Tag Archives: Montenegro

Posts from Base Camp

Missed Opportunities?

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

From time to time, travel plans get disrupted. Today’s post is about plans that just didn’t work out!

“The Bean” in winter, downtown Chicago (an unplanned stand-in for Memphis, Tennessee)

In a February 2023 post about “Travel Regrets”, I mentioned a couple of plans that were thwarted. These included never making it to Memphis, Tennessee in March 2014, and the July 2016 visa issue that delayed our crossing from Chile to Argentina at a remote outpost in the Andes. Today’s post covers a few more examples.

North shore of Schiermonnikoog (Friesland, the Netherlands)

Weather has played a role in many of my missed opportunities. In August 2014, I had arranged to go on an extended wadlopen (a hike across the muddy sea floor during low tide) from the Dutch mainland to one of the Frisian islands. This day-long activity requires a guide…and also decent weather. Learning of the expected high winds and thunderstorms, the guide decided to pull the plug. While it was disappointing, I still managed to make it out the Frisian island of Schiermonnikoog by boat. And I went for a nice walk around the dunes.

Inside the “Los 36 Billares” billiards cafe (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Poor weather also prevented me from setting foot in Uruguay. During our stay in Buenos Aires, we had hoped to take a boat across the Rio de la Plata to the historic city of Colonia del Sacramento. But nasty weather forced us to back down from that plan and spend another day in Buenos Aires instead. Among other things, we ended up having enjoyable refreshments in a billiards cafe!

Specialty shop in Westport, Ireland. I went in for the vinyl but came out with a book!

Dismal weather also torpedoed my planned ascent of Croagh Patrick, a (relatively) large mountain just outside the quaint western Ireland town of Westport. Rain, wind, and clouds conspired to make that extended trek unpleasant and possibly dangerous. Instead, I explored some local Westport institutions, such as a quaint bookstore and the local “chippy”. It wasn’t the plan, but I still have the book I bought!

The Grand Canyon, on the “Day After”

Another more dramatic weather incident happened in 2019, when I was supposed to descend the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. Not only did we not go on that much-anticipated hike, we couldn’t even leave our hotel. And the hotel was without power for 24 hours as the state was battered by a fierce blizzard. Unlike the other “missed opportunities”, there was nothing to take the place of the canyon descent. We were cold, unable to travel, and could do little more than ensure we had enough to eat. While we managed a brief visit to the Grand Canyon the next morning, there wasn’t enough time to try even a short descent.

Overlooking the Tara River Canyon – northern Montenegro

While weather jettisoned all of the above plans, nature wasn’t always to blame. During my May 2014 stay in Kotor, Montenegro, I signed up for a guided tour to Albania. I thought it would an interesting trip, as Albania had been so isolated before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Alas, I was the only person who was interested and the excursion was cancelled. A small group was interested in heading up to Durmitor National Park in northern Montenegro, and it seemed to be a reasonable alternative, so I decided to take that trip instead. While the tour guide’s driving was terrifying, I did end up seeing some little-known but spectacular scenery.

Looking straight down at the Tara River (northern Montenegro)

Even if things don’t work out as planned, they (usually) still work out in a different way…the great Grand Canyon Blizzard of 2019 being a notable exception! Sometimes the unplanned alternative even surpasses the original intention. But no matter the outcome, these missed opportunities give me a great reason to go back to some of my favourite destinations.

Posts from Base Camp

Travel Tips: some more things to think about

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(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

My previous post focused on the packing list. But there are many other things to think about as departure day approaches. Here are some of them…

Inside the walled town of Kotor, with some of fortifications visible above the city.

Every ounce counts when you’re packing. So, if you’re bringing along items such as shampoo or toothpaste, take a container that is already half-empty (but will still last for your entire trip). 

My “hotel” in Kotor – my room is on the third floor (with open shutter)

Depending on where you’re travelling, you might want to consider registering with your home country’s foreign service. In Canada, that would be Global Affairs. You can tell them where you are going and when. This could come in handy if the local situation gets unstable while you’re there.

Lower part of the walls above Kotor, Montenegro

You can also let your credit card company know about your trip, so that any foreign purchases aren’t irrationally declined. However, some credit card companies are now refusing to record such information, as they claim that their algorithms will detect anything suspicious.

