Montenegro tour
A lot of paperwork was required before starting filming in Montenegro: the drone could not be brought into the country without a filming permit. I got a local lawyer who spent a fee, plus a month of waiting, to help me solve the problem. I can tell you right away that if it weren't for these files, there wouldn't have been this shoot. Security at Tivat airport was well aware of what the drone looked like on the scanning screen and called customs officers. I had to deal with them on both arrival and departure from Montenegro, but thanks to the permit, no problems arose. Still, when I handed the documents to the customs officers, it was very interesting to look at their frustrated expressions.
The main goal of this trip was to photograph the resorts on the coast near Tivat, as well as the Bay of Kotor. Considering the distance between Budva and Kotor and checking the availability of the hotel, I decided to stay in Budva, which is not far from the old town. There I managed to find a nice family hotel with its own parking lot. Anyone traveling by car in the coastal areas of Montenegro knows that in addition to the hotel facilities, it is so convenient to have parking.
On the first day of my trip in September, the sky was overcast and it was raining from time to time, and it seemed that my luck was not very good. So today I didn't shoot, but went to budva's old town to look for some locations. My first impression is that here I can hear a lot of Russian conversations, which are a lot of Russian-speaking tourists. You'll almost always see Russian on restaurant menus, and many locals know Russian.
The second impression is the weather. The air temperature here is about +30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), which is as hot and humid as in the tropics. After only about five minutes, the clothes were soaking wet. But that's not the only distressing thing: updated weather forecasts for the coming days predict that it will rain again. We usually joke that we took the good weather "in our pockets" to the filming set, but this time something must have gone wrong. After a few days, however, we discovered that while the weather forecast was correct, the weather in Budva and Kotor Bay changed quite quickly: although it rained in one place, after driving 20 kilometers (12.4 miles), you could "catch" the sun and beautiful clouds in another.
That's how I shoot in weather chase mode. If Budva is cloudy, I go to the Bay of Kotor, which is usually sunny. When the weather in Kotor got worse, I rushed back to Budva: Maybe the sun just came out there?
If I had to compare the impressions of these towns, I still prefer kotor's city center to Budva. Both old towns are small in size, and you can walk through the city in half an hour. There are no cars, only pedestrians. There are a lot of tourists during the day, but in my opinion, it is easier for you to get lost in the labyrinthine streets of Kotor, and sometimes there are no figures in the pictures I shoot. In terms of architecture and atmosphere, Kotor reminds me of southern Italy: red-tiled rooftops, clothes drying outside the window, neighbors talking to each other through the windows of their houses. Although it is a popular tourist attraction, I have noticed that not all houses have been converted into restaurants, hotels and shops, and many houses are still inhabited by locals.
Another sight worth mentioning is a serpentine road along which you will walk into the mountains above Kotor. After dozens of sharp turns, somewhere in the middle of the road, you can see amazing views of the Bay of Kotor. The road is very narrow, and sometimes you have to reverse for another car of tourists to pass. Sometimes, there are also long traffic jams, so early morning is the best time to drive up the mountain.
If you're lucky, standing on the observation deck above you can almost touch the clouds floating overhead with your hands. If you're unlucky, you'll find yourself wandering among the clouds on the side of the mountain. As I've said before, the weather here is very changeable: it's hard to guess what will happen in a few hours at bay.
The next destination on the journey is the small town of Perast, which can be reached by motorboat from Kotor or along a scenic road that surrounds the Bay of Kotor. The main attraction of the small town of Perast is an island whose name, Gospa od Škrpjela (Madonna rock island), is hard to pronounce, and the church of Our Lady stands on the island. It is a man-made island built on a reef where the citizens of Perast sank captured pirate ships and their old ships near the reef, 200 years old. A law was also passed on The Island of Our Lady of Rock: every ship passing through the island was required to drop a stone here. The tradition of throwing stones near the island continues to this day.
