Wait, it’s March already??
We finally made reservations to stay at the Porto Montenegro ski chalet in Kolašin the first weekend of March. Lift tickets were €25 for two days of skiing, and good quality rental equipment was available for even less. Felt safe – surely there would be enough snow, weren’t Claire and Ollie [Aquila Constellation] up there now and they’re the only ones on the mountain full of snow? But no. We drove up to Kolašin in the rain, got up the next morning and walked to breakfast in the rain. Drove up to the ski area in the rain and stood in the parking lot peering through the rain and the pea soup fog, trying to ignore the melting snow running in cascades around our feet. (But hot chocolates were had in the lodge.)
So we went hiking. The Biogradska national park is one of the largest three old growth forests left in all of Europe, and we had a lovely walk up and around a lake in the park. Since it was, you know, raining, we were the only ones there, and the forest and water seemed to breathe together as we passed through. We saw our first spring flowers – snowdrops – as we came around the last side of the lake, and I felt an improbable stirring of hope.
Our favorite thing in Kolašin was the “peasant food” that Peter’s colleagues in Podgorica instructed us to eat while we were there. The first one is popara, a breakfast food of old bread, cheese and milk. That was good. The other was kačamak, and kačamak was a revelation. It’s boiled potatoes vigorously mixed with a little of the boiling water and very young cheese. And probably heavy cream and some butter. We had it as a starter at a beautiful little restaurant on the river that runs through Kolašin, and then went back to the same restaurant for breakfast the next day – and to pick up kačamak To Go! We also tried the “donut” breakfast, which at that restaurant was a plate full of piping hot blobs of deep-fried dough along with prosciutto and local cheeses. One blob looked like a snail – Peter was mortified.
From Kolašin we traveled to a small, stone farmhouse in the middle of nowhere for a few days of nothing. It was very isolated, very rustic, and very beautiful. We hiked a bit through the hills around the house, played with the neighbor’s beagles, stoked and then enjoyed the wood sauna, and generally didn’t do a whole lot. Except for the hike up the Maraća River canyon, which was about 10 km down the road from us, and well reviewed by several friends from Porto Montenegro. It held up well to our high expectations, with a nice trail running along the river, and then up and over where the mountains ran straight into the river. We went as far up as the trail allowed – there had been a landslide, and the path was simply gone. So we sat on the rocks and ate our lunch, then, with the sun already behind the mountains, we made our way back to the car.
The next day we drove back to Tivat via the scenic route. We spent an hour and a half driving along a twisty road following the Maraća River and up a mountain pass. Oddly, there was no traffic coming from the other way. Then we came around a corner near what seemed to be the top of the pass, and there was a literal wall of snow across the road. Since the scenery was so stunning, we didn’t regret the drive at all. But then we did have to go back down into Podgorica and over to Cetinje, the traditional capitol of Montenegro. From there we went up the back side of the mountains we saw from Kotor, and at the top the road became single lane. On a cliff. On a road called simply “The Serpentine.” I was extremely glad I was driving and not the one having to simply hold on and hope for the best.
Back in Porto Montenegro, things were humming. [See April’s “Pre-Season Kickoff” post for more.] We joined a large group for dinner celebrating Tim’s birthday, and I had a beef carpaccio starter, which signaled the beginning of the end of my most recent brush with vegetarianism. (I’m still eating a lot of vegetarian, but I definitely have my flexitarian moments.) Ladies Lunch, a Thursday tradition, continued with larger and larger groups as the end of our time together grew nearer. We selected a different restaurant every week, and this one had particularly stunning situation right on the water.
One sunny, warm-ish morning, Claire, Catherine [SV Lickety], and I drove over to the Luštića peninsula for a swim at the Chedi Hotel’s beach. Claire routinely does polar swims, and I’d been telling her I would gladly join her. And I truly was so glad I did. We were quite alone, given how cold the water was, and we spent 45 minutes paddling around the swimming area. After the first minute or two of cold shock, it felt amazing! Once out on the beach again we changed into warm clothes and sat there in our puffies sipping the hot, milky tea that Claire brought along. We ended up at a tapas restaurant in Luštića Bay, drinking hot toddies and sitting in the sun. It was bliss.
And then, suddenly it was April. And things started moving verrrrry fast.