Montenegro - Country of Panoramic Roads

30/05/22 - 07/06/22

Up up up we go, then down down down and up up up again! That’s how we would describe Montenegro!

Slovenia and Croatia were nothing compared to Montenegro, the country which 60% of its territory lies above 1000m!

Montenegro may be small in terms of area, but it boasts stunning mountainous landscapes. The name of the country says it all!

Our first stop within Montenegro was Kotor bay, often called Europe's southernmost fjord. And it definitely looks like one, with towering peaks, rocky coastline and listed as a UNESCO Natural World Heritage.

We have never visited Norway’ fjords but felt like we were there! Not surprisingly it's touristic, but that's for a reason. Luckily, we were there still off season.

In Kotor Bay we stopped for two nights to do some hiking and walking in the fort of Saint John. Unmissable.

We continued our route through one of the most famous hairpinned roads in the world: the Kotor Serpentine Road! We were very lucky as it was a perfectly clear day so we had stunning panoramic views. The hairpins (in total there are 30 of them!) are very narrow and it’s a mess when buses and trucks meet.

It took us roughly 4 hours to get to the top, the road is not very steep (around 5%) and we were there early morning to avoid the heat.

Next stop was the Durmitor National Park taking the road through Piva Monastery and all the way up to Plužine until Zabljak, a ski resort and the place where people come to hike to reach the summits of Durmitor NP.

The road from Plužine to Zabljak was certainly one of the most beautiful roads we have ever taken. It passes through a lot of tunnels, canyon, passes in the National Park and it's surrounded by rocky summits all around.

In the first tunnel we bumped coincidentally into two cycling friends that we've met back in Croatia. We spend the whole day together!

In Zabljak, we took a day off in the park, as well to do some hiking and trying to get to Bobotov Peak (the country’s highest point at 2,522 meters) but you wouldn’t believe… there was too much snow! We did a beautiful tour anyway and will definitely need to come back for some ski touring!!

In the park, we met Joakim as well -this was planned- (Swiss cyclist met back in Italy) and we camped together! The beauty of the encounters on the road.

The third stop was the Tara River Canyon: the deepest canyon in Europe and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Well, we only really stopped at the Tara bridge, but went up the canyon in Kosovo direction, it was spectacular!

We also had a taste of Montenegrian's hospitality as well! Near the village of Bijelo Polje we were invited by a farmer family to sleep in their attic and try a lot of their homemade production. We were welcomed as their own children. The father of the family gave us a big piece of bacon, eggs and traditional sweets for the road.

The following day, we met two Montenegrins who moved to work and live in Paris back in 1969 and they invited us for lunch, telling us their incredible story. They gave us a little guided tour of their village, Petnjica, where one of the biggest and oldest mosque stands. We felt like we moved in time with them!

Later this same day we got caught by a thunderstorm and wanted to hide under someone's roof. The owner of the house invited us for a tee and a jeep tour in the mountains. He even proposed to sleep in his cottage house, that he build himself.

The communication in Montenegro wasn't easy though. The official language is Montenegrin but we were told that is mostly Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian. We havn't met a lot of people who spoke English, so communication was possible only because we learned some Croatian sentences… We came up into conclusion that it must be quite useful to speak Croatian as it’s spoken in the majority of Balkan countries!

To sum up, we spent almost 10days in Montenegro, visiting very diverse landscapes, from the busy Kotor bay and the cultural heritage in the south coast to the steep mountains, National parc and Canyons in the north region. We were delighted to discover the small rural villages and meet the people of this unknown country.