Living the Lie

Montenegro is an astonishingly beautiful country that gives the appearance of wealth and prosperity. Along it's very small coastline and lining the bays of the Kotor Fjord, there are expensive hotels and tourist resorts. One of the largest marina's in the Mediterranean and one that caters for enormous super-yachts is Porto Montenegro. St Stephan's islet is a hotel created for the exclusively wealthy. All this gives the impression that Montenegro is a wealthy country with affluent citizens.

Main street of Podgorica

Interesting advertising

Montenegro is living a lie, and a trip to the capital Podgorica quickly demonstrated this to us. This image of wealth, and a place where the beautiful people go, is a chimera created to satisfy the tourist market. The reality that we saw in Podgorica was of a struggling economy, an architecture of ugly communist inspired apartment blocks and unkempt street-scapes. The economy of Montenegro is still recovering from the impact of the Yugoslav wars of 1991 and the decline of manufacturing following the breakup of the Yugoslav empire.

Interesting breakfast: fried dough balls, cheese and honey

Central park

Montenegro never really developed an industrialised infrastructure, due to the small population, difficulties establishing transport and communication routes and lack of raw materials. Perhaps this lack of development preserved the ecological beauty of Montenegro's untouched forests and lush vegetation. It is this that allows the creation of a tourist mecca.

After the breakup of Yugoslavia, all the markets for Montenegro's nascent industries disappeared, the privatisation program was abolished and UN sanctions created an economic crisis from which Montenegro has still not recovered. In 1993, two thirds of the Montenegrin population was below the poverty line, and hyper-inflation reached 3 million percent in 1994. Interestingly, the location of Montenegro was ideal to support a smuggling industry, and the smuggling of user goods became the republic's main income in this period. Even now, the average income is around 500 Euro per month, about equivalent with Greece.

Remnant of Old Podgorica

Old town, Podgorica

The capital Podgorica was extensively bombed during World War II. It was invaded by Italy in 1941 and declared a protectorate of the Kingdom of Italy. After the Italian armistice in 1943, Podgorica was occupied by Germany. It became a major staging post for German troops withdrawing from Albania and Greece. For this reason, it was extensively bombed by Allied forces. This almost completely destroyed the city. We visited the remaining remnants of the old town, and it was extremely limited. So Podgorica was rebuilt by Tito and renamed Titograd. It reminded me of what I termed 'Communist Ugly' in Albania.

Abandoned communist era sport pavilion

Small cottage in the old town

Interesting carved door

One horse-power transport

Its great for Montenegro to re-invent itself through tourism, but I wonder what the long term consequences are for economies based just on tourism. What happens to a small countries sense of identity when its economic success depends on providing to the wealthy tourist sector. Service industries are great but limit the range and demand for educated graduates.

Old fort and our first contact with Croatia

The fort to seawards.

Anyway, our time in Montenegro was over. We loved the place, particularly the little port of Morinj that felt like a secure 'home base' while we roamed around the fjord. We checked out from Porto Montenegro, stayed another night illegally in our little anchorage in Uvala Krtole, and then lit out for Croatia.

Cavtat, our port of entry to Croatia

Unbelievably cute little tourist town

We had a trouble free passage up to Cavtat, our port of entry. We were pre-warned about the Croatian's love of charging for the previously assumed free requirements for cruising life, but we were still taken aback by the 100 Kuna (about $25) charge to tie up at the mandatory customs dock just to check in. Yachts were being charged 350 Kuna just to tie up to the town dock, electricity and water not included. We beat a hasty retreat and anchored in the bay next door, Tiha.

A great little anchorage in Tiha bay.

Welcome to Croatia!