Tara River Rafting, Montenegro

“AAAARGGGGGH!” Mike cried, his body tight to the inflatable tube in the bow of the raft. “My arm’s stuck!”

Kirsty and I panicked and sprang forward to pull him back on board.

He sat up with a big grin on his face.

“Only joking!”

We’d gone whitewater rafting on the Tara River and had been kidding around with the youngsters in our crew, telling them there was a crocodile in the water. Mike’s act was so convincing that experienced rafters, Kirsty and I, really thought something was wrong!

Kirsty’s partner, Mike, and our new Italian friend Simona had never rafted before. Kirsty and I were both Zambezi veterans, who had conquered one of the world’s biggest whitewater rivers. We vowed not to mention it or bore everyone by saying,

“Oh, it’s not the Zambezi!”

Our descent of the Tara River Canyon was going to be scenic, rather than stirring. It was a long way removed from the Grade 5 white water offered by the Slambezi, as some call it. For context, the International River Classification System rates Grade 5 as ‘expert’. Grade 6 is so extreme, it’s often considered unrunnable.

The most adrenaline-infused part of the day was the drive up the gorge. We were a little late setting off, since Simona made a last-minute decision to join in. She and I left our better halves, Mark and Giovanni, looking after the dogs.

At least the wait for for Simona gave me the chance to rush back to the truck, where I had to admit something embarrassing to my beloved.

“Mark, I forgot my towel and dry clothes!”

He gave me an incredulous look. “And I thought you were supposed to be the White Water Rafting Queen!”

Our driver did everything possible to deliver us to the start by 10 a.m. This included speeding the whole way on the edge of a precipice and overtaking a bus on a blind bend.

The rafting HQ was on the far side of the fabulous 365 m (1,198 ft) Đurđevića Tara Bridge. Its five irregular arches soar 172 m (564 ft) above the Tara River.

Mike filled us in on its history.

“When they built it in 1938, it was the longest concrete bridge in Europe. You will have seen it if you’ve ever watched the World War Two movie, Force 10 From Navarone.”

Getting our wetsuits, buoyancy aids, and bright yellow helmets was barely organised chaos. The wetsuit man was matter-of-fact when I found myself at the front of the swarming throng that doubled as a ‘queue’. He appraised me like a prize heifer, then, without hesitation, uttered,

“Large.”

Even before noon, the Montenegrin sun made wriggling into a neoprene suit hot work. I had drunk all my water before I’d even finished getting changed. I visited the restaurant to buy another bottle. At the threshold, I was forced to step over a kid sitting on the doormat. When I say kid, I don’t mean a child – it really was a baby goat. And when I say ‘I bought a bottle of water’ – the waitress donated it because she couldn’t change my 20 euro note.

Somehow, each member of the milling mob was allocated gear and some form of transport to drive to the put in. Jubo (pronounced ‘Yubo’, I think) bundled us into his jeep. I christened him U-Boat, which besides seeming apt, was easier to remember. We were elated when he was assigned to be our guide. Two lovely German families joined our raft with their kids (children!).

As we chatted, U-Boat told me,

“In the winter, I’m a ski instructor. I learned to ski on an 80-degree black slope. The lift was free, so it was where all the kids learned!”

That’s certainly an in-at-the-sheer-end way to learn.

Mark and I had been wondering how to manage the Schengen Shuffle for our ski season. Maybe Montenegro was the answer.

When I told him this, U-Boat promised to give me his details after the trip and advised, “Come in February when it’s quieter.”

The rafting expedition was a scenic float through the stunning greenery and steep limestone walls of the canyon. The crystalline waters twinkled over the colourful mosaic of pebbles on the riverbed.

Part way, we pulled on to a pale sandy beach and followed a footpath up through the trees to the Ljutica or ‘Angry’ River, a tributary of the Tara. At 450 m long, it’s one of the shortest and fastest rivers in Europe.

Its source was impressive. A broad torrent of dark water surged out from beneath a wide stretch of mossy boulders. As it seethed its way down the mountainside, black boulders squeezed and churned it into a series of pure white cascades that crashed down to the Tara via a staircase of frothing pools. Shaded by a pale limestone wall, the spray-filled air was refreshingly cool on our skin.

U-Boat said, “The water is pure enough to drink.”

In the heat, I had once again finished my water. Since the Ljutica emerged at a revitalising 5°C, I refilled my bottle, taking care not to slip into the maelstrom from the slimy rocks. U-Boat had told us to keep on our helmets for the walk, just in case.

Back in the raft, as we passed beneath the multi-arched Đurđevića bridge, U-Boat gave us a little more history.

“The bridge isn’t really called Đurđevića – Đurđevića is simply the name of the village nearby.

“When the Italians occupied the area in 1941, an engineer who worked on the bridge helped a troop of Yugoslav partisans blow up the last arch to halt the Italian advance. The Italians caught him eventually and executed him on the bridge. Since it’s such an important crossing, the arch was rebuilt in 1946, after the war. You can see the concrete is a different colour.”

U-Boat swirled our raft into a position that granted us a magical photo of a soaring cathedral-like arch eclipsing the sun.  

“There used to be a bungee jump from the bridge,” he told us. “They closed it because the roadway is narrow, and spectators caused too much congestion.”

