Remember how I ended the last post by asking what could possibly go wrong?

Well, thus far the answer appears to be: sweet bugger all.

Montenegro has continued to be absolutely lovely. The weather has been glorious, the scenery stupendous, the food and wine pretty decent, and the group (more on which later) so far entirely tolerable.

It’s disconcerting at this point, quite frankly…

Which rather leaves me in the awkward position of having to recount a perfectly agreeable holiday thus far.

Since arriving, I’ve been up the Kotor cable car for spectacular views over the bay, taken a boat trip out to the Lady of the Rock and St George Island, and visited beautiful Perast further up the coast.

Plus, I’ve been out running in the cool of the mornings, when I pretty much have the whole place to myself (apart from the cats, obviously). On one of these runs, I discovered the local farmers’ market – and you know I do love me one of those.

Not to mention, I’ve eaten an alarming amount of food on sunny squares, much of it involving local cheese and njeguški pršut (Montenegro’s version of prosciutto). Mere days in, and I’m already officially cheese-and-hammed out.

The same cannot be said for the Aperol spritzes I’ve been washing it all down with, however… 😉

As for the group, I finally met them all yesterday evening over drinks and dinner.

The good news is that – unlike the whole solitary saga that was Romania – the group does, in fact, exist this time.

The bad news is that everyone in it – so far – seems perfectly normal. Nice even!

There are about sixteen of us altogether – mainly cobbled together from across the Anglosphere (UK, US, Canada, Oz, New Zealand, etc.), and virtually all female to boot. So far at least, nobody has displayed any obvious signs of narcissism, passive aggression or terminal main-character syndrome.

Even the Bosnian tour leader – Sofia (not her real name) – is proving disappointingly polite, professional and competent. She arrived when she said she would, appears to know what she’s doing, and has yet to exhibit any obvious Lyle-style dick-swinging tendencies or RO-bot obsessional levels of historical fact deployment.

This is not what I signed up for.

Part of me is hoping that – as we head into the mountains tomorrow – the combination of long drives, close quarters and competing personalities will soon begin to reveal a few cracks. Perhaps an epic fall-out over punctuality. Or a steadily brewing factional dispute over bus seating arrangements. Or maybe the discovery that one of our number has been quietly waiting for the right moment to explain why Trump actually has the right idea.

Failing that, I may have to take matters into my own hands here.* A few carefully planted rumours, a manufactured dispute over departure times and unlimited access to the local rakija should do the trick.

Rest assured that, you – dear reader – will be the first to know the second anyone loses their shit, storms off from a monastery, or launches a breakaway WhatsApp splinter group.

After all, we’re only in the pilot episode here – stay tuned for the first few cracks in the façade…

* Obvs not really – I’m more the type to spend three days worrying that I’d sounded slightly abrupt in an email than to intentionally engineer drama for drama’s sake.