Goodbye and peak hiking. Mavrovo NP / North Macedonia

08/16/2023 - 08/19/2023

MARK:

Andrea from Vienna, whom we have met several times on our trip, is also returning to the Balkans. This time together with Lucie from Prague. We arrange to meet for a short road trip through the Mavrovo National Park and the two of you pick us up in Gostivar, where we have met Villy in the meantime. Villy is 80 and, as a former guest worker, speaks fluent German and invites us to a cafe right at the door of our house upon arrival. He drinks cappuccino himself. After 10 minutes (our cups are empty lengthwise) he first grabs the sugar and sweetens the coffee. Another 10 minutes pass before Ed empties the second packet and another ten minutes until he stirs for the first time. When Billy takes a small sip from his cup for the first time, what feels like an hour has passed and we know Villy's life story and family. In the meantime, an acquaintance of Villy's from the next table intervened and bought us a second espresso. It can't be that we're sitting in front of empty races 😂 The coffee culture of the Balkans is just wonderful! It is with a heavy heart that we cannot accept Villy's invitation to live with him. The tour plan is set and Lucie and Andrea, as short vacationers, unfortunately don't have the luxury of measuring their time in traveler categories...

The reunion with Andrea is warm and beautiful. How beneficial not to have to start from scratch. Now the four of us visit the orthodox monastery of Sveti Jovan Bigorski, make a detour to the really magnificent Duf waterfall, see the former village church of Mavrovo, which is regularly flooded depending on the water level of the lake of the same name, and climb almost 1000 meters to a peak whose Name I forgot, but with its almost 2200m you can almost call it alpine. We meet shepherds with huge flocks of sheep, cuddle the puppies of the shepherd dogs and enjoy a great view of the surrounding valleys.

To be honest: everything is beautiful, the hike is one of the most exciting ascents of our trip so far and the Duf Waterfall is something very special with its rock breakthrough, but at some point a monastery is just a monastery and a mountain is a mountain. The pictures speak for themselves and need no explanation. The real beauty is to travel together again, to get to know Andrea better, to look after Lucie a little after her nightly fish poisoning in our hostel... in short, to experience some continuity of friendship after so many days of travel. With each day of travel, the sightseeing spots become more irrelevant and the encounters come to the fore.

We spend our last evening together first swimming, then drinking wine on the balcony, meanwhile back in Ohrid.