I’m alive! Barely. I haven’t fully digested what happened at The Yacht Week (best week of my life, by the way), and I haven’t had time to upload photos. I’ve been sick as a dog with some kind of virus since then, and blogging has been impossible. I’m really hoping it isn’t a kidney infection, but we shall see. Anyway, that’s my sob story. I can’t wait to tell you about the whole yachting thing.

So I decided to go with something a little easier today, aight?

I stayed in Kotor for a week, and took a little trip into the mountains one day. The Old Town Hostel I was staying at arranges tours, but it was actually just one of the workers who piled three of us into his car and we took off to the north. He kept playing Serbian Celtic music. Perfect.

Our goal was Durmitor National Park, which for some reason brings to mind hooded phantoms sweeping across a dark mountain range. Anyone else? No? Oh.

On the way, we pulled over to snap photos of the famous Perast, where there are two churches on manmade islands in the middle of the bay.

Our next stop was Devil’s Lake, this bizarre and bright-blue pocket of water in the middle of a barren landscape. The locals kept trying to put fish in there so they would breed and could be used as food, but they kept dying due to the mineral content. The locals decided to blame the devil instead.

And, finally: Durmitor National Park, home to the fearsome Durmitor Massif, and several canyons. This is the canyon of Tara River, and it’s the deepest in Europe at 1,300 meters. Standing on the Đurđevića Tara Bridge is not for someone who is afraid of heights. I lasted maybe 10 minutes.

You can raft down Tara River, and the current runs swiftly. That colour? Oh yeah. Totally real.

We hiked to some hills to check out the mountains, me struggling to keep up with our guide who was about 15 years my senior (and a smoker). The Balkans has not been kind to me.

I just love this shot. What a seat.

We wrapped things up at Black Lake, a glacial lake. Well, the others hiked around the lake but I was too useless to do anything but sit on a bench and take photos in between naps. I did get to witness some Germans skinny-dipping, so everything was okay in the end.

Montenegro was kinda just a pit stop in my journey before my Bosnia & Herzegovina trip began, but it ended up being one of my favourite places. If you’re staying in Kotor for a few nights, I definitely recommend a day-trip to the mountains.