Coast Craving

Even after being away from the coast for a mere five days there's a certain feeling you get when you round a steep hillside and are confronted by the seemingly endless nature of the ocean far below. Older generations have told me stories of seeing the see for the first time at the age of thirteen, or sometimes even later. I can only imagine how overwhelming that might be.

We had just crossed from Bosnia to Montenegro, getting through customs quickly at a rather obscure border check point, now under the watch of clear blue skies. We were bound for the Bay of Kotor, a huge, fjord-like bay in the north of the country. Distances appear so small in Montenegro on a larger map of the region but its only when you get there that you realise how huge the bay actually is. I guess it'd take close to four hours to drive around the whole thing, head to head. As I said. Its huge.

The town of Kotor itself is nestled in the deepest alcove of the bay, hidden from view until you're right inside. We had accommodation booked here for the following night but now that we were here a day early we had time to enjoy what else the bay has to offer. Its by no means a well kept secret as some will tell you, even attracting a big cruise ship every day. It is however probably the best section of coastline I have visited in Europe.

Mountains drop steeply into the fjord-like bay, providing a back drop for sleepy towns and quaint churches. We stopped in Perast. While Dan headed into the town to find “facilities” I had a swim on my own off the developed foreshore near the car. The water is even warmer than Croatia, logical considering its that little bit further south but surprising that its actually noticeable. I floated out in the inky water, taking in the church on an island positioned against a steep wall of mountains behind.

I contently floated for about fifteen minutes before returning to shore, doing a few dives and hurriedly getting changed to look for Dan.

That night we somehow almost made it to Kotor, camping on the outskirts of a nearby town in view of the famous fortress that towers over Kotor itself. The camping was great but yet again we woke up to cattle being herded through our campsite, goats this time. The nice thing about this campsite was not being woken up at seven- odd am by the sun as its blocked by the mountains. Usually the sun dictates sleeping time, getting your tent up to forty or so degrees inside and forcing you from it by 8am at the latest.

After packing up we headed into the city and made the obligatory stop at a Pekara for Burek which went down nicely with a big German ale I bought from the supermarket. After this we headed into the old town to look for our accommodation. Now well experienced in this taking up a sizeable chunk of the day we left enough time to find it and still explore the city. You can't drive in the old city of Kotor so their directions were for walking and were about as illogical as they can get. When it said to pass a certain building on the right it often turned out to be the left. Stressful.

Luckily the old town of Kotor is rather tiny and it took a mere 15mins to find the hostel. We relaxed out of the heat of the day for a while and as the light began to fade we began walking towards the outskirts of the city. With a bit of trial and error we found the entrance to the fortress that towers a couple hundred metres above the city. The lady at the entrance suggested the climb should took 45 mins but it took us pretty much half that, walking steadily up the many hundreds of stairs that lead to the ancient citadel.

We deviated off the well worn path numerous times, passing through abandoned buildings and walking up old fortifications that get few footsteps nowadays. When we reached the top a mere handful of tourists were there waiting to watch the sunset like us.

The light simply faded. There was little colour. Because Kotor sits in a deep fjord-like valley the sunsets aren't very spectacular. The sun simply dips behind the hill and that's it. We descended quickly, planning to return the following day in the cool of the morning.

Our quick descent wasn't really that quick. We ducked through a window and downclimbed 1.5m to find a path leading to an alternate path down the mountain. We found a small, partially ruined church that still had some art in quite good condition which was interesting to check out before beginning our descent proper. At a guess I'd say the descent was three times the distance we ascended, due to numerous hair pins. It was pitch black when we reached the bottom.

Pretty hungry now we headed to the shore outside a once grand hotel to cook dinner. It was still warm at 10 o'clock at night, prompting me to head in for a quick swim. On this night we cooked the pasta sauce with bay leaves as I had found a few trees growing wild on the hill the fortress sits on, it was nice to have a bit of a change from the usual regular sauce with chunky onion.

The next morning we found ourselves up and dressed at 4am. I was not feeling motivated in the slightest. I pushed past it and we made quick time back up the fortress, getting to a reasonable vantage point to see the sunrise induced colours in the sky. We watched the colours change while eating breakfast, watching the lights turn off and the town of Kotor wake up far below.

Now feeling a little more energised we popped through the window we descended from the night before and headed higher into the mountains, passing a single farm house offering goat cheese and smoked ham. Again the path utilised an excessive amount of hair pins to reduce gradient, probably necessary to assist the passage of caravans into the mountains in times past. It wasn't unusual to walk for 200m completely horizontally along the hill before finding another hair pin!

The day quickly got warmer. Real warm. We kept pushing up for around an hour and a half from where we left the fortress, easily gaining the elevation you gain from the town to the fortress again. We stopped for a long break before turning around on top of a knoll that could have been around 800m high, a substantial height when you've climbed this whole way from sea level! This knoll was a mere point on a ridge of the impressive mountains rising beyond the town. Once you get up there they're much higher than the look from below.

\

We slowly made our way back down, now in the heat of the day, trying our best not to completely kill our knees on the long descent. We got back to the hostel at around 9:30 am, hurriedly packing up our stuff and checking out. We had a long journey ahead of us if we were to keep on track and visit the places I was so intent on while in the Balkans.