More Montenegro – Climbing the Ladder of Cattaro and Exploring the Ruins of the Kotor Fortress

More Montenegro – Climbing the Ladder of Cattaro and Exploring the Ruins of the Kotor Fortress

So if you’ve been following along this should look familiar we are back here at the budva bus station this time heading to Couture so we actually took a break from filming yesterday and took a day off just to enjoy the day without the pressure of filming and we actually

Spent a couple hours in Couture and we are back here again this time with a little more time to experience it a little more daylight so let’s take a look around just got off the bus and already we have a number of ruins here but the

Real highlight I think is look at all those old fortress walls leading up on the side of the mountain Couture and the Bay of Couture are basically UNESCO world heritage sites so this is one of those places where everywhere you turn you’re going to find something historic crossing a genuine drawbridge

Yeah uhhuh wow that’s cool Crank It Up yeah leave all the tourists behind us it’s funny you step in here and you feel like you’ve gone right into the middle of a Dungeons and Dragons game or something like your Port party has approached the city of Couture you need Provisions chain mail a

Broadsword All right well we’re going to start working our way towards some of those Fortress walls up on the mountain side and see how high we can get so we’ve emerged out of the Northern City Gate of 1540 and over there that’s an old Hydro Electric Plant now a couple nights back

We met a British woman back in budva and had a good conversation with her and we happened to run into her in our little Couture preview last night and she was giving us a hint about a way to get up into the fortresses using a little bit

Of a different path than the main methods and her Advantage was she didn’t have to pay for it so she showed us the directions on Google maps of where she went up and we’re going to attempt to replicate that as best we can sun isn’t in a great spot but you

Can get a look at the old Hydro El Electric Plant here we think this is our trail head so you can kind of see on the screen here I’ll zoom in if I can make it Zoom there you go switch backs all the way up so we are still

Firmly in the this is a good idea phase of this hike we’ll see how it goes I’ve kind of developed a small little cough probably got something on the plane hopefully that doesn’t hurt my lung capacity too much but you may get to see video of me down on all four

Hacking up along we’ll see just a quick overview of the town give you an idea of how far we’ve climbed and a look at the trail conditions so far it’s all rock but it’s not like super loose Rock like scree like we sometimes hike but look at the number of

Switchbacks that we have to go through to get up this mountain it’s right there it’s so close I mean it’s kind of intimidating but then again the switchbacks will really help spread out that elevation gain over a fairly significant distance so that part should work in our

Favor the other thing that is likely I hope going to work in our favor is if I pull out the GPS like right now we’re only at an elevation of 52 2 m at home I believe our elevation is close to 1,500 M so we’re down here in an environment

That’s much more oxygen rich than the higher altitude that we live so that I think is going to make a huge difference I’ve noticed that when hiking some trails along the Oregon coast that even though I may physically get tired the same as I usually do I don’t usually find

Myself breathing in the same way it’s much easier to hike at this elevation than high up in the Rocky so we’ll see how I feel by the time we actually get up there so a quick update from the trail we’ve reached an elevation of 118 M the town’s getting further and further below

Us and once the camera adjusts to the new exposure here but the Fortress up on top of the mountain is getting closer and closer there we go we’ve reached the posted coordinates for the Bay of Couture virtual cash and just look at that view we’re about 170 m of elevation right now

Still feeling pretty good we’ve got the Fortress there behind us the Bay down below us a mountain in front of us this is one of the most scenic caches I’ve done this is uh this is pretty good stuff coming upon our first little building here since leaving the old hydroelectric plant down

Below Cafe Etc it says and look there’s people wow very cool neat little Stone house here beer coffee juice the trail is definitely getting more rugged but according to the map at the top of this next Switchback we cut across and head to the Fortress and I see some more people on

The trail ahead of us so this is apparently the end of our upward climb although this Trail does continue right to the top of the mountain we’re going this way and heading back towards the Fortress so I think that’s probably close to the highest elevation we will

