Skadar Lake National Park

Skadar Lake National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Skadar is the great lake on the border of Montenegro and Albania, half an hour from Podgorica and from the coast at Bar and an hour and a half from Kotor or Budva, and the park is visited by boat from the village of Virpazar, where the captains wait on the quay: the standard cruise is one to two hours in a wooden boat through the channels of water lilies to the open lake, with a swim, the fortress island of Grmožur or the Lesendro fort and, in most, free wine, juice and doughnuts on board, and the longer trips of three to six hours go to the island monasteries of Kom, Beška or Starčevo or to the beach at Murići. The guided nature cruises with a birding guide, the private boats and the speedboat tours with swimming stops are the variations, and kayaks can be rented in Virpazar for the channels.

The park entrance fee is charged per person per day and is collected with the boat ticket. The day tours from Kotor, Budva and Podgorica add the drive, a wine tasting in the Crmnica vineyards behind Virpazar, the horseshoe bend of Rijeka Crnojevića from the Pavlova Strana viewpoint and sometimes the Lovćen mausoleum or Cetinje in the same day, which is a fair sampler of inland Montenegro. Rijeka Crnojevića, the old river port at the lake's north-west corner, has its own quieter boats. Independent visitors take the train from Podgorica or Bar to Virpazar, which is cheap and scenic, and choose a boat on the quay.

Visiting Skadar Lake National Park: what you will see

The park was established in 1983 on the Montenegrin two thirds of Lake Skadar, the largest lake in southern Europe, which swells from about 370 square kilometres in summer to 530 in the winter floods; it has been a Ramsar wetland since 1996, and the Albanian side is a managed reserve. The lake is a flooded karst field at the foot of the Rumija mountains, six metres deep on average with underwater springs, the oka, going down sixty metres, and its northern shore is a wide marsh of reeds, willows and carpets of white and yellow water lilies and water chestnut through which the boats push along cut channels, while the southern shore is steep and rocky, with a chain of islets called gorice.

It is one of the great bird reserves of Europe, with some 280 species: the Dalmatian pelican, the park's emblem, breeds here at the western edge of its range on floating platforms guarded by the rangers, pygmy cormorants in thousands, herons, egrets, glossy ibis, whiskered terns over the lilies and hundreds of thousands of wintering ducks and coots. The lake's fish, the bleak and the carp above all, are smoked and fried in the restaurants of Virpazar and Karuč. The islands carry the medieval history of Zeta: the monasteries of Starčevo, Beška and Moračnik, built by the Balšić lords in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, where monks and nuns still live, the Ottoman forts of Lesendro and Žabljak Crnojevića, the capital of the last medieval dynasty, and Grmožur, the island prison of King Nikola, the Montenegrin Alcatraz. Behind Virpazar, the Crmnica valley grows the vranac grape, and the village cellars are part of the visit.

Skadar Lake National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open all year, with the boats running from about April to October and on request in winter, and the visitor centre at Vranjina by the causeway from 8 am to 4 or 6 pm. May and June are the best months, with the lilies opening, the birds nesting and the water high; July and August are hot, with the lake warm for swimming and the quay busy with the coast's day trippers;

September is calm and golden; winter brings the flood, the wintering flocks and mist. The early morning and the last two hours of light are the birds' and the photographers' time. Allow a half-day for a cruise and lunch, a full day with a monastery island or the wineries. Podgorica is half an hour north, Bar and the coast half an hour south through the Sozina tunnel, and Cetinje and Lovćen an hour west.