more of the same?

One of the main draws of Montenegro is its beautiful scenery – hills, forests, mountains, lakes – so when I received the latest marketing email from a tour company I use frequently with a one-week hiking trip in Montenegro, during this time when I was planning to visit the country, it seemed sensible to sign up for it, especially as the cost was more than covered by the refund I’d received for the cancelled Socotra trip.  I hoped that the Valbona-Theth hike in Albania had helped to prepare me physically for the hiking, and was relieved when I met the other tour group members to see that they were mostly around my age.

Before meeting up with them, however, I had a few days to explore some other parts of the country – the capital (Podgorica), and the coastal town of Budva.  Podgorica has little of interest to a tourist, but it bothers me when I visit a country and don’t get to see its capital, so I gave myself a couple of days there – enough to see the sights (a clock tower, a couple of churches and bridges, a sample of brutalist architecture and the new cathedral).  Although unfortunately I didn’t know until afterwards that if I’d looked really carefully at all of the colourful frescoes inside the cathedral (the Orthodox Temple of Christ's Resurrection) I would have seen the heads of Marx, Engels and Tito in hell!!

Budva is a much more touristy place, with a beautiful stone-built old town within old stone walls, beaches, and a few places to walk to in either direction along the coast.  I'm not really a beach person (especially when I'm travelling alone, as I'd be too scared to leave my stuff unattended on the beach whilst in the water) and in any case they consisted of small pebbles rather than sand (I have very soft feet…), so I had plenty of time to explore along the coast – Mogren Fortress to the north, and Sveti Stefan to the south.

It was a long walk to Sveti Stefan – more than two hours each way, along a mixture of streets, beach, and paths that I managed to find over or around a few headlands – but the walk alone would have been worth it even had the views of the little island not been so stunning.  The island itself is off-limits, with all of the (15th century) buildings being part of a very expensive private resort.  You can cross the little isthmus to the island, but then arrive at a locked gate.  I don’t really like the idea of a whole island being shut off to the public like that, but I suppose there are people whose faces are known by the public who would appreciate the privacy of such a place.

From there I took a long bus trip to Dubrovnik, where I spent a night in a room near the bus station before meeting the rest of the group.the next morning.  We started the tour with an unscheduled stop at the coastal town of Herceg Novi – which was worth a stop – and on to a guest house up in the mountains near Cetinje.  A week with a nice bunch of people followed, some of it in our little mini-bus, some on boats, and much of it hiking up, down and along hills, mountains and woodland trails.  We mostly stayed in locally-run guesthouses, eating local food (heavily meat and cheese-based) in easily double the quantity I usually eat, but I suppose I was burning off many of the calories with the long hikes.

We ended the tour in the town of Kotor – a beautiful place but VERY touristy.  I had originally planned to take the free tour transfer back to Dubrovnik and spend a bit of time in Croatia, but accommodation prices there were ludicrously high (by my standards…) so I decided to leave that until another year but at an earlier time, before high-season prices kick in.  In any case, Kotor needed more time – but even there, the cheapest hostel I could find was €27 a night, which is at least five times what I pay in most of the places I’ve travelled around over the past few years!  But I spent a few days there wandering around the beautiful old city (early in the morning before the hordes of tourists descended from the cruise ships), up the hill to the fortress ruins, and along the shores of the ‘lake’ (actually part of the coastline) to a couple of other pretty towns with their old churches, monasteries and stone buildings.

Then, my final stop in Montenegro, I moved on to Cetinje, the former capital.  Not a place where many tourists go, so I was able to get a room to myself in a house with a shared kitchen, lounge, TV, washing machine, etc for €15 a night – still pricey by my standards but good value for Montenegro, and a nice base to sort through my photos and catch up with my admin in between the occasional walk around the parks and pretty streets of this very chilled town.  This building is the official residence of the President!