Hidden Beaches Near Budva Only Reachable by Boat — 5 Places Worth Seeing
If you've ever spent a summer in Budva, you know what the popular beaches look like in July and August. Slovenska, Mogren, Bečići, Rafailovići — beautiful places, but in peak season as busy as a city centre café on a rainy Friday.
What most tourists don't know is that less than an hour's sailing from Budva there are places with no crowds, no sun loungers, no music from speakers. Places with no bus route, no taxi drop-off, no walking path.
They exist only from the sea.
Why a Boat Tour Rather Than Swimming There?
Some of these places are close enough to spot from the hills above Budva. But between "seeing" and "being there" is a gap measured in boats, not kilometres.
Sailing along Montenegro's coast with an experienced skipper isn't just transport — the journey itself is the experience. You pass cliffs that fall straight into the sea, coves that appear around every headland, and you slowly realise that the land you walk on every day looks completely different from the other side.
Here are five locations that are a regular part of boat tours from Budva — and that 90% of tourists holidaying on the Budva Riviera never see.
1. Mogren 2 — The Forgotten Side
Mogren 1 is the well-known beach, reachable by the footpath beneath the hill. Mogren 2 is around the headland — separated from the first, accessible only by boat or by swimming through a tunnel in the rock.
From the sea, the Mogren beaches look like they were lifted straight from a Montenegro tourism poster: white rock, turquoise water, pine trees growing directly from the cliffs. The boat can stop close enough for you to swim ashore — an experience that those who've had it rarely forget.
2. Kalipso Cave — Hidden in Plain Sight
Kalipso Cave is visible from the road above it. But visible from the road and accessible from the road are two different things.
The cave entrance is on the seaward side and can only be reached by boat. The interior is spacious, lit by light filtering through from the sea, and has an unusual acoustic quality that makes even quiet conversation echo off the stone walls.
It's a natural formation with no tourist facilities inside it — which, for many travellers, is precisely the reason it's worth visiting.
3. Havaji Island — Beaches Behind the Point
Havaji Island isn't a major tourist attraction in the conventional sense. No hotel, no restaurant, nothing but sea, rock and two wild beaches behind the island that are accessible only by water.
The waters around Havaji are known for their clarity and colour — turquoise to the point of near-transparency, shallow enough to see the bottom from the boat. The swimming stop here lasts around twenty minutes, which — according to those who've been there — is always too short.
4. Zagorski Pijesak — A Cove Without an Address
"Zagorski Pijesak" isn't a name you'll easily find on Google Maps. It's not marked on tourist leaflets either. It's a wild cove with open sea on one side and high cliffs on the other three — a natural swimming arena of the kind that can only be found on a stretch of coast that has remained untouched.
The water here is the same quality as in those Montenegro tourism adverts: blue-turquoise, clear, cold near the bottom and warm at the surface in summer. It stays calm even when the rest of the Montenegrin coast has waves — the cove's geography shelters it from the prevailing winds.
5. Žukovica Cove — Mediterranean Peace Without Compromise
Žukovica is, of all the places on this list, perhaps the closest to the idea of "the perfect Montenegrin cove." Surrounded by low Mediterranean scrub, rocky shores and scents that come from sea and land simultaneously, this cove feels like it was invented for a film set.
But it wasn't invented. It exists, it's accessible, and it can be visited as part of a full-day tour from Budva that covers Blue Cave, Zagorski Pijesak and Žukovica in a single trip.
How to Visit These Places
Greben Boat Tours organises tours from Budva departing from Slovenska obala that cover different combinations of these locations:
- Four-hour tour — Kalipso Cave, Mogren beaches, Havaji Island, Sveti Stefan, three swimming stops
- Seven-hour full-day tour — Blue Cave, Zagorski Pijesak, Žukovica
- Custom tour — you choose the direction, the skipper knows every cove
Maximum 10 passengers per tour, local skipper, free cancellation up to 48 hours. Book online.
Montenegro has a lot to offer on land. But what it offers from the sea — that's a story of its own.