Montenegro

Montenegro packs high mountains, extreme canyons, glacial lakes, primeval forest and Mediterranean coast into less than fourteen thousand square kilometres. The canyon of the Tara river reaches close to 1,300 metres deep and is the deepest in Europe, cut into the limestone of the Durmitor massif. Biogradska Gora protects one of the last primeval forests on the continent, with trees half a millennium old around a glacial lake. Lake Skadar, the largest in the Balkans and shared with Albania, is a mosaic of reedbeds, water lilies and shallow water that works as one of the most important wetlands in the Mediterranean. On the coast, the Ulcinj salt pans concentrate tens of thousands of migrating birds each year between Europe and Africa, flamingos among them.