a “medium” hike, what would the “hard” hike on Day 2 bring? These 45 minutes would prove to the low point of the week in Montenegro for me.

 

Yet our obsession over the red section on the map proved to be unwarranted. It consisted of a series of gently sloping cobblestone paths, which became very slippery when wet. Luck was on our side; they were dry. Still, they had taken their toll in anxiety generated.

 

We arrived at our final destination, the town of Donji Stoliv, 7.5 hours after we started this hike, estimated to take six. It became clear that these time estimates were not based on 75-year-olds. Yet this was exactly why we had chosen a self-guided trip; we could go at our own pace. No pressure to keep up with a group. When the driver arrived to pick us up at the end of Day 1, we sank into the cushioned backseat of his car.


 

Day 2 took us to the other side of Kotor, where we started hiking from a coastal village of Orahovac. We ascended through a series of switchbacks that had not benefited from a lot of maintenance. The footing was solid, but again the trail was overgrown and prickly bushes impeded our way. By 10 o’clock, I had rivulets of blood running down my arms and leg.

 

Early on the hike the trail led us into a farmyard of animals that delighted Charlotte: pot-bellied pigs rooting and digging, piglets nursing, goats bleating, a dog barking, and a donkey balking to being tied to a post.

 

 

From there, the trail continued to the ruins of the Vranovo Hill fortress, affording an unparalleled 360-degree view of the surrounding bodies of water.

 

 

The trail down was mercifully easier than the previous day, causing us to wonder why this was labeled as “hard” compared to the previous day’s “medium.” Yet Charlotte had begun to experience considerable discomfort, a burning sensation of the soles of her feet that she attributed to “bony feet.” She stoically pushed on but began scouring the app for the time and distance to the destination. It advised that “the journey continues down a military path to the picturesque town of Perast, culminating in a delightful experience of history and culture.”

 

 We finally arrived in the seaside town of Perast, almost eight hours later for a hike estimated to take six. It was indeed idyllic. We found couples pushing baby strollers, tourists sauntering along with cones of gelato, and a wedding in full swing. Charlotte contacted Drazen for our pickup. He explained that the main street in Perast was closed to motor traffic and instructed us to walk a quarter of a mile back, up the 250 stone steps, to a pick-up spot along the main road that we had passed 20 minutes earlier.

 

 

Feet burning, Charlotte asked why the map had taken us this extra distance. “For exploration,” was Drazen’s answer. After eight hours Charlotte had little interest in the “delightful experience of history and culture” promised by the app. Mercifully, the pharmacy in Kotor sold gel insoles in her size, and her problem was largely resolved for the rest of the trip.

 


Day 3 offered another fabulous day of sunshine. Our route: the Ladders of Kotor, a hike with over 70 switchbacks, estimated to take 6 hours. We set out on foot from our hotel and again paid silent tribute to the Austro-Hungarian military for the network of stone paths they had constructed. We were hiking in the shade and took bets on how many switchbacks we’d complete before the sun caught up with us from the other side of the mountain. Charlotte guessed 10, I guessed 15. Mercifully, we made it to switchback 55 before for the sun found us. We entertained ourselves by counting off the number of each switchback. Charlotte hit on the genius idea that “turning left” made it an even number. As we hiked up this rocky path, the written instructions in the app were somewhat self-evident: “turn left, turn right, turn left.”

 

Probably because of its proximity to the heart of town, it was the best maintained of the Kotor trails. The rocky military pathways took us as far as switchback 60. The trail then led us through a magnificent forest of Black Pine trees, which provided for gentle footing (albeit on steep hills) and more welcome shade.

 

 

Three hours 45 minutes after we started, we found ourselves at the top of the Ladders of Kotor at an open-air restaurant overlooking the city and the vast expanse of mountains in every direction. We timed our arrival at this inviting restaurant well. As our glasses of freshly squeeze pomegranate juice arrived at our table, so did a tour bus with visitors who filled this large restaurant almost to capacity.

 

We had already arranged with Drazen (ever present by phone) that we would consider this our final destination for the day, rather than continuing on two additional kilometers to a town “that had really good ham and cheese.” We opted to give ourselves an afternoon off, leaving time to visit the Cat Museum, which advertised itself as the best in the world.



Indeed, cats lead very privileged lives in this part of the world. They circulate freely in the streets, perch wherever suits them, and nonchalantly wander through restaurants. Apparently fed by local residents, these cats have no doubt as to their superior position in the social hierarchy.

 


After three days of hiking around the Bay of Kotor, we transferred to Sveti Stefan. En route the driver left us off at Lovćen National Park, which was the site of day four’s 4-hour hike. We marveled that the government (Yugoslavia at the time) had had the foresight to set aside lands as a national park, although this park was relatively small-scale and underutilized. We passed a total of eight people on the trail, two from Baton Rouge – small world! Using the time release mechanism on her iPhone, Charlotte was able to capture what became my favorite photo from the trip.


