I decided that as i climbed to the fortress above Kotor after the previous entry, i’d do a special climbing edition update.
For those long time readers you may remember the infamous Guatemalan Donkey incident. There was no such reoccurrence on this climb, I’m sorry to say.
The climb starts by handing over 3 euros to some guy who says its 3 euros. I do however get a ticket, so it must be legitimate. I’d heard its possible to do the walk in 45 minutes up. I saw that as a challenge. Armed with 1.5 litres of water, I started the assault up to the fortress. The clock had started. There are 1350 steps, but there are also many sections of uphill paths without steps. I finally reached the church of St Ivan, which looks to be half way up but is closer a third of the way up.
View of Kotor Bay
I encountered a sign that said it was a high risk zone. I was about to die, so maybe thats what they meant. I looked for a cunning group of youths with donkeys, to entice me into trading said donkeys for exorbitant amounts of cash. But no, there were no hazards i feared other than death from excessive amounts of sweat weighing me down. I thought about counting the steps to pass the time, but figured when i got to 100 it would be demoralising. But i turned a corner and the Montenegrin flag was close and it drove me on to the top.
I checked my official timing device and it read 28 minutes. I’d run up the bloody thing almost. Apparently the record for running up is a lot lower than 28 minutes…
I must say my knees did not like the descent. The views were amazing, but each step felt painful to my knees. I also drank the 1.5 litres of water to replace the 1.5 litres of sweat.
Sorry there were no donkey shenanigans in this brief tale of near death mountain climbing.
