A Montenegrin Glacial Lake & A Not Quite Thai Massage

Not long after the trip to Albania, I did indeed get behind the wheel of a car again, from the same rentacar company, to head to Montenegro. I traveled for a long weekend to Kolasin, a Montenegrin ski resort with a five star spa called Bianca. I picked the locale because it was only 5 km away from the Biogradska Gora National Park which is known for its primordial forest and its glacial lake, situated at 1094 m, where I hoped to do some hiking.

Prior to my departure, people warned me that the roads across the Kosovo-Montenegrin border were bad and that the Montenegrin roads were treacherous. Of course, these were the same people who told me that the Albanian roads were good. Fortunately, I paid them no mind. While I am certain that my Albanian adventure honed my driving skills the same as if I had graduated summa cum laude from an offroad driving school, the roads in fact were okay. There were treacherous mountain roads with hairpin turns, evidence of an unnerving number of rock slides, and an eerily long no-man's land between the Kosovo border post and the Montenegrin border post, but the road was paved and occasionally came equipped with a guardrail - what more could you ask for. I made the journey in 3.5 hours, instead of the anticipated 4.5 hours.
I checked into the Bianca spa. (Here's a link to a review of the resort: http://www.visit-montenegro.com/our-reviews-1.htm ). You can spot it miles and miles away as it towers over its surroundings. I was one of only two guests whom they were expecting that day and as such, I was addressed by name when I walked through the door. Like I said, it is a ski resort, so summer is definitely its low season. The plus is that there are no crowds at its indoor Olympic size pool and it is no problem to get an appointment at the spa, which my friend had told me, was staffed by a group of Thai women who had moved to Kolasin from their homeland. It wasn't exactly right. When I went downstairs to book some services, I discovered they are from the Philippines. Then I discovered that a five star spa, even one in the middle of Montenegro, is damn expensive. Gone was my dream of booking an entire day of spa treatments, but I had come all this way and was not going back without something at least, so I booked my 30 euro (about $40) pedicure (I figured it worked out to $4 a toe - not so bad) and a 60 euro back massage for the next day.


The town is tiny, although it purports to have a population of 9500, it looks more like 500. The center, and really the entire town, consists of one crossroads and a multitude of cafes. The next morning, I sat in one, drank possibly the worst coffee ever brewed and overheard a neighboring table of a group of local middle aged men, who were all smoking and doing shots, speaking of their plans for massages later in the day at the spa. One gentleman bemoaned the fact that he only had enough for a thirty minute massage. I must admit that for a moment I thought the spa might be a front for some other professional craft, but as I learned later, it really was a spa, and this tiny town in the middle of Montenegro was now getting used to having weekly massages. East meets West, or at least meets the Balkans.

I headed in my car to the National Park. At its base is a hut and a pole blocking the road. A woman in a uniform came out of the hut and approached my car and said "one euro". She then apologized, although I had not objected, that I would have to pay but said that was policy. I gave her the euro, the pole was lifted, and I set off up a mountain.









Eventually, the road ends in a dirt clearing and opens up onto Biogradsko lake. It's clearly worth the price of admission.
The lake is tucked into the mountains and surrounded by forest. An Austrian organization donated funds to clean up/create a path along the 4.5 km long shoreline of the lake.



You can hike around the lake or into the mountains on well marked trails. I did both until it started raining later in the afternoon. I didn't mind having to pack it in because I knew I had a massage and pedicure waiting for me back at the spa. When I returned to the spa, I saw the cafe gentleman coming from his thirty minutes of massage heading to the sauna. It all looked above board to me. My massage was okay - thirty minutes with the expected background sounds of some new age music featuring harp and punctuated by the occasional sound of nature - the croaking frog, babbling brook or chirping cricket, all of which usually makes me more anxious than relaxed, not being a particularly outdoorsy person. Why would I want to be in a room with a frog or cricket? During my massage? Mystifying. But the pedicure opened up a whole new world. For some reason, I suspect boredom, the woman who took care of my feet made it her mission that day to loofah, soak, paraffin and massage the bejesus out of them. Ninety minutes later, I felt like I had someone else's feet - never had I seen them looking so shiny and new. I felt bad having to walk on them at all and was sad that the five star spa did not have man servants standing by to carry me, Cleopatra like, back to my room. Alas, I returned to my room as any mere mortal, on my own two (now fabulous looking) feet.