Durmitor

Durmitor National Park

To escape the summer heat along the coast we decided to head inwards to spend some time hiking in the Montenegro national parks. We found a campsite in Žabljak, the starting point for Durmitor National Park hikes. It was nicely cool and I immediately got a flashback from last year's Norway experience when it started to rain. A good thing we were only staying two nights.

There are numerous hikes from Žabljak and while I would have probably chosen the highest peak as our destination I decided against it after I checked the weather forecast: it was supposed to rain in the afternoon. So we went only as far as Ledena pećina, an ice cave. We didn’t actually visit the cave though, we were anxious to go back because clouds were gathering ominously and so we turned around to descend.

Horses in pasture at Durmitor National Park

We cut across the mountain to take a shorter route on our way down where we stumbled on three horses in pasture. I was slightly nervous about getting too close to the horses as I wasn’t sure whether they were used to tourists hiking in their meadow. Then I noticed a shepherding dog running from somewhere and it became obvious that the dog felt responsible for the horses. He started barking at the horses and although it seemed they didn’t mind him much, he managed to get them out of the way so we couldn’t get too close to them. Witnessing such a scene was certainly something incredibly unusual to me, whoever thought a dog could shepherd horses?

Black Lake, Durmitor National Park

We spent some time relaxing around the Black lake on our way down and made it into camp at exactly the time it started raining. Perfect timing! Unfortunately there was no hot water in the showers and I had to suffer through a cold shower in the cold weather in the rain. I couldn’t really hold that against them as the next morning when I paid for the camp I realized that this was probably the cheapest camp we had ever stayed in.

Podgorica

Our drive the next day took us through Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. We stopped briefly although there is nothing much to see. The reason the photo is so foggy is that my camera was wet from sleeping in a tent in the rain. I was sure glad to be heading back towards the seashore again and on to our next destination, Albania. Who knows what awaits us there?