Saw everything but the monastery...

Things don't always go as planned. Yesterday, we had the great idea to take the gondola up Mt. Vodno to take in the 66 m Millennium Cross, check out the views of Skopje, and then to hike the short distance down to St. Pantelejmon Monastery where we would be rewarded with 12th - century frescoes.  The ride up the mountain was great and we did in fact get great views:

The cross is indeed big:

The day was alternately sunny and cloudy which was great for hiking.  The weather on top of the mountain was noticeably cooler and we got nice views of the back face, including an adorable declaration of love in Cyrillic alphabet:

We saw so may beautiful wildflowers, some of which strange enough that we compared to a Dr. Seuss book, and others whose smells overwhelmed us.  One patch of white wildflowers near the end smelled so strongly of honey. At other times, the fields smelled of thyme and rosemary - I found one plant whose smell could pass as thyme but it was different than other thyme I've seen. I think there are a lot of different varieties though, so it may well be thyme after all.

Wildflowers:

After hiking mostly along the ridge line, we found this incredible disused military installation. You can see on the right side of the picture there's a watchtower with thin slats for viewing / firing. I assume that the bottom once held vehicles, but today only cows were there. We had heard their bells ringing eerily through the fields before we could find them!

These looked like parking spaces for vehicles as well. They were a few meters wide and went back perhaps 30 feet. The whole complex was a mix of these recessed walkways and elevated embankments, which I think were to limit sight lines to the outside, allowing people to move around without being spotted.

We saw several of these, which we assumed were for sleeping or storage. We didn't investigate!

Until this point we had been following what was clearly a road, but there was no clear road that led away from the military installation.  However, there was a trail, which we were relieved to see actually had trail markers, which was something we hadn't seen yet that day.  After continuing for awhile on the marked trail, though, we both agreed that it seemed we were walking too far along the ridgeline, away from the city.

We then took an unmarked but fairly clear path which earlier on had tire tracks in it. Later on, we lost the car tracks but the path was full of sheep or goat tracks and droppings, along with an occasional shoe print.

It was generally clear but not maintained at all, though it was a bit harrowing for 5-10 minutes when the path passed through some thick forest and became a muddy creek bed. We had to duck under brush and at some point came out into more open areas again (see note at meadows full of wildflowers!).

I don't remember where exactly we took this picture but it gives a sense of the descent and the mix of forests and meadows / pastures:

The first settlement we encountered - and man, were we relieved to be coming upon civilization again - was this picturesque Albanian village snuggled onto the side of Mt. Vodno:

We looked back on the mountain and thought of how far off course we were but how enjoyable the detour had been.

The village was very picturesque.

We found the sheep whose path we had probably been following - these also added to our repertoire of smells for the day, as you might imagine.

We never saw anyone in the first village (Gorni Krushopek according to Google Maps, as we found out later) and continued through fields, orchards, and the village cemetery, heading toward the city.

We thought we were done when we neared the bottom and looked back at the Millennium Cross, and the village of Gorno Nerezi, where the monastery is that we had meant to go to, in the middleground which we never made it to.  We could also tell we were pretty far afield from the city, as we were facing the side of the cross here, and the front of the cross faces the city.  As we began to head down, we started hearing increasingly loud, very Balkan folk music.

As we approached the sound of the music, we came to the second settlement of the afternoon, with a *paved road* and a house with a street number (a big victory after hours of hiking). Not sure of which way to head, we loitered a bit, and attracted the attention of a very kind old woman who was picking vegetables from her garden / farm for dinner, across the street from her house.

She quickly identified that we didn't speak Macedonian, and gestured for us to come sit on her porch, which we did. A few of her children and grandchildren watched, some with interest and others without, as she tried to figure out where the heck we were from and what we were doing. She brought us two glasses of orange juice each and talked for a bit, with us only understanding that she was bringing someone who spoke English.

That someone was her son who had just celebrated his wedding three days ago. She brought us each a slice of leftover wedding cake and we congratulated him and met his wife. It turns out he learned pretty good English working with a Turkish crew on a gas station project in this village on the outskirts of Skopje.  He told us that the Balkan folk music that had guided us here was from a middle school graduation occurring in town.  He also remarked that confused, lost-looking people turn up after failed attempts to see Sveti Pantelejmon monastery about once a week.  Whew.

After talking a bit more, the son tried to call a cab but the company said no cabs were available. In the end, he drove us a little bit into town to where we could easily catch a cab ourselves. 

Incredible people the world over! Reach out and help someone who looks lost in life.

And here's a rough google map of the route we took:


View Hiking down Mt. Vodno in a larger map