Nov 8th - Nov 11th
On the morning of Nov 8th, we left the little town of Elbasan and headed east toward the Border of North Macedonia. This is an interesting country that has had a name change recently. The problem is that in Greece there is a region known as Macedonia and this was causing a lot of strife between the neighbouring countries. It is a very rural country with beautiful mountains, valleys and lots of sheep!
North Macedonia is a small country, a former part of Yugoslavia and it is nestled in the mountainous region in the Balkans. We crossed the border without any trouble and headed toward the town of Ohrid. Ohrid is an ancient town that was on the cross roads for Roman, Greek and Ottoman forces for centuries. It is a town located on lake Ohrid which is one of Europe's oldest and deepest lakes. It is a beautiful lake that is filled with many endemic species.
We stopped in the beautiful little town and had a wonderful little lunch of chicken, some amazing flatbread, a dipping sauce called Avjar (a roasted red pepper sauce of the Balkan region). It was great! It is really fun to be traveling with Chris and Joanie! We are having a lot of fun with them! It is so nice to have visitors come and stay with us when we are traveling!
We walked up through the old winding streets of the town towards the huge castle that is on the hill overlooking the lake. We hiked up past a beautiful old church called Holy Mary Perybleptos. It is made in the traditional way with the flat clay bricks in an alternating patterns. We then walked up into the old town and saw the Ancient theater of Ohrid. It was built in 200 BCE in Hellenistic times and has been very well preserved. It was used by the Romans for gladiator fights and for executions of Christians and after the Roman empire fell the local people did not want to use the site, it was filled in and buried and remained totally hidden from knowledge until the 1980's.
We continued up towards the top of the main hill in the town and made our way up to Samuel's Fortress. It is a huge imposing castle that overlooks the whole of the town. The hill was used as a fort and castle by every army and invading force over thousands of years. The current castle was built during the rule of the first Bulgarian Empire in the 900's by the Tsar Samuel.
We had a wonderful afternoon walking around the little town, a town filled with thousands of years of history.
I found some beautiful Macedonian dolls that showed the traditional dress of the Macedonian girls. It is so pretty to see. Here is the flag of North Macedonia.
The rest of the day was a long car drive north through Macedonia to Mavrovo. An area filled with cabins, cottages and small towns. It is built around a big ski resort, so most of the homes and cottages were not open right now. It was a quiet area, but that was okay.
We stayed in acute little cottage on the side of Lake Mavrovo, and it was super warm! The owner got the woodstove all fired up for us as we have finally hit fall and even maybe a bit of winter!
My dad and Uncle Chris and Joanie are going to hike Mt. Korab. It is the highest mountain in Albania and Macedonia and is on the border between the two countries. They went off early the next morning and were gone all day hiking to the top and back! It was a very windy, wet and cold and snowy hike!
I think they had lots of fun, and maybe when I'm a little older I will join in on those hikes, but it was a little to extreme for us just yet! The top of the mountain was 2764 m high!
So that night we were all sitting in front of the fire trying to figure out where we were going to stay the next night and my mom saw a book all about Macedonia. We grabbed it and started flipping through the beautiful pictures. The biggest trouble is that the Macedonian language is written in the Cyrllic script and we couldn't figure out how to read the words. Thank good for Google Translate - it isn't perfect that's for sure, but it allowed us to read a little bit about the pictures. My mom spotted this page with cave with the beautiful crystals. We wondered if we could go and see them .
As we translated the information we found out that the cave was in a town called Debar. We also found out that Debar is famous, not only for the crystal cave , but for one of the best thermal spas in Europe! So off we went to discover Debar.
We arrived in the beautiful valley of Debar and went first to the Kosovasti Spa. In the picture above you can see the spa. You can also see where the water from the spa flows out of the pools and runs down into the river, it is creating these white cliffs of rock that are deposited from the water. it is really neat to see. It has over 4000mg of dissolved salts per litre of water and is called the most healing and effective thermal spa in Europe! The was temperature is 41 degrees Celcius and it was hot!!
The spa was so much fun, unfortunately because it is fall the kids section was shut down so we couldn't use the water slide, but it was still great. We got to swim, stay and have all our meals! it was a really fun place.
So although we found a great place to stay, we didn't get to the cave, which was the main reason for coming over here. We asked at the main desk and we showed the lady the picture that we took of the book. She said, it is not open to the public, but it is owned by the local mining company and sometimes they will open it up for special groups. She said we have to go to the main head office and ask.
So of we went the next morning and my dad was super brave to go up and talk to all these different people who could only speak Macedonian! But with hand signals and showing them the picture again, we were lead to a lady who could speak English and she said.... YES! We would love to take you! You are from Canada! It will be your own private tour with our most experienced mining engineer!
And what an experience it was, we took a few wrong turns getting over to the old abandoned mine and cave, but the mining engineer was waiting for us and we all got dressed in our hard hats and set off for the cave!
The tour was so special because it was just me and my brothers, my mom, dad, Chris and Joanie and our tour guide.
The Mine is owner by the German Mining company Knauf and our tour guide told us that he was a mining engineer and had worked for Knauf for 35 years. He only spoke Macedonian and German, so he used a notebook to write out info for us and then we tried our best to translate it. We all did pretty well understanding him.
We started to walk though the mine and into the shaft and it was very low, only me and my brothers didn't have to duck down! But when we got inside the main rooms of the cave you could stand up fine.
The type of crystal in the cave was gypsum. The chemical for of Gypsum is CaSO4·2H2O it also forms as an anhydrate - without the water. But the big beautiful crystals are hydrates.
They have only mined about 400 meters into the mountain, but he told us that the size of the deposit continues for at least 16km under the mountain. The entire mountain is made of gypsum. They are not mining from this spot anymore, but from a different spot farther down the valley.
It was incredible, huge giant gypsum crystals all around us. We were all so amazed. We were allowed to pick up the crystals and to choose ones to take home with us. They are so beautiful, they look like glass. Some of them were yellow and you could smell the strong sulfur smell! Ugh, really stinky rotten eggs!!
The only cave in the world with bigger crystals is is mexico. He told us this is the biggest Gypsum mine in Europe.
We were so excited to learn about the mine that while I was helping my mom type this up my brothers did their own project about the mine.
What an incredible experience. We felt so honoured to have been able to see that cave, that only a few other people get to see. The Macedonian people have been so incredibly nice, welcoming and accommodating of us and we cannot thank them enough for giving us this incredible experience.
And to think, all from just opening a book. Travel is the most beautiful thing in the world.
Thank you Macedonia
Благодарам! (said: blagodaram)
As it is November the 11, we chose to do our best to remember those who fought and died so that we could live in freedom. Lest we Forget.
Tia and Mari
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