According to the forecast, an abundance of sun is not in our near future. It is now or never to see what Montenegro’s great outdoors has to offer us. We are in a bay surrounded, and I do mean surrounded, by mountains. This area is begging to be explored.

Lucky for us, they have recently built a gondola that will take you to the top of one of the mountains. Yes please! Eleven minutes later and we are on top of the world. We look at the map and see many hiking trails. No legend, no distances, no elevations, just a long blue line going in a big circle with lots of little off shoots. We have our waterbottles, our layers, our grippy shoes, our athletic gear and our positive attitudes. We are ready, come what may. 5km? 10km? 15km?? We’ve got this.

Less than an hour later, not only had we completed the full loop and all of the off shoots, but we also visited the amphitheatre, the viewpoints, the restaurants and tried to rent quads – but the store was closed. It was not the crazy hike we were looking forward to, but it was unbelievably beautiful. Being here in the fall is magical. This gondola ride was absolutely worth the price of admission. 100% recommend.

While we were up there, we noticed some sort of fortress/bunker/structure (?) in the hills, right by a road. Having a car gave us the ability to go and check it out. OMG. It was incredible. Originally built on some other structure in the late 1800s, it was used by one military or another right up until the 1990s. It has since been abandoned and anybody can go there and explore. I couldn’t believe how big it was, and if we hadn’t seen it from the gondola, we’d have never known it was there – it was that well hidden and camouflaged into the mountain. Walking through it was really kind of spooky. Our little iPhone flashlights did absolutely nothing in many of the rooms. Stairwells led up to the second level or down into the basement – I did NOT go down there, there were abandoned gun mounts in front of sniper holes, walls surrounding the entire structure, a moat and tons of chambers.

As of now, there is nobody monitoring it, nobody taking admission, nobody taking care of it. I assume it is just a matter of time before somebody in the tourism sector finds a way to clean it up and make it another money making destination. I am very grateful that we got to explore it as is.

It is still daylight and we have found another little hike that we want to do. There is a church, a fortress and a wall that has been teasing us every since we got here. It is quite the hike up from Old Town – I believe our guide said well over 1300 steps in total. Ugh. We just might need all of those hiking preparations we made earlier!

But wait – Jason has found us an alternate route. We will drive to the top of the mountain and there is a trail, according to Google, that will take us to the fort. This sounds like a perfect plan.

22 minutes.

Mostly flat.

Yes please.

It was an hour drive up on a road with the most switchbacks I have ever seen in one place. Of course the road was narrow and of course it was for bi-directional traffic. Jason was a hero as we navigated all of the pitfalls that came our way.

Since the hike was only 22 minutes and mostly flat, we ‘packed’ accordingly. As we head off, we immediately started a pretty steep decline. Hmmmm…it’ll flatten out soon, right? We took a lot of pictures as we navigated ourselves down (and I do mean DOWN) the well marked path. The scenery was quite beautiful. No viewpoints because we were in the thick of the trees, but we were enjoying the hike.

Until we were well past the 22 minute mark, still descending and still not seeing anything close to a wall, a fortress or a church. Nor any signs telling us we are close.

It was NOT 22 minutes.

It was NOT mostly flat.

And, spoiler alert, we saw neither a fortress, a wall nor a church. It was starting to get late and now we were actually worried that we would run out of daylight. Time to hoof it up – and I do mean UP! An hour an a half after we started, we made it back to the car. Just in time too – the sun was just starting to set. Beautiful!

We were tired, we were disappointed, we were a little ticked off at Mr. Google. Honestly though? We were happy and so grateful. Regardless of the outcome, we had an adventurous hike on a beautifully sunny day right here in Montenegro. We won’t be able to say that in a week, or maybe ever again.