It's Not Flat!
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 5 ~ 10 September ~ Durmitor National Park
Breakfast in the dining room. Look over at the case on the wall to the right.
This is the snowsuit and equipment that the creator of the lodge, Dragan Gašo Lalović, used to climb Mount Everest in 1996! He was quite the local hero in his day (he died in 2018) and his obituary at a Montenegrin newspaper website says he was
holder of numerous awards and recognitions, among which are the gold plaque of the Mountaineering Association of Yugoslavia, the plaque of the Mountaineering Association of Montenegro, and the plaque of the Mountain Rescue Service of Montenegro. He was chosen among the 10 best athletes from Nikšić.
And art in the dining room. I confess I'm not entirely sure what it means.The metal belts look a bit like they might be machine gun ammunition belts, but don't seem quite right on close inspection, and there are some bits of bicycle chain definitely. The plaque gives the artist's name and the title of the piece (in Cyrillic). It's by Rajko Sušić, who seems to be quite a well known Montenegrin sculptor, and you can find more pictures of this work ("Kosara") on the web, but nothing much about what it might mean. The only references on the web to the title (writtten as "KOCAPA" in Cyrillic characters) is a town in Bulgaria.
Use your imagination, then.
We will need packed lunches later. (The passports are there because they've just been returned to us, not because we need to prove our citizenship before we can have lunch.)
A short drive and then we start our walk. As I said, this is supposed to be our toughest day, and as Thérèse had found the steep Biogradska
descent very painful the other day, she's decided to give it a miss. It's just Marko, us and Peter, then.
On the map, this is a road, but Dasha dropped us just a little way back where the tarmac gives way to gravel.
And this is where we're heading.
This isn't the terrain we're walking on for now, we're still on the on the same easy path just above the bank of this rocky river bed. Before long, though, it stops even pretending to be a road and becomes a pure walking trail.
Oh, and then it becomes rather less pure! A landslide earlier in the year has completely blocked the trail and we need to scramble over it.
There's a fair bit of it. At the time of writing, if you put these coordinates into Google Maps: 43°02'22.4"N 19°02'35.4"E -- and select Satellite view, you can still see the extent of the rock field in among the trees.
Marko gives Peter a bit of a hand on some of the tougher bits.
Shortly we need to cross this river. You can imagine what the glacial meltwater floods must be like to move these chunks of rock, and demolish the trees, but now it's just a matter of keeping your balance on the uneven surface.
And up the other side. Look, a waymark, we're not lost!
Nowhere near lunchtime yet, just a brief water stop. I'm not quite sure what Amanda and Marko are doing on their phones. It could be just that we have one of the occasional random spots of signal and they are just checking for anything urgent, or maybe sorting some of the photos they've taken. I'm pretty sure they're not arranging a Tindr date.
The day isn't really hot, but we've all got warm from our exertions.
Flatter and more open now.
So flat, we'll have another little break for lunch. Yeah, yeah, I can just hear people saying, "I thought this was supposed to be a hard trek!".
Yes, well it is. So there. Just not at this moment. Ok?
Seems it's Peter's turn on his phone now.
Recovering my strength before the others, I go finding pretty things like a Chafer Beetle on a thistle.
Interesting... Marshal Tito died in 1980, but this rock has been painted recently using the same paints as the waymark symbols, so we have to assume they were done together by the same people.
I'm not sure what today's collective Western European opinion of Tito might be, if it even has one. Yugoslavia (as was) didn't really belong to the USSR-dominated Eastern Bloc, and Tito managed to keep the sometimes fractious components of the country in balance while developing a relatively liberal and advanced economy. He was undoubtedly a severe authoritarian, but arguably the proverbial benevolent dictator.
I'm old enough to remember those days as an adult, but I still don't have any particularly strong memories.
