Day 13: Crno Jezero

The rain had been quite torrential in Žabljak yesterday evening, but we were relieved to see when we woke up this morning that there was a beautifully clear blue sky. Our plan for today was to visit Crno Jezero (the Black Lake), a beautiful glacial lake on the outskirts of the town. It was the sort of activity which would have been rather miserable in the rain.

We set out straight after breakfast, to make the most of the good weather. We started by walking down Žabljak's high street, in the direction of the mountains.

Žabljak isn't a large town, and soon the shops and houses started thinning out, giving us an increasingly good view of the mountains.

This one in particular looks so rocky!

Crno Jezero is located just 3km outside of Žabljak and it's an easy, well-signposted stroll down a road which doesn't have much traffic.

As we started to get closer, we turned a corner and had a spectacular view.

The forests looked like something out of a fairy tale, with mist rising from them in the early morning sunshine.

A couple of kilometres from the town, the road is roped off and you come to a little wooden hut. This is the point at which you have to pay an entrance fee (€3) to enter the national park. It seemed like a bargain.

Once we had paid, there were another few hundred metres to go before we got our first glimpse of the lake.

Wow. It isn't immediately obvious why this is known as the Black Lake, because the waters seemed to be a shade of blue which would almost rival Plitvice.

While we were admiring the views on the shores of the lake, we even found some ducks

Although the lake is referred to as Crno Jezero, in summer it actually splits into two lakes - Veliko Jezero and Malo Jezero - which are connected by a narrow strait of rocks. In other seasons when the water level is higher, they join together to form one lake. We were currently at the first bit of the lake, Veliko Jezero.

Although there had been some groups of other tourists at the entrance to the national park, by the time we had wandered around the shore for a bit there were only a handful of other people in sight.

Everything which I have ever read about Crno Jezero has said that there is an "easy" 4km path around the edge of the lake. Walking paths in Montenegro are graded as blue (easy), red (medium) and black (hard) and the signs at the entrance to the national park confirmed that this was a blue path. In my mind this had led me to imagine something in the Swiss style of easy paths around lakes, which generally involve a tarmac surface you could push a wheelchair along and plentiful opportunities to buy ice-cream. Lulled into a false sense of security, I had therefore decided to wear my trainers today rather than my walking shoes.

The path started off easily enough around the shore of the lake, and everywhere we looked we were rewarded with fantastic views.

As we came to the far edge of the first lake, the path led uphill into the forest on its route around the second part of the lake.

The forests were beautiful in their own right and reminded us a little of the amazing forests we'd experienced in Lithuania last year.

The trees blocked out the view of the lake for a while, but every so often we would come across little clearings

It was around this point that we began to experience the true meaning of an "easy" path, Montenegrin-style, and I started to regret not having worn my proper shoes!

Let's just say I don't think I feel ready for a medium path

In fairness, the path is probably a lot easier if the weather is completely dry. But it had rained quite heavily last night, and everywhere was still pretty wet, especially under the trees. The main surfaces of the path were damp rocks, damp tree roots and damp mud, all of which were slippery in different ways at different times. But the rocks were all quite stable, so if it hadn't rained I don't think they would have been quite so much of a struggle!

The good news is that the views did continue to make the effort worthwhile.

One of the most striking things about the lake was how clear the water was. As you can see in the photo, we could not only see a perfect reflection of the trees but the clouds as well.

In some places the reflections did make the water look darker, although I still think calling the lake "black" is a bit of an exaggeration.

We began to make good progress around the second lake and back towards the first one.

Partway around we came to a sign for "Titova Pećina" (Tito's cave). Although you wouldn't think it to look at it, there was some serious fighting around Žabljak during the Second World War, with the entire town ultimately being burnt to the ground.

The inscription on the plaque reads "Here Comrade Tito stayed with his Supreme Staff from 20 to 29 May 1943 and took the decision about the breakthrough across the Sutjeska (river)". Unfortunately I don't know enough about the history of the Second World War to know what the significance of this decision was, but it sounds like it was important!

Soon after the cave we were coming back around to where we had started.

The lake and the mountains still looked beautiful in the sunshine.

And the path became a bit easier at this point as well

Now that we were up close by the water we could see how amazingly clear it was...

..with hundreds of tiny fish swimming in it.

It was coming up to lunch time by this point, so we decided we'd better head back to the main town to get some food.

It was a pleasant walk back

We went back to the apartment first so I could wash mud of me (it was that sort of walk!) and then to a restaurant we'd passed on the way to the lake which advertised itself as a pizzeria. I had a very cheesy margherita pizza and Tim ordered something called "piletina u kari sosu" (chicken in curry sauce). This was a promising name, but when it arrived it turned out to have the colour of mustard and be very bland, not even as spicy as a korma. The chicken looked good though, and the entire meal including drinks only came to €20.

It was about 2pm by this point and we walked back towards the lake, in the hope of exploring some of the other paths which start from there. Unfortunately, by this stage some rather dark clouds had started to descend over the area and it was getting increasingly cold and windy, as if it might rain soon.

The weather can be very volatile in this part of Montenegro, so we decided we'd better not risk another walk and set off back to Žabljak instead. We'd walked 10 miles already by this point anyway and got some fantastic photos in the sunshine, so we couldn't complain It turned out to be a good decision, because we'd just got within sight of the local supermarket when the heavens opened!