Bioča

Bioca is a small village in the Podgorica municipality, in the transitional country where the flat Zeta plain gives way to the low hills of the interior. Note that it is a different place from Bioce, which sits north of the capital at the mouth of the Moraca canyon.

Rural in the plainest sense: a scatter of houses along a road, gardens and small holdings behind them, and pasture and scrub running up the slopes beyond. There is no centre to speak of and no tourist infrastructure.

The way the hinterland has been worked for generations — vegetable plots and fruit trees close to the houses, vines on the warmer slopes, sheep and a few cattle on the rougher ground. Stone field walls, old wells and abandoned outbuildings mark generations of settlement.

The Podgorica climate: hot, dry summers where midday shuts everything down and work happens early and late, and mild wet winters that keep the hills green when the high north is under snow.

Position. Podgorica and its transport links are close, and from this side of the capital the roads run quickly north into the Moraca canyon, west toward Niksic and Ostrog, and south to Skadar lake and the coast.

Travellers with their own transport who are interested in ordinary rural Montenegro rather than sights, and people staying in village accommodation near the capital. Spring and autumn are the most pleasant; midsummer in the Zeta basin is among the hottest weather in the country.