View of Žanjic and Mirišta
The Luštica peninsula hides an incredible number of surprises. Maslinjaci hundreds of years old, houses of dry stone, untouched villages ringed by walls, beaches, islands, fortresses, stories of famous captains and pirates, the clearest sea on this coast, and rare animals such as mongooses and jackals. The Blue Cave is another of the peninsula's surprises, and the one most people come for.
Where the cave is
The Blue Cave lies on the outer, seaward flank of Luštica, close to Cape Arza at the point where the Bay of Kotor gives way to the open Adriatic. It is about ten minutes by boat from the picnic grounds of Žanjic and Mirišta, and it can be reached only from the water. There is no path down the cliff and no way in on foot.
The cave has two openings into the same chamber, one facing west and one east, both wide and high enough for a small boat to motor through. Inside, the vault rises a few metres above a pool of clear, cold water, and the rock is pale limestone worn smooth by centuries of swell.
Why the water turns blue
Almost all the light that reaches the chamber comes in below the waterline, through the submerged part of the openings. It passes through several metres of seawater, which absorbs the red end of the spectrum, then reflects off the white floor of the cave and back up. What returns is blue, and it fills the whole space rather than falling from any particular direction, so the water appears to be lit from within and swimmers in it look as if they are floating in coloured air.
Everyone who has visited comes back full of it. People with a heightened artistic sensibility call swimming here entering the blue, because of the combination of the blue of the sea and the shades of blue on the walls created by the refraction of light. The effect is strongest around the middle of the day, when the sun is high enough to drive light deep into the water outside the entrance.
Entrance from the west side, outside
Entrance from the east side, inside
Getting there by boat
Local taxi boats run several tours to the Blue Cave every day through the season. The shortest crossings leave from Žanjic and Mirišta on Luštica itself; longer excursions set out from Herceg Novi, from Rose at the tip of the peninsula, and from Tivat and Kotor, usually taking in Mamula island and the Žanjic beaches on the same circuit.
Sea conditions decide everything. In a southerly the swell breaks into the openings and skippers will not go in; in a flat calm you can swim through from one entrance to the other. Boats moor outside or drift in the chamber rather than tying up, so you enter the water directly from the boat. Take a mask, wear something on your feet for the rocks, and expect the water inside to be noticeably colder than the bay.
Azure Gate
What else is out on this coast
The run out to the cave passes some of the most interesting shoreline in the Bay of Kotor. Žanjic is a long pebble beach backed by an old olive grove; Mirišta sits in the next cove, and off it stands the small island with its fortified church, the Vavedenje monastery, recently restored, whose entrance we showed in an earlier report painted in thousands of colours.
Above the cape stands the Arza fortress, one of the nineteenth-century Austro-Hungarian batteries built to close the mouth of the bay, with its twin on the island of Mamula out in the channel. Rose, the old captains' village at the western tip of Luštica, is a short hop further and makes an easy second stop.
Arza fortress
Best time to go
June and September give you warm water and thinner traffic; in July and August several boats can be inside the chamber at once, so aim for the first departures of the morning if you want it quiet, or accept the crowd and go at noon for the strongest colour. Outside the season the taxi boats largely stop running and the weather makes the crossing unreliable.
This report was made thanks to our friend Mirko Kosić and his extraordinary ability to capture nature and its beauty.
