Snakes

 Managed to 'escape' Kotor unscathed, though there were some challenging moments on the way down the hill from our apartment.  At one point the road was blocked by a police car and there wasn't enough room for us to squeeze past.  Instead of waiting patiently until we could move, the people behind us just kept blasting their horns and gesticulating wildly.  Not quite sure what we were expected to do!

Our route to Podgorica took us along the coast past lots of smaller seaside towns.  Had planned to stop at Budva to look at the old town, but the town was busy and the thought of negotiating more narrow roads was just too hard.  More glorious views across the bay.

Just to ensure that we got plenty of exercise for the day, we stopped off near Sutomore Beach to climb to the Haj Nehaj fortress.  It sits 231 m above sea level, the path is stoney and steep.  We surprised ourselves by managing the climb in about 20 minutes, but it took equally long to climb back down due to the slippery stones.  The ruins of the fort were amazing and well worth the climb.  Now that I know that there are snakes in Montenegro. I was on the lookout the whole time, especially as the path was narrow with long grass and weeds alongside.  It was a relief to get back down to the road without any unwanted surprises, only to see a snake slithering across the tarmac in front of us!  We did see another one on the road, but sadly it met an untimely death.

Even though we haven't seen any bears, we have heard cuckoo in the forest, such a cool bird call and they sound just like the clocks!

We had a very pleasant picnic at Sutomore Beach, after Google Maps took us down a number of one way roads the wrong way.  Funnily enough no-one seemed to notice and we even saw some locals doing the same thing.  It was a lovely quiet spot with only a few tourists, but they were clearly preparing for the summer trade.

Onward to Podgorica with a stop of at Niagara Waterfall on the Cijevna River which originates in Albania.    There are differing views about whether or not the waterfall has been formed by nature, or from a man-made dam, but it was pretty impressive either way.  The strange thing was that there is a restaurant on the bank of the river where diners sit outside watching the river, and you had to walk through it to get to the falls.  Guess it's one way to get potential customers to notice you.

We found our apartment for tonight, again it's in a large building.  We have spent some of the evening standing on the balcony just watching every day life play out.   We walked to the Millennium Bridge over the Moraca River and then along the river bank to the stone bridge spanning the Ribnica River.  Just because we need more steps, we climbed up to another ruin, before heading back to the apartment.

Thoughts about Montenegro:  beautiful country with incredible contrasts from snowy mountains to beautiful coastlines, crazy drivers and impossible roads, on the cusp of becoming over-run by tourists.  I think we have had the pleasure of visiting before it potentially looses some of its magic.