We crossed the Bosnia Hertzogovena border today into Montenegro. While the Piva canyon has been spectacular on the BiH side of the border we too concentrated on the road to really appreciate it. But on the Montenegro side things improved markedly. The wide and strong looking bitumen road allowed us to appreciate our spectacular surroundings.
These pictures cannot show the scale of this canyon, from river level to mountain top, you cannot see it all in one field of vision!
This river is used for rafting adventure tourism in the summer and we saw quite a few camp sites on each side of the border advertising rafting.
The gorge has been dammed on the Montenegro side for hydroelectric power generation, forming a large and also spectacular lake.
This is a great road trip, provided you can manage the stretch of road north of the border!
25 March 2016
Today has been a day of mountains with much of the time spent above 1000m. Needless to say the vista has been fantastic.
The roads here have been great so far, but they do have their hazards....
One of the tourist attractions along here is the Ostrog monastery (Serbian Orthodox Church) built on/in an almost vertical cliff. It represents the meeting place of all confessions - the orthodox, Catholic and Muslims -according to Wikipaedia, but I wonder if each if these "confessions" see it the same way! ).
There are are two thousand steps from the parking lot to the monestary. And there is a "white knuckle" road. The pilgrims generally use the steps, but those who are "pure of heart" can use the road. We decided that we are not sure we are pure of heart enough to trust the gods on the white knuckle road, and not devout enough to tackle the steps. So a photo from afar was the nearest we got!
And so onwards.... And we suddenly came out to a view of a plain. This is a flat fertile looking area which seems to hold most of Montenegro's population, including the capital of Podgorica. And if we were tired of endless mountains this was the perfect contrast.
Podgorica itself didn't capture our attention for more than a quick drive around. So it was back up into the mountains.
The mountains south of Podgorica were snow free! Suddenly we can see the limestone rocky strata and the incredible amount of surface stones. These have been cleared by hand in many places leaving grassy and terraced fields for sheep and agriculture, surrounded by dry stone walls which give the impression of very old age.
But the most unexpected feature is the lake Skadar south of Podgorica, which crosses the border into Albania. It is very picturesque and there are winding ("white knuckle") roads along the southern coast of it.
But more on the lake and on Montenegro in the next installment!
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