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| No chance of passing on this road! |
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Local raki and good friends in Pestani, Macedonia |
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.
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| Our campsite across the other side of Lake Ohrid |
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.
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| 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.
We spent four nights free-camping on this very special site.
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.