Sept 5 - Though we’ve been at this lake for two days, today was our first time to travel on it by boat. Get on the minibus once again with some Dutch retirees and head south to the town of Peštani. Here we get on a launch and go south along the coast. Really windy today with some good waves.
The first stop is the Bay of Bones. It is a rather dramatic name for an archaeological site, thought to have been inhabited between 1200-700 BCE. It was found when an accumulation of human and deer bones were found on the lakebed just offshore, along with traces of buildings. Once the material was mapped, a ‘replica’ village was constructed, based on the best guesses archaeologists had. The people who lived here would have subsisted mostly off of fishing.
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Continue down the coast. The shore is very rugged, with steep limestone cliffs most of the way, and a few very small gravel beaches. Access to many of them is only feasible via boat. Stop at the town of Trpejca, known as the ‘St. Tropez of Macedonia’.
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Alex, the guide, has a placed picked out for lunch on an isolated beach.
We all went swimming here, well, the three of us and also Alex, the guide. Everyone else sat on the shore. The water temperature was perfect, though I’ve been told by October is gets a bit cold for bathing.
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Some facts about Lake Ohrid! It is one of the oldest lakes in the world, estimated at 2-10 million years. As such, it has an immense diversity of aquatic life, adapted to this specific environment. As mentioned before, it is quite deep, maximum depth of 289 meters. Not so much water goes in and out on an annual basis, so chemical residence time is relatively long. Lack of strong mixing has led to a stratified water column, with the deepest parts much more saline (though I saw no mention of an anoxic environment, like the Black Sea has at depth). There is a slight counterclockwise current around the edges that is partially due to the rotation of the earth (Coriolis effect). And as one would fully expect, such a finely balanced system is especially sensitive to human intrusion and climatic changes. The same thing could said about other restricted freshwater lakes, like Baikal, Tahoe, Crater, and others. In a future of freshwater shortages (which is already starting to happen) places like this are incredibly important as reservoirs.
Back to Ohrid, walk along the lake to the southeast corner of town. Here there is one of the two major springs that feed the lake.
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