#natural wonder
New Zealand is spectacular. My partner and I hiked around Mt Doom, swam in countless hot springs and saw too many natural wonders to list. I never want to leave.
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Santa Elena Canyon
Does anyone want to live on a volcano island? A volcano within a volcano, Aogashima Island, a part of the Izu Archipelago, lies two hundred miles south of Tokyo, in the Philippine Sea. With a population of over 200, it’s an oasis from the rest of the world. Oh, and the volcano on the island is still ACTIVE.
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Deep canyon walls rose high either side of us as we followed alongside the raging blue river, weaving in and out of craggy rocks and diving through tunnels carved out of the very mountainside itself.
After six short weeks in Albania, which felt like it had lasted both like a lifetime and the blink of an eye, we were now driving North through the Tara Canyon, one of Montenegro’s most impressive natural wonders and the deepest canyon in Europe.
Our journey had begun that morning after an exceptionally rainy day in Albania, and as we waited for the diggers to clear the landslides that blocked the road we were questioning whether we had to leave at all or if we could stay here forever. Our second time in Albania had been just as incredible as the first, and we left with a deeper understanding of the country as well as a handful of new friends.
The border crossing into Montenegro was no more than a remote outpost, lacking in electricity or internet; they wrote down our details by hand, stamped our passports, shouted out the letters “L- D- V!” then a burly uniformed man lifted the barrier by hand and we drove beneath it onto Montenegrin soil.
The sides of Tara Canyon soared up to 1300m above us, higher than our windscreen view would allow, and we found ourselves stopping frequently to admire it with coffees in hand. This was day one of our meandering journey back to the UK, taking in as much of the Western Balkan countries as we could along the way, and our revisit to Montenegro did not disappoint.
Two years ago we’d visited but largely stuck to the coast, afraid of the heavy winter snow further inland; this time round we actively sought it, and were not disappointed as we turned a corner into the Durmitor National Park and found a vast whitewashed landscape spread out before us.
Sadly we couldn’t stick around to enjoy it; with burnt-out glowplugs we were barely coaxing our van into life every morning, and an overnight stint at -7°C would surely leave us stranded.
We drove onwards, following the canyon walls until we arrived at the border to Bosnia & Herzegovina…
P.S. This is actually four photos stitched together to create a vertical panorama- that should give you a sense of how big this canyon is.