Reach so I was just reading the description of the next geocache and basically it sounds like the pathway that we’ve been taking here is the ancient mule route known as the ladder of kataro and at one point this was the only route from the Bay of cataro further Inland into what is today

Montenegro it’s breathtakingly beautiful I mean One Direction you have a limestone or Granite Mountain M then to the other side you have the bay and one side you have the Fortress it’s just one of the most spectacular places I’ve ever seen truly make friends with the locals hey

There kitty cat sorry I have nothing for you this is truly an amazing site and there’s donkeys I assume they’re on the side of the Hill down below the Fortress and this old church here wow we’ve talked about exploring some old churches on the Prairies well they’ve got nothing on this one

Wow and I don’t know if you can see it there but the ceiling in here used to be painted blue wow what an amazing building it’s it’s incredible when you build things out of stone just how long they can last compared to our wooden buildings back in

Canada wow wonder what year this yeah I’m not sure there we go and thanks to the hint we were able to find the Geocache now we’re going to carry on with our hike so from what I’ve read is we now hike over to this ramp

Part over here and we can climb in that window and then that puts us on the more touristy Trail where we’re then free to continue to explore the Fortress and the nice thing is is by coming up this back route we’ve successfully avoided having to pay the

Fee to climb up here so thank you to our British friend who pointed out this route to us now I apologize you’re probably getting a little bit of wind noise but the battery on my lapel mic died it didn’t get a proper charge last night and that’s mainly

Because we only have one charging port in the entire hotel room so we’ve had to be very picky and choosy with how we CH charge our devices now this should be interesting we have seen other people who were up here make this climb so it should be doable and believe it or

Not it’s actually part of the marked Trail but it looks pretty high from here I’m not sure how we’re supposed to get up there I guess we’ll see yes literally through the window huh this is is getting to be a real Adventure now okay Emily’s up on the ledge here with

Me okay so this might not be quite as high as it looks but I’m not exactly the most agile person see if I can hoist myself up there just going to take all the breakables out of my pockets okay there’s a good purchase Point here it’s a little wet but here goes

Nothing oh yeah it’s very wet it’s not bad all right okay Emily’s just putting her stuff in her bag and I’m G to back up give her some room and be ready to lend a hand if necessary okay you’re up you’re up in Europe there’s the there we go So Graceful slide

Out well done and now for the first time we finally get to look down on the old town of coutur or Couture and see the other side of this Fortress wall that we were following this whole time wow what a view look at these narrow steps that they had to navigate

When they were Manning these I always want to call them musket holes but you know what I mean these places for shooting from the fortresses and wow what a view from up here I am so glad we chose to do this hike this is going to definitely be one of the

Highlights of the trip so we figured we well as well go all the way to the top having come this far I don’t have a ton of battery life left as we make the final push this is the castle of St John [Laughter] So from the wind swept steps of the Fortress of Couture thanks for Watching

This next video in our European adventures takes us to Kotor, Montenegro. We don’t spend much time in the old city though as we set out to climb the Ladder of Kotor. Also known as the Ladder of Cattaro (Cattaro being the old Venentian for Kotor) is an old mule track that once connected Kotor with the old Montenegrin capital of Cetinje,

We don’t go all the way up and over the pass, however, We detour over to check out the medieval Chapel of St. Ivan and then climb through a window to explore the ruins of the Kotor Fortress and continue our trip up to the Castle of San Giovanni.

It’s a great hike which offers some of the best scenery we’ve ever experienced, and you get to come along with us.

As always, thanks for coming along for the ride!

#montenegro #kotor #travel

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Chapters:
00:00 – Bus Ride to Kotor
00:30 – Exploring Kotor
02:42 – The Ladder of Kotor / Cattaro
10:12 – Chapel of St. Ivan
12:18 – Fortress of Kotor
15:28 – Castle of San Giovanni

DroneOCan is a DJI Mavic Pro. Most video is shot using a DJI Pocket 2 gimbal. Video editing is done with Wondershare Filmora on a mid-2010 iMac.