Overlooking the Tara River Canyon – northern Montenegro

Speaking of credit cards – consider paying off your balance (and then some) in advance. This might save you money if you should ever require a cash advance on your credit card, because interest gets charged on cash advances right away. But you should always have multiple strategies for dealing with any unexpected expenses.

Climbing the walls above Kotor

Consider getting a little of the local currency before departure. The rates charged at airport exchange booths are usually very unfavourable, and you may not see any other options when you first arrive. Don’t be fooled by boasts of “no commissions” or “no fees”. Those are already built into the exchange rates, even if they aren’t listed separately. If you see a gap of 10% (or more!) between the buy and sell rates, you know that the currency trader is doing very well indeed.

View from my lunch table, overlooking the Bay of Kotor (Dobrota, Montenegro)

Learn your duty/customs limits before you leave on your trip. These are different for every country, and are affected by how long you are away, so don’t rely on others to know which limits apply to you when you return home.

Black Lake, Durmitor National Park (Montenegro)

For overnight flights and/or flights longer than 7 hours, don’t forget to check your airline’s upgrading offers. You can sometimes successfully bid on (or outright buy) an upgrade at a far lower price than you would have paid at the original time of purchase. If your flight is not close to full, and it is not on a route favoured by business travelers, you may well succeed! Paying a little extra for a good night’s sleep can be a great investment, especially when you are going to be very active shortly after arrival.

Durmitor National Park, northern Montenegro

Today’s photos are from my 2014 travels in Montenegro. I have no real reason for that, other than the fact that I hadn’t seen them in a while! It’s a small but very beautiful country.

Posts from the road

Taking a vacation…while on vacation?

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(Split, Croatia)

After my far-too-exciting road trip to northern Montenegro, I decided that it was time for an important part of any extended trip:  a vacation from the vacation.  It’s important to recharge every once in a while, even though it is tempting to maximize the sightseeing every day.  With the sun shining in Kotor, I decided to enjoy the nice weather, stay close to my hotel, and take care of some more mundane matters.

My "hotel" in Kotor - my room is on the third floor (with open shutter)
My “hotel” in Kotor – my room is on the third floor (with open shutter)

I had fallen behind in my postcards, so I picked up a few of those and also found the appropriate stamps.  Instead of just asking “Engleski?”, I graduated to asking “Govorite li engleski?”  I probably butchered it quite badly but I still think it is important to make the effort and acknowledge that you are not in an English-speaking country.

Inside the walled town of Kotor, with some of fortifications visible above the city.
Inside the walled town of Kotor, with some of fortifications visible above the city.

One of the challenges with the language here is that the emphasis often falls on the first syllable of a word – it’s completely different from Italian, for example, where the emphasis is usually on the second-last syllable of a word. I also tried to communicate in the Montenegrin language at the bus station, where I figured out the schedule and bought a ticket for today’s bus trip to Dubrovnik and then Split.  The ticket seller appreciated my linguistic effort, but was much less appreciative of my use of a 100-Euro note to pay for a 14-Euro fare.   Unfortunately, bank machines here dispense very large denominations and it’s really overkill for most purchases.

View from my lunch table, overlooking the Bay of Kotor (Dobrota, Montenegro)
View from my lunch table, overlooking the Bay of Kotor (Dobrota, Montenegro)

I then decided to wander around both the old town of Kotor and the newer town of Dobrota.  No shocking discoveries, just a pleasant Mediterranean afternoon.  After catching up on some e-mail, I decided to return to my vacation and stopped by the hostel.  There is usually a special event of some kind at 8:30 each night:  there was a free dinner twice, while the other two nights featured free sangria and cocktails.  It was a chance to say goodbye to my fellow “road trippers” and to swap travel stories with some new hostel residents.  Several were from France, but there was one from Lithuania and one from New Jersey!  You never know who you are going to run into or where they have been.

View of the walls of Kotor and the fortifications above the town
View of the walls of Kotor and the fortifications above the town

I’m pleased to report that my two bus trips today were very much in control and I didn’t have any concerns about my safety.  Sadly, though, we were delayed for nearly two hours just past Dubrovnik because of a serious traffic accident.   We saw the ambulances racing to the scene and then saw them leave about half an hour later.  When they left, the ambulance lights were flashing but there was no siren and they weren’t going too fast.  A traveller on the bus from Colorado thought it meant that there had been fatalities.  Needless to say, I couldn’t help thinking about the dangerous road trip from a couple of days ago.

