3 months with 3 monkeys (or How to travel Europe with children.) : Budva, Montenegro

Outflow from mountain - where's the waterfall?

We're in our last month in Europe and so that we can see a bit of Slovenia, Austria and maybe the Czech republic we will be covering some serious kilometres over the next few days. First stop though is Dubrovnik because even though we were here 14 years ago it is a must do.

On the beautiful drive scale today's was way up there as we travelled to our next destination particularly the section along the coast from Kotor to Herceg Novi which hugged the water line.

Exit point of the underground river

On the way we saw water flowing into the fjord from a river. Because the karst (limestone) mountains rise so quickly out of the ocean I thought there must be a pretty spectacular waterfall just out of sight. We parked the car and Harry and I went rock scrambling to see where the water was coming from. We were surprised to see that the river just disappeared into the face of the mountain.

Smoko - water exiting mountain
at another spot - behind back left

I was speaking to a ranger about it a few days later and she explained that when the water hits the limestone it forms carbonic acid which eats away at the rock. That coupled with the path of least resistance through the limestone results in the water burrowing through the rock rather than flowing over it. We saw a few actually but one in particular was so large I thought it was the outflow for a hydroelectric setup or something but it was exactly the same thing. Quite amazing really.

Not a hydroelectric outflow.

Crossed the border leaving Montenegro and the border guard queried me on whether I had anything to declare or not. "3 mental children!" I said only for him to shoot back "But you are the father". Fair call I suppose.

Arrived at a little town called Cavtat about 16km away from Dubrovnik and about €30 a night cheaper. Walked along the waterfront in town and had dinner by the water. Tomorrow we'll be hitting up Dubrovnik.