One hundred metres (yards) from The Rock Island of Our Lady is st. George's Island, where a Benedictine monastery stands. Unfortunately, the island is not open to the public and can only be viewed from the water or from the air, but it is no problem to go to the Church of Our Lady. However, there is a little trick here, and the residents of Perast use this trick to make a fortune on tourists. You can't drive into town – there's simply no room for everyone to park. Paid parking is available near town, but if you buy a boat tour of the island from a local, you can see signs in their yard that offer free parking. In the paid car park, if you buy a boat tour, the locals will not charge the parking fee, but the price of the boat tour here is 2-2.5 times higher than the boat company in the city center. It's a great business!
After driving to Madonna Rock Island, I started shooting from the ground: when I tried to launch the drone, an employee came out of the church store and asked me to land the plane. It is one of the few places in Montenegro where locals oppose the launch of drones, although there are no warning signs against it. Later I photographed the islands with a drone on shore: they were about half a kilometer (546 yards) away from the parking lot.
I had a few days left before flying home, and after consulting with my colleagues, I decided to go to northern Montenegro to photograph Dumitor National Park. After about 3.5 hours on the road, after passing through several mountain passes and valleys, I reached the mountain resort town of Zabljak. You can feel the drastic change in temperature: +26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) on the coast, and only +4 degrees Celsius (39 degrees Fahrenheit) on the coast. A strong wind blew from the north, and the sky was covered with cannon copper clouds. Indeed, sunny Montenegro can easily surprise people!
The weather was obviously bad, so I went looking for a shooting location. The Tara Valley is impressive, but not as impressive as the valley of the Durmitor Mountains. I am rarely fascinated by the beautiful mountains, but the Durmitor Mountain has impressed me so much that now for me, Montenegro is first and foremost Dumitor, not the coast and the Bay of Kotor. Nothing seems to be special about the surroundings: the slopes are littered with intricately shaped rocks, trees are sparse, but the rocks are not bare — the hills are overgrown with grass, moss and some mountain flowers. It's completely isolated, but at the same time you can find civilization right around you – the hotel is only half an hour away.
A narrow asphalt road runs through the valley of Dumitor, and you can easily drive along this road. The park itself has almost no cell phone service and very few buildings. I only saw a couple of roadside cafes and mountain lodges. Unlike the coastal areas, there are not many tourists here, probably because of the low season. It's cold and not suitable for outdoor walks, but it's still too early to ski.
I drove around the valley several times, marking out my favorite locations for future shoots. I would like to thank my Ukrainian colleagues, who told me the location of a lone tree: it is difficult to find it on the road.
I had a day to photograph the park, and today I was lucky to have the sun around, but not lucky with the wind and temperature — the car thermometer showed only +2 degrees Celsius (35 degrees Fahrenheit). I had serious doubts about starting a large drone, but now the plane has also more or less completed its mission. I spent the day sprinting from one previously scouted location to another, trying to photograph as many attractions as possible. Of course, a day is simply not enough to photograph this park of about 390 square kilometers (150 square miles), but I want to do my best to show you the attractions that I particularly like. In the last rays of the sun, my drone photographed Mount Cedro from the mountain pass of the same name, which is truly a magical sight.
The next day, the weather seemed to be hinting at a clearing, and the weather forecast even predicted that it would warm to +15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) in the coming days, but unfortunately I had to leave for the airport. The day before, my colleagues and I had tried to rearrange our return tickets to have more time to shoot Dumitor, but unfortunately we weren't lucky enough.
One more drive, another huge temperature change: in Tivat, the sun is shining and the weather is hot. Patrolling, inspecting, talking to customs officials – that's what we do at airports. Finally, my plane took off for Belgrade, where I would transfer back to Moscow. The plane turned around at sea and flew over the Bay of Kotor, then on the horizon appeared the familiar mountains and the famous Cedlow Peak, where I watched a wonderful sunset yesterday. Luckily, I saw all the places I had recently photographed on the plane again and I wish it wasn't the last time I'd seen these mountains...