Macedonia

No chance of passing on this road!

Another border crossing, this time from Albania to Macedonia, and we are now starting to get quite a few stamps in our passports.

Driving into Macedonia, we passed through the village of Struga, managing to avoid getting stuck in its narrow roads.

We were heading to Ohrid where we thought we had a choice of possible camp grounds. But it was not to be!

We found two that appeared to be closed and upon stopping to decide what to do, we spotted what looked like a campervan parked on a cliff top.

Marg among the wildflowers atop Lake Ohrid, Macedonia

We ventured toward it and found two lots of campers - a German couple, and an English/Israeli couple camped there. 

All had experienced similar problems to us in finding a camping ground.

We decided that the cliff top was a fantastic place to freecamp, and chose a spot among the wild flowers, with a wonderful view over the 3 million year old Lake Ohrid.

Jen and Noam (our English/Israeli co-campers) were travelling overland in their Land Rover, heading to Russia and on to China, then further afield.

Sunset over Lake Ohrid, viewed from our campsite

We had a great time in their company and it was really good to chat in English.

Ryan, a Canadian travelling on his bicycle, also joined our free-camping community, as well as an older Dutch couple.

Despite us all having very little English were able to communicate.

We were privileged to receive a gift of a bracelet each that our Dutch neighbour had made out of beads - really sweet of her. We gave her a Kiwi key ring in return.

Local raki and good friends in Pestani, Macedonia

One night we walked into the local village of Pestani where we had an awesome meal with Jen, Noam and Ryan.

Local raki from our host (sure killed any stomach bugs Marg had complained about), good food, beer, and wonderful company made for a fantastic night.

Pestani is a small fishing village full of the friendliest people. In the middle of the village there is a tap to a natural spring which we used to refill some of our depleted water supplies. 

Our campsite across the other side of Lake Ohrid

While there, we visited the local Museum of the Sea that showed a recreated village from the time of XIV to VII BC, and which included lots of artifacts recovered from the ancient Lake Ohrid. We found it very interesting.

We even washed some of our laundry in the lake (using bio-degradable washing liquid or course), as it was lovely, fresh, and fantastically clean water. 

The colour of the sky was often reflected in the lake and looked spectacular.

Leigh trying to heard the local cows away from Vanni

One night we had a visit from a herd of cows – their bells provided a musical relief, but their unwillingness to move on was comical. 

We spent four nights free-camping on this very special site.

One day, we explored Ohrid, which is a beautiful old town. It has a very convenient supermarket with helpful staff, and a good supply of the right kind of coffee – a life saver.

A local Ohrid hotel provided free internet, and enabled us to charge up our computers as we cannot do that when not plugged into a power supply in our motorhome – a downside of free-camping.

The next morning, we drove further around Lake Ohrid, which shares a border with Albania, so we crossed the border and drove into Albania again.

This blog describes part of our 7 month motorhome trip around central and southern Europe, which began in Germany in April.