Lets call this one "The Climb"
Trip Start
Mar 01, 2010
1
39
62
Trip End
Aug 23, 2010
Kotor, Montenegro
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Ben is shotgun first and is therefore the navigator - the navigator armed with only a massive map of the whole country. I am the driver because I am over 25 and therefore it is cheaper for me to drive. Also, they drive on the left side of the road, where as I and everyone else in the world drives on the right. Naturally, I became the sole driver. So we drove. At first it was great fun. The three of us in a Mercedes doing "guerrilla photography" as they termed it, quick shots out the window. The roads were narrow, but nothing that caution couldn’t take care of.
And then we went up through the mountains. We were jamming to a Beach Boys CD that we got at the rest stop having a grand old time. Well they were…I kept hearing in my head the Beach Boys singing “Deadman’s Curve! Deadman’s Curve! Won't come back from Deadman's Curve!” The roads were so narrow and there were no guardrails. To close and we’re all done for! And we kept going higher and higher into the mountains. Oh, and it was a little rainy and had some serious fog. At one point we were driving through clouds. But hey, let’s go 90+ km an hour. Morons. Well we made it, a few close calls while passing, but we made it…until we were making our way up to the Monestary.
As we got closer the roads became "roads". They were narrower and steeper. And then we hit...a nicely paved road! Ah, sometimes you got to love the Church and it's money. So now we're set, we get to the lower church and it was nice (built in 1824), but that's not what we came to see. Nope, we want to see the "Upper Monastery".
A note about the "Upper Monastery". It is called St. Vasilije's Miracle because the church is built into two caves. It looks like it's always been there, but apparently it's fairly new (1665) but no one seems to know how it got there - probably partially because (wait for it) it's really really high in the mountains.
To put it blunt lightly on the way up to the Upper Monastery I hit a car. Technically it was my fault. Technically. In hindsight I should have stayed put, but as I mentioned, the roads are really narrow and have large drops without guide rails to protect you. When another car came down from the Monastery, we both stopped. We went back and forth gesturing for one another to go first. Finally the guys (stupid boys) convinced me to go...well I did..cautiously. didn't matter...I hit the car. I tour off some of the siding and dented our Mercedes, and did a bit worse to the other car.
Thankfully we had insurance. Oh, but it's not that easy. Luckily there was a car behind us with a girl who spoke English. She said that there are two ways things like this are dealt with. The first way is you call the police who then help with the insurance and everything that we are used to. That was no good she said because we're in the middle of no where and it would take the police until nightfall to get there. The guys and I agreed that this was probably true. The second way would be for the guys to evaluate the damage of their car and we pay them and we deal with our car on our own. The guys decided it would cost about 100 Euros to repair the car. We sighed with relief, pulled together our Euros and let them be off. I wanted to pay the guys back, but they wouldn't let me and said that since my name was on the car, I would be responsible for that. Fair enough I thought!
And after we popped the siding bits back on we went up to the Upper Monastery. It was gorgeous, though the accident and the rain put a damper on it. So we looked at it, took a few pictures and started our 3.5 hour trek back home to Kotor.
This is one of those trips where you go up the mountain to get where you're going and back up the mountain to get back. We did go down the mountain at some point, but mostly, we just went up.