In the Balkans, though, we learn the popular view is much more positive and this is not the only hint we see. And in his Wikipedia article, we read:
The Croat historian Marijana Belaj wrote that for some people in Croatia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, Tito is remembered as a sort of secular saint, mentioning how some Croats keep portraits of Catholic saints together with a portrait of Tito on their walls as a way to bring hope. The practice of writing letters to Tito has continued well after his death with several websites in former Yugoslavia devoted entirely as forums for people to send him posthumous letters.
Anyway, onward march! (Past one of those waymarks.)
"OK", says Marko, "Listen up. We are coming to a very dangerous and steep scree slope. Keep five metres apart, concentrate, don't chat."
Ok...
Yes, it really is that steep. Amanda, who as most of you will know is NOT "I just love heights!" woman, keeps her focus on the path right ahead and doesn't look down.
"Right!" she cries, "I'm going to stop and turn round so you can take a picture, but be quick: I am not staying here for long!"
You may note she has turned to face up rather than down. Several of her family members will probably be having their own collywobbles at this point.
Near the end of the section now, looking back the way we've come. Fabulous!
Out of the mountains flanking the river valley and into more pastural land now: the soil has completely changed.
It's a pity I don't know enough about geology to talk about this lovely rock more. All I can find apart from some stuff that's way too technical for the non-specialist is this general description of the park geology as, "limestone formations of the Middle and Upper Triassic, Upper Jurassic and Upper Cretaceous though more recent rocks are also present".
Should have some good dinosaurs there!
Or maybe not. This may not be the right kind of place even if it's the right kind of age. There are a few known fossil-bearing regions in Montenegro (see the Wikipedia page List of fossiliferous stratigraphic units in Montenegro, but whether that's all there is or whether scientists just haven't investigated some of the more remote areas I don't know.
Nearly there.
You can see sheep and shepherds' huts down in the lower hills, and if you look carefully, though it's hard to see at this scale, at the upper left edge of the picture is the viewpoint with a car park where we will meet Dasha.
Well, when I say that's where we'll meet Dasha, that's what the plan says. But no Dasha???
Marko is most surprised; he's worked with Dasha many times and knows he's extremely reliable, so what's happened. Can't phone, though, no signal!
After waiting a few minutes, Marko remembers that there is another car park further along the road, and as they've not done this particular walk together previously, it's possible they've got a crossed wire. [Aside: that's something else that almost nobody of non-pensionable age will know as anything other than a metaphor!]
There's plenty of traffic coming and going at the viewpoint, so Marko is easily able to hitch a lift with some people going in the right direction to see if that's what's happened.
This is what everyone does here except us. We've been there for real!
Suffice to say that we have not seen a single other soul on the trail until we got within about five minutes of here.
Before too long, we're relieved to see our minibus coming down the road. Marko's prediction has proven 100% accurate. It's good, because it's very windy here and now that we're no longer working hard, we soon start cooling down.
Back to the lodge, then.
Listening to the music that Marko's been playing in the minibus, some of it makes me think of the 1970's German band Can. I wonder if he knows them... I'll try and remember to find a link for him later.
We have a little downtime before dinner, so we sit on our upstairs balcony with a bit of coffee and cake, and then maybe a little glass of something. We've learnt that Thérèse has had a pleasant morning herself, and we all agree that she definitely made the right decision.
Before dinner, though, the heavens open. We have coats and it's not far to walk so that's not a big problem, but we're a bit surprised at the story in the main lodge building.
Ooh err, there's a bit of a leak in the roof, and they've put out an ice bucket to catch the drips.
Other than that, dinner is much the same as last night but without the exuberant locals, and we don't have the energy to take their place
Much the same scene as before, but darker and wetter.
I've a feeling that's red wine in my mug, not Bovril. I'm sure Bovril would be just as warming if we had it, but we don't, so needs must.
Anyway, I find a link to Can's classic album "Future Days" on YouTube and WhatsApp Marko. He replies that he doesn't know the band at all but will gladly put it on tomorrow.
Our non-waterproof trainers definitely need some drying out overnight.
It'll take a lot more rain than that to dampen our spirits. ¡Hasta la mañana!, then. Oops, wrong language: vidimo se sutra!
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