I left Skopje for Mavrovo National Park on the western edge of Macedonia, but first I took a little detour to the ancient city of Stobi. Stobi is the only ruins I’ve visited in this country so far that is actually mentioned in the guidebooks and actually requires a ticket. It looks like they’re still excavating the site because there were people there working and photographing everything.

The other fun part about visiting a site with some actual infrastructure is that everything is roped off and protected. Which means I wasn’t able to climb around all over the place at will. Instead I got to practice my long distance and aerial photography.

There was informational signs about certain buildings, but unfortunately, not much about the city’s history. All I know is that it started as a Paeonian city and was eventually annexed by Macedonia and later, the Romans. There were some fantastic mosaics, as well as the ruins of churches, bath houses, and family homes.

After my detour, I headed to Mavrovo where things didn’t go quite as planned. My main reason for coming here was to hike Mt Korab, the highest peak in Macedonia… AND Albania! It’s another border summit and the highest peak in each country. After driving almost two hours up a really horrible dirt road towards the trailhead, I came to a small border checkpoint where they told me I couldn’t go any further because the trail was closed due to fires. So I had to turn around and just like that my Mt Korab plan was kaput. In an exceptionally bad mood I went ahead with my “day 2” plans, starting with a visit to Jovan Bigorski monastery.

Jovan Bigorski Monastery is a very old and historically significant place, however, you wouldn’t know it today because it’s been so fully restored. It’s pristine and family friendly, every detail is perfection. There’s even a coffee shop, so naturally I was disappointed. Give me the old, dusty, undiscovered gems. Anyway, next, a short drive and a short hike to Duf waterfall. The hike was through a gorgeous canyon along a river with lots of little waterfalls along the way. The main attraction was a huge double waterfall coming through a hole in the ceiling of a shallow cave in an amazing alcove. It was also a great place to learn what kind of garbage Macedonians like to leave behind after a hike.

Back in Mavrovo village, on the shore of Mavrovo lake, and still in a bad mood, I took some time to explore the Mavrovo sunken church. They call it the sunken church because it used to be mostly submerged in the lake. Due to severe drought conditions over the last ten to twenty years you can just walk right to it now. It even looks like they’re trying to restore it. Just for fun, I pulled a pic from the internet of how it used to look compared to my pic from today.

It’s too bad things didn’t start out on a good note here because this area is really beautiful. It’s heavily forested, has some absolutely massive mountains, and unbelievable canyons. I decided after dinner to do some intense research to find a new and interesting hike for day two, and to try to reverse the negativity. By bedtime I had a plan and some hope.

With my new plan, I started out early and drove up up up through the forest until I reached a sort of plateau. All the trees were gone and it was nothing but meadows and endless grassland.

I found my trailhead with no problem thanks to GPS and started hiking for the summit of Medenica. It’s the highest peak in this particular mountain range and I read that the views were unbelievable. Honestly, the views were unbelievable before I even started hiking. Just see the pic above and the one below. Just a very short distance into the hike I looked back and took a pic of the mountains and my little Volkswagen parked all alone. A car would drive the road once in a great while, but other than that I was alone all day.

In addition to reading about the views, I also read about the sheep herders and their vicious dogs. The advice was to give sheep herds an extremely wide berth and if you do encounter the dogs to try and get the shepherds attention to call them off, or hope for the best. The whole way up I was hyper vigilant and terrified. Every time I went around a bend or over a ridge without seeing sheep was a relief. Luckily, the only dogs I encountered were when I passed by a small cabin towards the end of the hike, but they were puppies and just wanted to play.

Finally I reached the summit and had a nice lunch while enjoying the unbelievable 360° views. Included in the 360° were Mavrovo Lake and my elusive Mt Korab. I did not see any fires, grrrr!

And before you ask, yes, I just learned how to add text and draw arrows on my pics today. Haha! You can expect more text and arrows from time to time from now on. Anyway, tomorrow I’m leaving Mavrovo for a super quick stop, so don’t stray too far…