More than 5 hours after departure (and after passing through Bosnia & Herzegovina’s 10 km strip of Adriatic coastline – see photo of the resort of Neum at the top of this posting), I finally arrived in Split.

Split is a vibrant city with thousands of people on the streets.  You couldn’t move!  I’ve never seen a city with so many people in the downtown core.  After eating at a restaurant near the fringes of the old city, I emerged to fireworks above the waterfront area.    Well, it turns out that today was probably the biggest civic celebration of the year for Split:  the Feast Day of St. Domnius.  While the intense crush of people was kind of intimidating when I first arrived, tomorrow should be much calmer in Split.  I can do some proper sightseeing then.

Posts from the road

A Crazy Road Trip

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(Kotor, Montenegro)

Eager to see some remote corners of this rugged and mountainous country, I signed up for a group tour of Durmitor National Park.  It is located quite some distance to the north of Kotor, but on the map it looked “do-able” in a day.

Overlooking the Tara River Canyon - northern Montenegro
Overlooking the Tara River Canyon – northern Montenegro

It is only appropriate that I cut to the chase:  it wasn’t a crazy road trip because of the extreme scenery (although there was plenty of that)…it was a crazy road trip because of the way we travelled.  Four of us, plus our driver, were crammed into a VW Golf.  As three out of the five were 6’3″ or taller, it was never going to be a comfortable ride.  But I certainly didn’t expect it to be such a terrifying ride.

Basically, the whole day was like a video game:  let’s see how recklessly and dangerously you can drive on narrow mountain roads!  Blind corners, doubling the speed limit, passing transport trucks, tailgating so closely that you could read the newspaper in the car in front of you, racing through unlit tunnels, making and taking phone calls and text messages while driving…bonus points for all!  I’ve never been so exhausted by a vacation day.  I honestly felt like kissing the ground when the tour ended 13 hours later.  It also seemed so unnecessary:  we took long coffee breaks in each direction and still arrived back in Kotor well ahead of schedule.

Further upstream the Tara River, as seen from a very high vantage point (northern Montenegro)
An upstream view of the Tara River, as seen from Curevac. (northern Montenegro)

When we were walking back to the hostel afterwards, I told the other guys (two from England, one from Hong Kong) that I might not quite be myself at dinner, as I was a little shaken up by what I thought was a scary ride.   After all, in addition to having a crazy driver, we had passed an awful lot of roadside memorials to car accident victims.  To my surprise, the other guys didn’t seem to think the day’s driving was particularly noteworthy.  One of them shrugged it off and said that “you get used to bad driving in Europe”.

This really made me think, as my reaction was so markedly different from theirs.  I suppose that it can be explained by personal factors as well as cultural ones.  Personally, I like to be in control of my own destiny.  I once lost control of my vehicle on a remote icy road and , as a lawyer, I’ve often dealt professionally with the aftermath of automobile accidents.  Lawyers are also trained to identify every possible negative outcome of an arrangement, so that risks can be identified and appropriate contracts can be negotiated.

Looking straight down at the Tara River (northern Montenegro)
Looking straight down at the Tara River (northern Montenegro)

From a cultural perspective, I think that Canadians are (perhaps excessively) polite and tend to follow rules more.  We’re also taught “defensive driving” when we learn how to drive a car:  you always need to be prepared for a mistake that the *other* driver might make.   By contrast, our driver seemed to assume that the car coming the other way would always get out of the way in time.  Canadian roads are also engineered for optimum safety, something that is made possible by (most of) our terrain and the relative abundance of space.  Other countries, especially very mountainous and/or densely populated ones, may not have that luxury.

Black Lake, Durmitor National Park (Montenegro)
Black Lake, Durmitor National Park (Montenegro)

Anyway, I survived the trip and managed to take some pictures as well.   The bottom line is that northern Montenegro is a beautiful riot of mountain scenery with a lot of sheer drop-offs.  The Tara River Canyon reaches a depth of 1300 metres at one point.

