New friends – and getting outta town – are good for you.
The dreariness of November seeped relentlessly into December, but there were mitigating factors and events that helped us cope. First, as the weeks went by we became more adapted to living on the boat. Small cabins, check. Cold cabins, check. Long walk to the Service Block, check. Tiny oven, check. Treacherous access, check. After a while it all becomes commonplace, and instead of climbing into bed every night and thinking, “FUCK this bed is uncomfortable,” or “god DAMN that low ceiling,” you just think, “Mmmmmm, hot water bottle. ZZZZzzzzzzzz.”
We also started to get to know our peers in the marina better. They’re a diverse mix of seasoned and less seasoned sailors with all variety of personalities and eccentricities, but almost without exception they bring humor and generous spirits to the table, and it’s made it very easy to enjoy being with them. Sailors are reknowned for their generosity, and we’ve found that this liveaboard community in Porto Montenegro is no exception. The liveaboard WhatsApp group is the most obvious manifestation of the supportive ethos. Any question – ANY question! – receives responses within minutes, usually faster, and if the first person can’t help you, the second, third and fourth will. Need to borrow a tool? Need to get to the station to fill a propane tank? Need a ride from the airport Tuesday? Need to know which dehumidifier to buy? Just ask and someone will try to help. Not what I expected, and a very pleasant surprise.
Curry Nights also became a fixture for me – Peter generally can’t attend – every Wednesday evening. Anyone who’s craving Indian food and/or seeing friends gathers at the Blue Room for a few hours of Nikšićko (Nick-sheech-ko) on tap, boat talk, and surprisingly delicious curry. Boat talk encompasses remarkably wide-ranging topics and closely resembles the WhatsApp group chatter. It’s fun. You laugh and give people a hard time. You get to know people a little better. You make plans for coffee the next morning. You go home feeling a little warmer.
And then of course, there’s Christmas.
Before we even left Denver we decided to spend the holiday in Kotor, a medieval walled city built up against mountains that seem to rise out of the sea. It’s a 20 minute drive from Tivat through a tunnel that cuts through the mountainous peninsula separating the two globes of Boka Kotorska’s hourglass. Before the tunnel, the single-lane drive around the peninsula was shorter than the drive along the vertiginous mountain route, but both are harrowing in their own special ways and time consuming. Within minutes of dropping out of the tunnel, the outer walls of Kotor’s old city are in view, and you can pick out the remnants of the defensive walls running up the craggy mountains to the old fortress
above. And once you’re inside those walls, you are in another world entirely.
Granted, this other world has excellent restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries, and hotels, but you never lose the feeling that it is profoundly ancient and therefore magical. Now add Christmas lights. Christmas trees in the courtyards. Minstrels. Ok, no minstrels. But we did spend Christmas eve listening to a band
of five older men playing traditional Christmas songs to a courtyard full of people dancing, singing along, and looking downright misty eyed. Hell, WE were downright misty eyed, and we’re neither Montenegrin nor religious. That’s magical.
The other fortunate aspect of visiting Kotor over the Christmas holiday was that there were no other tourists. (We did walk out of the sea gate on Christmas morning to find a cruise ship disgorging its contents, but we were on our way to climb to the fortress and missed the hordes entirely – we had a bird’s eye view of the ship leaving port a couple of hours later.) As a result, lodging was reasonable, the narrow alleys navigable, restaurants delighted to see you at any hour, and all of it was ours to explore.
To the Fortress
We took the unofficial route on our hike to the fortress, thereby avoiding the €10 each cost for taking the official stairs up. The wide stone stairs leave from within the city walls and zig zag their way up the “front” of the mountain to the top. The unofficial route is a very well-worn path up the side of the mountain. It was delightful – a great view of the bay, a pleasant incline along the many zigs and zags, and, about three quarters of the way up, the path goes right through a goat herder’s front yard. The farm is well known for its excellent home-made goat cheese and prosciutto, which you are encouraged to purchase, as well as being a good place to sit and enjoy a coffee or cold bottle of water: the view is jaw dropping.
It turns out that the goat herder is our marinero Miloš’ father-in-law. Miloš had encouraged us to go up the unofficial route in order to visit the farm “for the view.” Indeed, I had texted him that morning to thank him for his Christmas greetings and mentioned we were going to hike up to the fortress that day. Within a few minutes of our arrival we were sitting looking out over the city and bay below, feet up, and sipping from our water bottles. And shortly after that I was coming out of the small bathroom (situated literally on the edge of the mountain) and heard someone say “You are Peter?” and “You know Miloš?” Then “We have been expecting you!” Then Miloš’ sister-in-law Yelena, an English major at university in the north, was explaining the connections. Radovan, the herder, took things in hand at that point. There were glasses of rakija, and a platter of fresh bread, cheeses and meats was conjured up and spread on our table, and we all got down to the business of becoming fast friends. Radovan proudly took us into his curing smoke shed (a room in their house), and Yelena took us up to the goat pasture tucked into a ravine behind the house. Two hours and quite a lot of rakija later, we exchanged hugs and continued our way to the fortress. Which was impressive (how DID they manage this construction on such steep slopes??) and we delighted in the view directly down into the walled city. We took the official steps back down and arrived as dusk fell. More magic.
Exploring the Boka
There are several other towns up from Kotor along the coast of the Boka, and another sunny morning we decided to take a drive and explore. We ended up in Perast, a small village across from the fjord that reportedly played a key role in defending the strait and towns further into the Boka, including Kotor. In addition to being a ridiculously charming town, Perast is the home to two islands off its shore: St. George and the Lady of the Rock. Legend has it that the latter was first created centuries ago on top of an underwater island by sailors after their ship hit the island and sank, killing most of the men on board. To repay their debt to the Virgin Mary for sparing them, they built up the island, rock by rock, so that it actually came up out of the water instead of lurking underneath, threatening other ships and crew. (One wonders why the beneficent Virgin failed to save the rest of the crew as well, but that one would be an atheist.) Over the centuries other grateful sailors added rock after rock, and at some point, a quite beautiful church/monument to the Virgin was built on it. We accepted a boatman’s offer to take us out to it for a small fee, and with no other tourists there, enjoyed a peaceful stroll around the island.
St. George island is off limits to visitors, although there is a large flock of herons nesting in all the trees. A small church is also built there, and apparently the island was a cemetery, and may still be, for locals. In the middle ages, or whenever the area was constantly being attacked by Ottomans or Austro-Hungarians or both, a ship laid siege to Perast. The ruling nobleman agreed to negotiate with the ship captain, and along the way, the nobleman’s daughter and the ship captain… yes! Fell in love! Negotiations faltered, however. Lines were drawn. Tempers must have flared. The captain ordered a single cannon shot be fired – the old “I’m SERIOUS now” strategy – and, against all odds, the cannon ball blasted into the daughter’s bedroom and killed her. Desolate, the captain became a monk, the island became the daughter’s final resting place, and he rowed out every day to lay flowers on her grave. Or sing to her, or read her poems, or something equally heartbreaking and lovely.
The rest of the afternoon in Perast was a blur of prosecco and local cheeses, cured meats, bread and tapenades at a waterside restaurant. The sun shone brilliantly on the glassy sea, and we rediscovered the joy of simply basking and remembering that as much as boat life challenges us, we are the luckiest people ever.
