Swimming in Lake Ohrid...

As tired as we were, we only had two nights at most if Ohrid if we were going to make it back to Croatia in time, so we headed out to the lake to look for a place to swim. It turns out that the house was about a 25 minute walk to the lake through town.

Ohrid town is a nice little place, and is well equipped for tourists. There are grocery stores, restaurants, hotels and apartments for rent everywhere along the lakefront, and street vendors selling whatever kind of ice cream or t-shirt or keychain you could need. There's a wide pedestrian street with shopping and cafes, and an old town topped by a fort an castle on the steep hill overlooking the lake. The tourists seemed to be mostly Macedonians and Serbians. I think buses come down from Belgrade.

Water taxies plied the shore, and people were by the water, sunning on any flat surface - seawalls, docks, rocks - there are just a couple beaches in town and they're packed or private. We headed up the hill through maze of streets and levels of the old neighborhoods, climbing through narrow alleys and staircases between houses. Scattered through the neighborhoods of ancient houses were even more ancient churches. They were of a distinctive red-brick design, and were mostly built in the 1200s. In fact, the entire town is a UNESCO world heritage site because of it's historical significance and and good condition. High on the hill there were sweeping views of the lake, which was big enough that the far shore in Albania was out of site on the horizon.

An ancient, fortified, stone wall follows the top of the ridge, protecting the city from invasion. Beyond that is a steep natural drop-off, also protecting the city, but also having the effect of protecting the lake from us swimming in it... With about a 20 minute walk over the hill and around the corner, you can follow a little path down to a small, pebbly beach and lake access. The lake water was crystal clear here, unlike the water taxi and runoff clouded water in town. We waded out and snorkeled over beds of aquatic plants and fish. The rocks are sharp, since there isn't the wave action of the ocean, so wading is a little painful, but woth it to enter the cold water of the lake.

Later we walked back through the woods, and explored the rest of the town. We drank our nightly bottle of very-inexpensive-wine back in the room, too tired to make it back to the beach one last time.

We had run into the Serbian Guys on the way to the beach and they'd pointed out Marshal Tito's lake palace out across the lake on a peninsula, so in the morning we headed out to find it. It turned out to be about a 7 kilometer walk over there, so we hiked along the lake shore all morning. We passed several resorts and beach bars, muddy shores, and beaches with gravel laid on top create the popular Balkan "shingle beach" that they like. We came across the Macedonian Navy in a dredged out creek channel, consisting of one tiny gunboat and an inflatable Zodiac. Just in case.

Again we were trying to find a less crowded beach - everything was choked with people and umbrellas, it's an incredibly popular area it seems. We finally reached Tito's palace as our poor feet, blistered from two weeks of walking, were ready to give out. And it was closed. It appears that the current president still uses it, so you can't get close enough to see it. Oh well... We continued on in search of our beach, and finally found it. Well, sort of. We climbed down a tall cliff to the lake edge, then waded to a shallow cave in the cliff with a dry spot to put the packs and our clothes while we swam. We'd found the only spot on this end of the lake not infested with people! Getting ready, I whacked my head on the cave roof so hard that I knocked a poor bat out of his crevice and he started crawling around the beach, sort of stunned to suddenly be out in the daylight. That didn't go over too well with Z. We tried swimming out far enough to see the palace from the lake, it was right there... but no luck. They'd done a pretty good job with the privacy thing.

We enjoyed the lake and town the rest of the day, and in the morning reluctantly headed off on our long journey to Albania.