Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of
Casino Royale
in “Montenegro”—though it was actually filmed in the Czech Republic).
But even this new development is poorly regulated, threatening to turn Montenegro into a
charmless, concrete Costa del Sol-style vacation zone. Enjoy the Bay of Kotor's pristine
areas (which we'll enter soon) while you still can.
• As you go through Herceg Novi, at the roundabout, follow signs for
Budva, Kotor,
and
Trajekt/Ferry.
After the tunnel, you'll pass through
Zelenika,
once the end of the line for the Habsburg
rail line from Vienna, which first brought tourism to this area.
You'll carry on through a few more dreary towns. Entertain yourself by gazing across
the strait on your right to look for caves burrowed into the cliff face at sea level. These
provided shelter for Yugoslav warships. Also along this cliff, you'll see naval barracks. In
Bijela,
you'll pass a big industrial shipyard on your right; in addition to the rusty, hard-
working ships you'll likely see here, this place also services luxury yachts—another example
of Montenegro's odd juxtaposition of gritty industry and nouveau wealth.
Eventually, you'll emerge into a more rustic setting. This fjordside road is lined with
fishing villages, some now developed as resorts (including a few with severe communist-era
touches). Each waterfront house seems to have its own little boat dock sticking out into the
glassy water. You'll pass through the town of
Kamenari,
which has a handy ferry that you
could use to shave time off your return trip to Dubrovnik (described at the end of this drive).
Two minutes after leaving Kamenari (just after the
Kostanjica
sign), watch for a convenient
gravel pull-out on the right (likely packed with tour buses, by the small white lighthouse).
Pull over to check out the narrowest point of the fjord, the...
Verige Strait
ThistightbottleneckatthemouthofthebayisthesecrettotheBayofKotor'ssuccess:Any
would-be invaders had to pass through here to reach the port towns inside the bay. It's nar-
row enough to carefully monitor (not even a quarter-mile wide), but deep enough to allow
even today's large megaships through (more than 130 feet deep). Because this extremely
narrow strait is relatively easy to defend, whoever controlled the inside of the fjord was al-
lowed to thrive virtually unchecked.
Centuries before Christ, even before the flourishing of Roman culture, the Bay of Kotor
was home to the Illyrians—the mysterious ancestors of today's Albanians. In the third cen-
tury
B.C.
, Illyrian Queen Teuta spanned this strait with an ingenious shipwrecking mechan-
ismtomoreeffectivelycollecttaxes.Tothisday,manysunkenshipslitterthebottomofthis
bay. (Teuta was a little too clever for her own good—her shrewdness and success attracted
the attention of the on-the-rise Romans, who seized most of her holdings.)
Inlatertimes,chainswerestretchedacrossthebayheretocontroltheentrance(thename
“Verige” comes from a Slavic word for “chain”). Later still, the Venetians came up with an
