Ada Bojana, the island a shipwreck built

In the last corner of Montenegro’s coast, where the Bojana splits into two channels just before it reaches the sea, there’s an island that didn’t exist a century and a half ago. Ada Bojana is a triangle with the river on two sides and the Adriatic on the third, and it lives off three things you don’t often find together, naturism, kitesurfing and grilled fish.

An island made by a shipwreck

The Ulcinj tourist board tells the legend with a name and a date. In 1858 the Merito, a ship from Trogir, went down at the river mouth, and its wreck, together with two small islets that stood there at the time, began trapping the sand and silt carried downstream. By 1882 the island was showing above the water. The archives in Shkodër, the board adds, record that around 1858 and 1859 one arm of the Drin changed course and began draining into the Bojana, bringing even more sediment. Today the island covers about 600 hectares.

A river that runs below sea level

The Bojana, Buna in Albanian, flows out of Lake Skadar and runs for 44 km to the sea. The Ulcinj tourist board explains that its bed lies below sea level for 36 km upstream from the mouth, so salt water creeps up along the bottom as far as Sveti Đorđe, and that 143 species of fish have been recorded in the delta. That mix of sea, river and the nearby Ulcinj salt pans makes it good bird country too.

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The beach

The sandy beach is about three kilometres long according to the beach listing, and 3,800 metres according to the island’s own page. The national tourist board calls it the country’s largest naturist resort, tucked away between river and sea, where you can sleep in a tent, at a campsite or on a fishermen’s raft. Not all of it is naturist, though. The hotel beach has water sports, beach volleyball, five-a-side football, parasols and a bar, and the Ulcinj tourist board goes as far as calling the island the surfing capital of the Adriatic because of its wind. The shoreline changes shape from one year to the next as the river and the sea push it around. If the naturist side is what interests you, I compare it with the rest in Montenegro’s naturist beaches.

Fish over the water

The other reason to come is along the bank of the Bojana. The Ulcinj tourist board describes plenty of fish restaurants that catch and cook in the traditional way, and some of the best sunsets in the area. I’d come in the late afternoon even if I had no plans to swim.

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Fitting it into a trip to Ulcinj

Ada Bojana sits at the end of Velika plaža, the 13 km beach a short drive from the centre of Ulcinj. The obvious plan is to pair it with a beach or kitesurfing day and head back to town to sleep, or to stay on the island if switching off is the whole point.

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