A holiday in Montenegro with a laid-back pace like no other
Could these goats be anymore relaxed? I muse while nudging the car past an especially laid-back ruminant, its pungent odour mixing with the heady scent of sun-warmed pines. Nobody answers. My guests and I have emerged through a mountain pass from the jagged bowl of peaks surrounding vast Lake Skadar, and they are now speechless at the view stretching miles below us of the green, forested bulk of the mountains of Montenegro as they crash into the Adriatic Sea in slanting layers of grey limestone sediment.
The goat is oblivious to this, but it is demonstrating the typical Montenegrin philosophy of life, encapsulated by the word polako, which loosely translates as ‘Take it easy’. Variously part of the Illyrian empire, a Roman province, a protectorate of the Venetian Republic, the last bulwark of Christendom against the might of the Ottoman Empire and the point where Western Catholicism meets Eastern Orthodoxy, Montenegro has seen a lot of action and you can imagine why locals feel they deserve some downtime. And I, a recidivist Slavophile with a passion for the unconventional, after nearly a decade running forestry companies in Siberia and gold mines in the Russian Arctic, felt that I deserved some peace, too. So, in 2014, I bought and renovated a ruined farmhouse in Montenegro and learned the language. Initially visiting occasionally for a week or two, I am now based here permanently.
My friends, who have come to stay, however, are less burdened by history, so we hurtle down the curling serpentine road and along the coast, past the fortified island village of Sveti Stefan and bustling Budva with its beaches and bars. Our goal is the Unesco World Heritage site Kotor, a medieval walled city sheltered in the lee of impregnable mountains at the end of the Bay of Kotor and protected by a fortress that rises vertiginously on the rocks behind it.
Kotor is the small but perfectly formed cousin to Dubrovnik and still feels like a living town, where
locals and tourists mingle easily at pavement cafés. Fuelled by tender grilled squid, we stride through the main gates of the walled city onto the waterfront and board a speedboat.
Slim cypresses, the masts of yachts and the pale stone and red roofs of the fishermen’s cottages and merchants’ palaces fringing the bay are reflected in the water as we bounce across the wakes of passing boats.
After a quick swim, we tie up at the baroque church of Our Lady of the Rocks, on the Adriatic’s only artificial island, which sailors created in the 15th century, following a miraculous appearance of an icon of the Virgin Mary, by dropping a rock into the sea each time they returned home safely. The church is decorated with 68 painted panels and the walls with more than 2,000 silver ex-votos that sparkle in the rich gloom. We admire them before we emerge into the bright sunshine and cruise two minutes to Perast.
Once a powerful maritime town, Perast is the birthplace of several of the naval commanders who, with the Holy League, crushed the Ottomans in 1571 at the Battle of Lepanto, and where Peter the Great sent his noblemen to learn to sail when he decided to create a Russian navy. The warships are gone, but the grand homes of sea captains that line the waterfront form a fabulous backdrop for sipping Camparis as the sun sets over the golden water.
The next day, we continue around the bay, stopping to look at Roman mosaics of the winged god Hypnos at Risan and Bronze Age rock carvings of deer and mounted hunters at nearby Lipci, where legend has it that Illyrian queen Teuta threw herself to her death from the mountainside rather than accept defeat by the Romans. Choosing the opposite direction, we climb high into the mountains and trace the curves of Lake Piva as it snakes between the flanks of green mountainsides on its path to the north.
That evening, we are on a riverbank, listening to the crackling of a bonfire and the waterfall opposite as fireflies play in the forest canopy above. After break- fast in the dappled morning light, we bump along in a white, ex-UN Land Rover. Later, we fling ourselves in rafts down the Tara River Canyon, which forms the border between Bosnia and Montenegro, jolting, splashing and screaming through 21 series of wild rapids, punctuated by idyllic stretches of floating like a leaf on the limpid, turquoise water. Sitting at a makeshift bar under the trees on the Bosnian side of the river having a beer and gazing at the trees and water while we take a break, I ask our river guide how much time we have and he motions me to relax: ‘Polako, take your time.’ I think I shall.
WAYS AND MEANS
Rooms at the Regent Porto Montenegro in Tivat cost from €165 a night (ihg.com/regent). Villa Stari Mlin, on the Lustica peninsula, sleeps 10 and costs from £3,100 a week (villastarimlin.com). Rafting at the Waterfall Rafting Center, including accommodation in a two-person cabin, meals and equipment, costs €80 per person (raftingmontenegro. com). Easyjet (easyjet.com) flies from Gatwick to Tivat from March to September. Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Podgorica all year round. Wizzair (wizzair.com) will fly from Gatwick to Podgorica all year round from next month. Return fares from about £40.
