This little-known ‘fjord’ is one of Europe’s greatest landscapes

If Norway and Venice had a lovechild, it would look like Kotor Bay. Extravagantly beautiful, as you’d expect. The waterway carves a great gash through the Dinaric Alps, narrowing and opening again between sheer cliffs. It looks like a fjord, except that the water is pure joyous Mediterranean blue, speckled with silver.

Kotor Bay, Montenegro – one of the Mediterranean’s greatest landscapes and one of the world’s great sail-ins on a cruise ship.Credit: iStock

The bay is ringed with Renaissance towns, as if bits of Venice have snapped off and drifted down the Adriatic Sea to lodge on the flanks of these sunny shores. Two chunks are still afloat in the bay. One is paved in semaphoring marble and topped by a chapel. On the other, tall dark cypress trees conceal a rustic monastery.

I’m on an Azamara cruise between Barcelona and Venice, and this day in Montenegro might be the best of many highlights. I’m up early, pacing the decks of Azamara Pursuit as it approaches Kotor Bay’s narrow opening.

Only pernickety geologists would care that this is not strictly a fjord, which is created by glaciers, but rather a sunken river valley of eroded karst.

In all but name this is a fjord that has taken a holiday in the sun. It has the same closed-in, cliff-dramatic splendour, and allows you similarly to sail inland in improbable directions. The journey down Kotor Bay is one of the great moments in cruising.

The first widening of Kotor Bay is rather gentle, forest covered, and flanked with white villas. The town of Herceg-Novi drifts past, fronted by a golden beach and backed by a hilltop church.

Then the ship turns a corner through some narrows. The next bay is bigger, the towns larger, the hills craggier. Porto Montenegro heaves up the hillside in a pile of yellow apartment blocks, leftover fortifications and church spires.

An Azamara cruise ship sailing into Kotor Bay.

The hills shoulder in again at Verige Strait, which is just 340 metres wide. Passengers exclaim at the railings as the ship slides through. You could almost reach out and touch the terracotta-roofed chapel to starboard and the chic-looking cafe to port.

Beyond the strait are more wide waters, a panorama of mountains, and a series of little peninsulas decorated with golden limestone buildings. Kotor Bay finally ends 30 kilometres from the open sea in a barrier of crags.

Kotor is a delightful mini-Dubrovnik.Credit: iStock

We dock a cannon shot from Kotor town’s bastions. Fortifications zigzag up the slopes, knitting together a chapel and towers that seem about to slide into the bay. Kotor is a delightful mini-Dubrovnik, a town of marble squares and shadowy streets entangled behind high walls.

There’ll be time, later, to wander about. Azamara is a destination-oriented cruise line that lingers long in ports of call, so we’ll be here all day. Meanwhile, I want to see more of this remarkable bay.

Soon I’m trundling along the bay-side road towards Perast, accompanied by a local Azamara guide. Our first stop is Our Lady of the Rocks, the chapel-topped island we passed on our morning sail.

It has 360-degree views of mountains and water that demonstrate how Kotor Bay is changing. Some towns have barely changed since overhauls in the baroque period added marble flagstones and cavorting rooftop saints. Elsewhere, resort hotels and concrete holiday apartments mushroom.

In Perast, retired fishermen sit in the cafes over thick coffee and plates of sausages, while chic Euro-yachters totter along the quays. Some of the town’s palazzi are in ruins, others have been renovated and turned into boutique hotels draped in hot red bougainvillea.

Later that evening as we sail away and I patrol Azamara’s decks again, sunset stains Perast’s facades pink. The water is mirror-smooth, the mountains of Montenegro a black bulk beyond, and cruising has me spellbound again.

The writer travelled as a guest of Azamara.

THE DETAILS

CRUISE
Several of Azamara’s Mediterranean cruises visit Kotor. Among them is a nine-night Croatia Intensive Voyage return from Fusina (Venice) departing September 8, 2024, from $3553 a person. A nine-night Dalmatian Coast Voyage between Fusina (Venice) and Piraeus (Athens) departing September 17, 2022, is from $3668 a person. Shore excursions are additional. See azamara.com

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