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The cloudy day in Durmitor NP began with a detour (far from the last) to the Visitor Center. We didn’t get much information, and had to go back to Žabljak to start our hike.

Today, we decided to set off to Ćurevac, a view point over the Tara Canyon. This canyon is the deepest in Europe, and one of the deepest in the World. It sounds promising, even though we’re a bit scared about the weather being too misty.

We are already on the plateau on the Southern side of the canyon, so the walk there was a rather easy one, mostly flat. Taking our time to eat, at a point where I missed a turn and we did another small detour, it took us just two hours and a half.

Only for the last 15 min or so, the path took a sharp turn to the West, and climbed steeply. By 1 PM, we arrived at the summit.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

We’re at an altitude of about 1,600 m. The river Tara runs at 600 m. Do the maths.

The view over the winding turquoise river, so small from here, making its way between two walls of rock, a kilometer in height, is too surreal to be described by such a poor wordsmith as I. It’s one thing that you should see once in your lifetime, seriously. The opposite mountain face, almost a vertical cliff, was covered in an emerald green forest all the way from the top to the river bank. Our side looked even steeper, rockier, but still pines tried to grow there. The weather was not clear but still enough for us to get a full view of this part of the canyon, although on our left, the clouds were coming from under our feet, getting up above the crest, alternatingly hiding then revealing the West side of the valley. Another lifelong memory right there.

After quite some time, we left this magical place, going down the muddy path. Then, we decided to go to another view point, much further East. Problem: there’s a forest with no paths (at least on Google Maps) between us. That’s alright though, Kamel has some proper hike maps, and it seems that there’s a path after a bit. That’s how we went straight East, crossing a clearing, and then we followed the electric lines into the forest. The ground was uneven to say the least, but not too difficult to navigate.

After a while, we indeed found a large path, and followed it North, towards the cliff. We soon arrived, at 4 PM, to another viewpoint, not the one we aimed for, but again with a fantastic sight.

And that’s where things got tricky. Many fallen trees were barring our way, and soon after, the path simply disappeared. We walked a bit in rocky terrain for a few minutes and find the path again. According to the map, this path was doing a wide loop until it ended up in the village from where we aimed to go back to Žabljak. But we soon met a crossing path, going South, that would make a shortcut to antoher smaller loop. By now, there was about three hours of sunlight left, and as it was two hours walk from the village, and we were nowhere close from that fabled viewpoint, so we went for it.

Again, fallen trees were on the way, and the path purely and simply vanished. So we went offroad, Southward and uphill through the forest until we found the lower loop. However, it was clear from our GPSes that the map we had could not be trusted anymore, as that scent send us back downhill and North.

Fed up with that shit, we simply climbed straight South, avoiding the trees, until finally, at around 5:30 PM, we got out of the woods, into the small village. That was fun! But only because we were not really lost, we had GPS, maps and signal.

Sadly the village welcomed us with a monstrous pile of litter. Welcome back to « civilization »…

As soon as we got back on the road, we were followed by two dogs, obvisouly not stray ones, for a very long time. We were wondering how many more kilometers they will do with us, until enventually a car reached us, stopped, and the guy took one of the dog.

« What about the other one? »

« It’s ok, it’s alright! »

And he went back. Well, we keep going with our new friend, for about four more kilometers, until another car stopped, got him in the car, but the dog escaped and ran towards us. The guy said that it’s alright, the dog know its way, and he left. Wow… We were concerned that it’ll follow us until the end of the line, up to the airbnb.

Finally we got freed from our companion by two cyclists passing us, and he ran happily after them. We never saw that dog again. Crazy endurance!

And finally, finally, after nearly 10 h and 30 km (record annihilated) of walk, we were back home. As always when hiking with Kamel, I was broken in half… but with memories for life.