At 172 metres (564 ft), it was considerably higher than the bungee jump I did in a place in Africa that I had vowed not to mention. At the time, the 111 m (364 ft) drop from Victoria Falls Bridge above the Zambezi was the highest bungee jump in the world.

As we bumped down a few more minor rapids, U-Boat said.

“In April, the Tara is a Grade 4 river.”

Kirsty and I shared a glance that said,

That sounds like a lot of fun…

We enhanced the thrill from the small waves by bouncing on the tubes of the inflatable raft. On some runs, Kirsty suggested whirling our craft around three hundred and sixty degrees in a mad waltz. At one point, our antics grounded us on a rock. Another raft kindly dislodged us with a controlled crash.

Towards the end, U-Boat asked the crew if we wanted to jump into the river from a 4 m (13 ft) cliff.

We all ummed and ahed, afraid to say ‘Yes’, but worried we would miss out if the others did it. When a young boy from another raft ran straight up the rock and launched himself into the void without question, we subconsciously reached an agreement. We couldn’t be thwarted by a teenager.

At the top of the rugged skull-coloured limestone cliff, our stomachs churned and knotted like the Ljutica river. We could have taken the easy way out – the walk of shame down to the beach, but Kirsty’s pinched her nose and leapt feet first into the glassy aquamarine waters. Her fearless plunge inspired us. There was no going back.

I stepped past the point of no return and felt a rush of warm air, the shock of cold water, a brief period of gurgling weightlessness, then my buoyancy aid whooshed me to the surface in a blossom of white spray. As I gasped for fresh air, I side-stroked to the shore, then clambered through the shallows on to a sunlit beach, tingling all over. It felt great.

The rush I got came not just from the jump, but because I felt reconnected with my younger, thrill-seeking self. It was a long time since I’d done something that terrified me just for kicks.

I relished that electrifying sensation of invincibility that derives from facing your fears, then doing it anyway. At those moments, you feel so powerful.

You know you can do anything.

U-Boat stopped to let us refill our water bottles under a trickle of a waterfall, then we paddled hard to the take out. As a team, we lifted the raft with its grab handles and ran up the bank, before high fiving each other.

It was a great day out. Yet, despite our mastery of the cliff jump, we asked our driver to negotiate the gorge rather more sedately on the way back!

Back at the campsite, Mark and Giovanni greeted us after they’d been dog sitting all day. As a group, we’d been helping Nerone, a huge black stray who had wandered into the campsite a few days before. A local dog rescue was due to pick him up, but we were all quietly pleased he was still there when we got back.

The goodbye wasn’t far away, though.

In the early evening, Nerone moved on to the next part of his adventure, leaving us all heartbroken.

A white van came to collect him. When asked, he hopped willingly into the back, but when we closed the doors, we heard him whimper and cry. It felt like a betrayal.

The campsite owner’s son, Pavel, was particularly distraught. Since the first afternoon, Nerone had been Pavel’s shadow. We knew the family had discussed keeping him, but in a few weeks, Pavel was due back at university, and his parents had enough to do, running the campsite and their smallholding. Pavel’s cousin, Biljana, who had also been helping with Nerone, already had two Rottweilers and couldn’t take another large dog. We couldn’t take him. Besides the complications of importing a dog into the EU from an unlisted country like Montenegro, he was a Cane Corso, which is a banned breed.

“He will get the care he needs for ever,” Pavel said as we watched the van pull out of the gate.

Biljana reassured us, “We told the rescue centre over and over, ‘This dog needs love’.”

The following day, Pavel relayed an update.

“Nerone has had his vaccinations. They will care for him until they find him a home, or he will stay at the shelter.”

Losing Simona and Giovanni that evening, then Kirsty and Mike the next morning, left us even more bereft. We had intended to hit the road, but by the time we’d faffed about filling up our water tanks, the heat was unbearable and we opted to stay another night.

Biljana told us,

“In the capital, Podgorica, it was 48°C” (119°F) yesterday. It was 40°C (104°F) here!”

No wonder it had been purgatory walking around in a wetsuit!

We took the dogs to our secret beach by the river to cool off, then packed up our truck, The Beast.

Leaving was very sad. Our time at Eko Oaza had been good for our souls.

Pavel’s family gave us milk straight from the cow, and a box of fresh veggies from the garden. His mum got up every morning at 3 a.m. to bake fresh bread and refused to take money for doing our laundry. When Mark admired Pavel’s bright green Eko Oaza T-shirt and asked if he could buy one, Pavel replied,

“We don’t sell them,” – but the next day, he brought one for Mark as a gift.

It was such a utopia, we didn’t want to go, but our next adventure beckoned.

To escape the heat, we set a course for the mountains of the Durmitor National Park.

Although I had reconnected with my adrenaline junkie roots, my stomach lurched a little when I contemplated taking The Beast over the Sedlo pass, Montenegro’s highest paved mountain road.

The website Dangerous Roads deems the Sedlo Pass ‘not recommended for bigger vehicles’.

But Mark didn’t seem to think the term ‘bigger vehicles’ applied to our 16-tonne Beast.

The Beast on the Sedlo Pass, Durmitor National Park, Montenegro