Skopje - 22nd October

We liked Skopje so much that we decided to stay a third night here.  But we are going to do a day trip to Lake Matka, a lake that has been created in a canyon by damming a river for electricity.  It is close enough to town that we can get a local bus to it; the only catch is that there are only a couple of buses a day, so we have to get up a 06:00 to catch the 07:00 bus.  However when we get on the bus it already has other walkers on it, and more get on as we leave town, so it looks like we won’t be the only walkers on board.

At 15k from town the lake is actually one end of a national park that ends at Mt Vodno, the site of the big cross, and this can be hiked.  And this is actually what the 15 or so other walkers are going to do.  So they all get off at the second last stop leaving us two as the only people on the bus.  As we walk to the lake we are the only two people in sight, although we are accompanied by about a dozen dogs.

Nevertheless we begin to hike up the mountain to a church but as we go up the very steep walls of the canyon, it begins to rain.  As the surface looks like it will get treacherous we decide to turn back after 20 minutes.  So it looks like we will have to wait for the bus back sitting under shelter at the one restaurant in the place.  However after half an hour the rain stops and we decide that if we do the lakeside walk with no slopes it should be safe enough.   So we have a very pleasant 10k walk.

After that when we return there are boat rides available so we take a boat ride on the lake to a cave on the other side, which we go into and which is very pretty.  We have lunch in the restaurant, and get the bus back.  So our day which started unconvincingly turns out to be pretty good.  When we get back to town we try to visit the castle overlooking the town, but it is closed on Saturday afternoons, so we spend the rest of the day hanging around cafes and local restaurants.