Ostrog |
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8 November 2025 - Ostrog
Today was about visiting the cliffside monastery at Ostrog. The road there from Nikšić was exciting to say the least. The Japanese hitchhiker we picked up outside Kotor yesterday decided not to tag along, so it was just Iwona and me. Often a single lane wide, the cliffs on the right were only separated from us by occasional stone barriers. We could not see the valley below through the fog though, so who knows how good the views were. At one point the road was almost completely washed away leaving a gaping hole, but our tiny rental Renault squeezed by. We stopped for lunch and some junk shopping after rejoining a more modern road just before reaching Ostrog. The last stretch between the lower and upper monastery is two kilometers of steep switchbacks I'd have skipped if not for the pouring rain. The Ostrog monastery set into the cliffside is definitely worth seeing though. Much like Predjamski Grad it's set into an overhang of a rocky cliffface. There is a vine on the top level that supposed sprouted when St. Basil died there, but that was 1671. They have his corpse there too, which people visit because they believe it has magic powers. The monastery also has some beautiful tiled icons and the views are breathtaking when the fog clears. I was able to walk the whole way down to the lower monastery as the rain had let up. There one can get an impressive view of the upper part set into the cliff. The road to Podgorica was two lanes and fortunately not exciting.