 

We ended our hike (on time!) at a roadside hotel on the outskirts of the park, where we enjoyed a glass of fresh squeezed lemonade as we waited for a different driver to pick us up for the ride to Sveti Stefan. The 45 minutes that followed were hair-raising. We were in an old car with no seat belts and a driver with a heavy foot navigating hairpin turns on a narrow road shared with mammoth tour buses. En route, the driver (who spoke little English) got a call, and he passed the phone to us. A woman from the restaurant we just left was asking if there was “a Jane Bertrand in our car, because if so, she left one of her bags at the restaurant.” The thought of spending an extra hour in this rolling death-trap to retrieve my suitcase led to an alternative plan. I happily paid the driver 45 euros to retrace the route and pick up that bag AFTER leaving us off at our hotel.

 

As we awoke on Day 5, we could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance, consistent with the forecast of rain at every hour between 9 am and 5 pm. Having experienced torrential downpours from inside the bus a few days earlier, we had no interest in being outside on what was to be the second longest hike of the trip. Instead, we enjoyed a welcome day of rest. Charlotte organized and captioned her extensive photo library from the trip, while I took advantage to catch up on my own work. Drazen arranged for a quick trip into Old Town, where we visited a small history museum and patronized one of the many gelato stands while ducking between raindrops.

 


Disappointed that we might miss the “long” Day 5 hike of the Budva Riviera, we simply postponed it to Day 6. Despite a slight drizzle at the start, the weather improved as we started the hike from the Praskvica Monastery. Charlotte soon discovered a massive, ornate chandelier inside the monastery, while I photographed the curious sign on the outside.

 


According to Google Translate, this attention-grabbing sign said, “Please enter decently dressed.”

 

A carefully constructed stone staircase took us up the first stretch of the trail en route to Ogradeniča.  (A problem throughout the trip was our inability to remember the names of places along the route, much less pronounce them.) This trail regularly joined asphalt and gravel roads with houses along the route, prompting jokes about calling an Uber (which operates in Montenegro).

 

The only other hikers we saw the entire day were a curious threesome: a man seemingly older than we were carrying a large umbrella, his middle-aged daughter, and their local guide. When we exchanged the usual question of “Where are you from?” and we mentioned Maine, the guide mentioned that he’d been to Maine. Where? Southwest Harbor! The very place Bill and I were married. Small world…

 

 

We arrived at Ogradeniča, where we found a charming chapel connected to a small monastery. A religious sister was bustling around in the adjacent courtyard, and a grey tiger cat came to greet us but declined to be photographed if food was not part of the transaction.

 

After a short pause in Ogradeniča, we headed through a poorly marked section of paths through the woods (“Warning: you are out of track since 20 meters”). We happily rejoined more military roads that led to a lookout from Goli Vhr, providing yet another angle for viewing the Budva Riviera below.  

 

We were a good two hours past the chapel and had seen no one else on the trail. My mind wandered to the question: what would happen if we got in trouble out here (for example, a twisted ankle, vertigo, heatstroke). Drazen had proven to be very responsive on the other end of a phone, but it was less clear how this company would deal with an emergency on the trail. I saw no reason to burden Charlotte with my thoughts on this matter.

 

No sooner had I put the question out of my mind, then Charlotte turned to me with an anguished look on her face, “Jane, there is something really wrong with my knee.” We both had knee problems, but this was something new and more serious. The standard reply when anything goes wrong on the trail – for lack of any better solutions – is to stop and have some water. Charlotte used it to wash down some Tylenol and Ibuprofen. Within a few minutes, the knee seemed better, and we were back on the trail. Mercifully we had not needed to test how the company would deal with a health emergency miles from the end points of the trail.

 

Despite Charlotte’s momentary knee pain, we both agreed that Day 6 was by far the most enjoyable. Although the total hike was 7.7 miles, the points of interest along the way had been memorable, the trails had been easy on our feet, and the scenery had remained spectacular.

 

True, we had lost one day of the self-hiking trip to rain: the trip to Skadar Lake. The map indicated that this site was lodged high in the mountains, a good hour from our hotel. By then, we had experienced enough hairpin turns that left our stomach in our mouth; we shed no tears in foregoing our trip to Skadar Lake.  

 

 

We celebrated our six days of hiking with dinner at the restaurant Amadeus (Charlotte being a huge classical music buff), located on a beach just below our hotel in Sveti Stefan. As the sun descended behind the island of abandoned houses, we enjoyed our last night of sea food and white wine in Montenegro. In almost every restaurant we’d visited, the menu had very similar offerings, and except for black risotto (made with squid ink), everything had been superb.

 

 

The cat at the restaurant strongly resembled Candelaria’s stray cat, Robert Fuller, and he must have known he had found someone with a soft spot for him. Initially keeping his distance, he edged ever closer to the table, gazing up at me with hopeful eyes, before eventually making his way to the tabletop. (By then we were paying the bill.) As we departed the restaurant, I found a spot to leave him the scraps from my seafood dinner.

 

 

 

 


 


 

Drazen helped with one final service: finding transport to take us from Sveti Stefan to Cavtat, Croatia, another seaside town that Charlotte had selected for its proximity to the airport.

