Day 18 - June 2

Distance - 14.2 miles (26.1 km)

I woke up around 8am to run along Kotor Bay.  If you've never heard of Kotor, Kotor Bay, or even Montenegro, I suggest you look them up.  The old town of Kotor is a UNESCO World Heritage site (along with the old towns in Dubrovnik, Brugge, and Gent, plus a plethora of sites in London and Paris - I just realized we've seen a lot of World Heritage Sites on this trip).  Anyway, Kotor Bay is often referred to as the southernmost fjord in Europe.  It's steep, mountainous sides plunge down into the clear blue water in a way that is reminiscent of the fjords of Norway.  However, it's actually a submerged river valley connected to the Adriatic Sea.  I decided to keep my run flat and run along the road going north along the bay from Kotor.  I ran for about 5 miles before the quiet, less busy shoreline road ended and joined up with the busy highway with no shoulder.  I decided I'd better not try running on it, since two cars barely had room to sneak past each other as they barreled around corners at 50 mph, and throwing a runner into the mix would probably cause an accident.  So I ran back to the hostel. 

Kotor Bay

City walls and moat

Kitties!

Abandoned Church

Over the course of the day, we got some new roommates: a very nice American lady, a cool Brit named Zak, and a crazy old Ukrainian lady who fancied herself a prophet. I have Ukrainian friends who are wonderful, very intelligent people, but this lady was perhaps the opposite of them.  She claimed she was a "truth-seeker" who must tell the world that Obama is a homosexual liar who personally called her a lesbian and she must help bring down the propoganda machine.  Inermingled in that message, she'd have some actually fairly accurate statements about the crisis in Ukraine, though perhaps biased by her background as a Russian-speaking Crimean.  Of course, I don't know what she's been through and I do feel bad for her, but her preaching got a bit tiresome.  We had to get in and out of our room quickly when she was in there or she would start sharing her wisdom with us.

That afternoon, Curtis and I decided we'd hike a bit.  We went up the mountain right behind Kotor heading toward Lovcen National Park.  We had no idea how far it was to the park, but we just headed up.  Along the way, we came across the hut of a goat farmer and his wife, their many goats, a cow, and plenty of big brown snakes. I'd stop dead in my tracks every time one shot across the path in front of us, but they seemed more afraid of us than we (well, mostly me) were of them. They only seemed to come out when I was leading, so I let Curtis lead the whole rest of the way.  In the 15 or so minutes of our hike that I led, we saw about 7 snakes, one about 3 inches in diameter and at least 4 feet long.  In the several hours that Curtis led, we saw just one little snake. I guess they like me?

View on the way up

The winding, rocky trail

View a little higher up

At the end of the winding, rocky trail and the start of the steep, forested trail

The winding, rocky path we followed turned into a forested, pine needle-stewn path that was steeper but less winding, which we followed for another mile and a half before coming to a road.  On the road, there was a restaurant where we stopped for some thick, juicy cuts of lamb.  At that point, we decided we'd better turn back.  The top of Lovcen National park was at least annother 6 miles away I would guess, and we didn't know how we'd get back.  We had already hiked over 4 miles (which had taken two and a half hours on the steep rocky path) and so we decided we'd just hike back down the way we came.  In all, we hiked over 8 miles, 3/4  of which I am counting as running mileage because, honestly, it was harder work than running and hey, I was wearing my running shoes, so why not?

The forest

View from the retaurant on the mountain

On the way back down

Obstacle on the trail

Can't believe I'm here!

Later, for supper, we had an authentic, home-made Montenegran meal of mussels and potato salad cooked up by the chef at our hostel for the price of just 5 Euros.  The mussels came in a massive bowl with a delicious soup in the bottom.  Just another reason why I recommend staying at Montenegro Hostel if you ever find yourself in Kotor!

That night, we went for some beers with our hostelmate Zak, a Welsh-born Brit who lives in Plymouth, England.  That's one thing I should mention: if you want to make good friends while abroad, stay at hostels and go out for a drink with your roommates.  Few things foster camaraderie like a good, strong foreign beer.