While many of the mountains were folded up and very close together, some of the mountains in Durmitor National Park reminded me somewhat of the Canadian Rockies – they were large, but they also had relatively more space around them than one normally sees in the Alps.  Black Lake felt like Lake Louise, Alberta from certain angles.

It never hurts to consider the cultural and personal factors that may impact your trip.  In this case, I don’t think I was fully prepared for what was going to happen…and my immediate enjoyment probably took a bit of a hit as a result.  But I do have fond memories of the mountains…and the Bečka šnicla at lunch was really good!

In this part of Europe, they call it " Bečka šnicla" rather than Wienerschnitzel. (Durmitor Restaurant, Žabljak, Montenegro)
In this part of Europe, they call it ” Bečka šnicla” rather than Wienerschnitzel. (Durmitor Restaurant, Žabljak, Montenegro)

Posts from the road

Off the radar in Montenegro

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(Kotor, Montenegro)

I’m not literally off the radar, as this place is quite wired.  But I think it is safe to say that I am off the Canadian tourist radar.  Part of that is probably because Montenegro has only been independent since 2006.  It also wasn’t in the headlines as much as Dubrovnik or Bosnia & Herzegovina during the war years, nor is it a very large country (in either size or population).   What it lacks in size and profile, however, it makes up for in natural beauty and history.

My base for the next few days is the town of Kotor.  It is almost as disorienting as Venice, although thankfully it is not as large and you can try to get some guidance from the surrounding mountains to help orient yourself.   Those mountains are ridiculously steep and rise out of the bay like shark fins.  While not technically a fjord, it looks and feels like one.

Like Dubrovnik, the old town it is also surrounded by a wall.  But, as a bonus, the wall also goes up the mountain to the Fortress of St. John which looms high above the town.  You can climb all 1500 steps – I suppose this is what the Great Wall of China would be like if it were built on the Norwegian coast.   It took a millennium to build, although work was often suspended for long periods of time.  I managed to climb it today, despite the misty and occasionally rainy weather.

Clouds and rain can't diminish the joy of being high up in the Montenegrin mountains
Clouds and rain can’t diminish the joy of being high up in the Montenegrin mountains

A personal injury lawyer might describe the walls above Kotor as “a lawsuit waiting to happen”.  All sorts of hazards and dangers lurk in the crumbling walls and buildings.  But what a thrill to climb it! The views over Kotor, the fjord and the mountains are fabulous as well.  The photo at the top is from about halfway up the wall – the old town of Kotor is on the left.

Climbing the walls above Kotor
Climbing the walls above Kotor

I also visited the nearby village of Perast today.  There are only 300 people living here now, but 16 churches and 17 palaces still remain.   It looks Venetian (minus the canals) and is good for wandering.  There are also a couple of small islands nearby that you can visit.  I took a boat to “Our Lady of the Rocks Island”, which is built on an island created by dumping rocks, shipwrecks, etc., where a picture of Mary was found hundreds of years ago.

Our Lady of the Rocks Island, Bay of Kotor
Our Lady of the Rocks Island, Bay of Kotor

As for being off the radar, I wonder if one reason might be the brutal border crossing on the main road between Croatia and Montenegro.  It took the bus 90 minutes to get through yesterday, as all passports needed to be checked at two separate places.  Montenegro wants to join the EU (Croatia is already a member) so hopefully this notoriously bad crossing becomes obsolete.

I wonder why it was necessary to post this sign (above Kotor, Montenegro)
I wonder why it was necessary to post this sign (above Kotor, Montenegro)

My accommodations are once again different.  I had reserved a place at the Kotor Old Town Hostel; a highly-regarded hostel housed in a 13th century palace.  However, I was “upgraded” to a private room with private bathroom in a nearby building (also called a “palazzo”) in the Old Town.  I’m still affiliated with the hostel (they served a free dinner last night for all guests) and I will be joining one of their tours tomorrow to see the even-more-rugged mountains of northern Montenegro.  After fairly solitary accommodation up to this point, it’s been good to meet more fellow travellers.  A fellow from England joined me on the wall climb and the trip to Perast today.  I’m not sure who will all be on the tour tomorrow but it promises to be a multicultural assortment of mountain-seeking people.

Perast, Montenegro (and its islands) on the Bay of Kotor
Perast, Montenegro (and its islands) on the Bay of Kotor