Vacation to Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina

Planet

UK Office:
It all starts at home so we have first worked at reducing our carbon footprint in our UK Offices. Through energy conservation measures and recycling policies, we are proud to be actively reducing the waste produced and our impact on the environment. We support various projects all over the world to try and give something back to the places we visit.

Group Size:
This small group tour has a maximum of 16 participants, meaning that we have a low impact on the environments and communities we visit and are able to ensure that we do not disrupt or lead to the displacement of local people. The small number also allows us to stay in unique, family-run hotels that cannot benefit from coach tours and other mass tourism due to their limited sizes.

People

Local Craft and Culture:
This tour is packed with culture: we visit the walls of Kotor and its many churches and palaces, the galleries and museums in Cetinje and Saravejo’s Old Town and Tunnel Musuem. However, the best way to culturally explore the three countries in this trip is to engage with local people. We arrange to have lunch with a local family in two small, mountain highland villages (one in Montenegro and one in Bosnia) where we can enjoy some authentic food and see that our presence benefits this remote economy. After this there is the chance to buy traditional handicrafts, like woollen gloves and sweaters or carven wooden relics, directly from the villagers.

Community:
This trip designed to allow a high degree of economic benefit to the local communities; we buy local produce, eat local food and use local services, thus ensuring that as much money as possible is retained within the local economies and the host communities. By visiting a large number of cultural and natural sites and paying entrance fees, we are contributing towards maintaining, restoring and protecting these valuable monuments and facilities. Stops include Kotor's 4.5km long fortification walls and its many churches and palaces, Ostrog Monastery, Durmitor National Park, Saravejo’s Old Town and the Tunnel Museum, Tvrdos Orthodox Monastery and the walls of Dubrovnik.

Accommodation and Meals:
We will spend 10 nights in small hotels and pensions. All accommodation is locally owned and staffed, which provides employment and income alternatives for many locals. Where meals are provided, locally sourced, traditionally used ingredients like yoghurt, meat (pork, lamb and veal) and seasonal vegetables will be provided. Guides will be able to recommend authentic restaurants to visit for dinner and these will often be family run. In Kotor, guests can visit a fresh fish market and in Saravejo there is a popular market called Markale, where guests can buy local produce.