 

Because private cars have a separate route for crossing the border, we passed the two checkpoints in less than 10 minutes. Our driver Alex, whom we’d had on two other rides, was a wealth of information and opinions about Montenegro, the surrounding countries, U.S. politics, tourists from other countries, and American movie actors. He recounted that the sanctions on Russia had directly affected the real estate business in Montenegro (his other job), because Russian buyers could no longer pay in cash (implication: launder money). We were sorry to part ways when he dropped us off in Cavtat.

 

Cavtat was a scaled-down version of Dubrovnik, with lots of tourists, restaurants along the shore, and gelato stands. Private yachts replaced the cruise ships that frequented the harbor. Our Airbnb was steps from the taxi stand (which was fortunate, since cars couldn’t circulate through town during the day) and very convenient to the grocery store, bakery, and shoreline. We learned that it was also near the local church bell tower, which at 6 a.m. each day clanged loudly over 100 times.

 

 

On a roll with hiking, we began to check our options on the AllTrails app. We decided in favor of a one-hour walk “Cape to Cape,” which took us around the perimeter of the two peninsulas that defined the city. We passed up the opportunity for yet another nude beach, and instead returned to the center of town for amazingly good gelato. We had dinner at La Bohème (a second nod to Charlotte’s interest in classical music) along the waterfront and headed home for bed.

 

We had one final day in Cavtat, which meant one final hike. We decided against an 11-mile trek with considerable elevation gain in favor of a 9-mile hike that would loop us around the airport. Unappealing as that might sound, we were surprisingly pleased with the glimpses of the Adriatic Sea interspersed with wooded paths for the first half. The new app that Charlotte had located – Wikiloc – served the same function of showing our progress against the trail and indicating (this time with a red dot but no helpful female voice) when we had deviated from it. We knew we couldn’t be too far afield when the first plane took off a few hundred feet above us. We were amused by a dated sign for the airport bus, pointing down a very rough trail.

 

 

 At the halfway point, we passed through the village of Čilipi, which gave us a chance to buy cold drinks. The route home – on the other side of the airport – overlooked vast plots of agricultural land with the ubiquitous cream-colored houses and red roofs dotting the hillsides. After a good hour on a very straight path with a strong retaining wall on one side, Charlotte guessed and then confirmed that this had been a railroad track in previous decades.

 

 

By 1 pm, we still had over an hour before returning to Cavtat and found some shade while we enjoyed our sandwiches. The low point of the day came from walking a quarter mile down an asphalt road, only to realize we were off track and had to retrace our steps uphill. The soles of Charlotte’s feet were protesting, and my knee was letting me know it would be glad when the hiking program was over, but we finally made our way back to the apartment after another 7-hour hike. I laid down on the bed and was out cold in five minutes.

 

We had one more activity to check off our list before leaving Croatia: to swim in the Adriatic Sea. We’d seen plenty of swimmers the day before, so we got on our suits and wandered down to the swimming area – less than five minutes from our apartment. It took some courage to make the plunge (“yes, this water is colder than Holbrook Pond”), but once in, it was delightful. With my goggles on, I could see everything below through beautiful blue-green crystal-clear water. Because of the salt content, we were very buoyant – making it almost difficult to swim. Ten minutes was plenty, and we went home to pack.

 

 

As we looked back on our week of hiking in Montenegro, it had been wash, rinse, and repeat. Each day we would have breakfast at 7 am, be on the road by 8 am, enjoy a spectacular if sometimes challenging day of hiking, return late afternoon, shower, and prepare for a dinner of seafood and white wine. Even on our free days, we looked for additional chances to go hiking. All told, we hiked 7 of our 8 days in Montenegro, averaging close to 7 miles a day.

The trip had been a great success, in large part because Charlotte and I were so well matched in temperament, pace of hiking, and potential for knee flare-ups. My low point had been on Day 1, descending the shepherd’s path at a snail’s pace, anticipating the dreaded red zone on the map (that never materialized). Charlotte’s low point was the extra walking we did on Day 2 in Perast “for exploration,” as her soles burned. But both of us marveled that the weather and our knees cooperated during what proved to be a very memorable trip.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Epilogue: Charlotte and I had not planned to return to the US together. We were on different airlines, and I was not entirely sure I would end up returning to Maine. By chance, we were both scheduled to arrive in Boston around the same time, but we had already made separate plans for getting to Bangor. I had rented a hotel room at Logan airport, would take the Concord bus to Bangor, then pick up my rental car there. Charlotte, by contrast, picked up a rental car in Boston, would drive as far north as she could, find a motel, and complete the trip the following day. We said our goodbyes on a Saturday morning as we took different taxis to the Dubrovnik airport. Over the next 24 hours, we exchanged texts on our progress home, including one in which Charlotte informed me that her rental car had run out of gas, and she was stranded on the side of I-95 in Saco, Maine. Fast forward several hours. As I was completing my rental agreement at the Budget Rent-A-Car counter in Bangor, I looked over to see Charlotte a few feet away at the Alamo counter. After close to 30 hours of travel on different airlines, with different strategies to get to Bangor, we ended up at the exact same moment in the Bangor airport car rental. Talk about coincidence…



******** 

Comentarios


bottom of page