Niksic - 13th October

Because we couldn’t find any excursions operating from Kotor (they were all closed for the winter) and because we had been misinformed about hiking to Lovcen national park, we decided to hire a car for a couple of days.  Although this is technically breaking backpacking rules, we wanted to see so much that it was the only way to achieve it in the off season.

After picking up the car we left Kotor to drive to the top of Lovcen mountain, the black mountain that gives Montenegro its name.   This involves a drive up a mountain road with 27 hairpins taking us up 1000m.  It’s a tough first drive for Dorota, but it’s handled well, our biggest problem is that we keep wanting to stop for photos.  Lovcen is actually the centre of a large park, and on the second highest peak there is a mausoleum to a former hero, which requires a 400 step climb up to it, so we do this.  The views from the top are pretty good, as is the monument itself.

Following that it was down an equally winding road to Cetinje, the former capital of Montenegro.  It’s not a particularly nice town, but it does have some interesting houses which were the former embassies.  The most interesting part is the old monastery, where they keep a fragment of Jesus’s cross and the hand of John the Baptist.  They don’t always put them on show, but enough actual pilgrims came to see them that day that a monk looking like a pirate did show them, and we got to tag along.  The cross could have been any piece of wood, and the hand is pretty old looking, but could be anyone’s.

As if we hadn’t had enough of monasteries we then proceeded to Ostrog monastery, another national monument.  However we got caught up with a nice lunch in a little village (down another winding road) and then a thunderstorm near the capital Podgorica.  So when we got near Ostrog we decided to look for lodgings and go in the morning instead.  However this was not as easy as finding accommodation at the bus stations. In fact we saw the worst bathroom in the world in one hotel, before we ended up in a slightly expensive hotel in Niksic, the second largest town in the country.  Expensive because it is the only one there.