Long ride south again.

We wake up at 6 am to be able to catch the bus south, to Ressen at 8h45. After a tea, a small piece of bread with some tasty home made jam and a couple of those filled chocolate harts we head off. The sun is rising on the mountains as we start walking down. On our way, pieces of century years old clay, fountains and sometimes remains of an ancient paved road. In our hurry, we get off the path in an attempt to make it shorter. But we soon find it again and come across three gypsy's on horse back walking up the mountain. Goze explains that they go up to collect wood and chop down the couple remaining trees, all young and sparse already, the vegetation is shrinking. He tells them not to cut the small ones but is well aware this will make no difference. Foreign companies bought the electrical plants around and since the prices of electricity kept raising until people could not afford to heat on electricity and switched back to wood. Creating a huge demand for wood in this region. Remembers me of French companies privatizing water in south America, paying French loans to their French employees and thus rising the water price.
We are talking a lt and time passes, we are late. Very late. We start running as we get in the bottom of the valley on flat roads. Goze asks everybody for a phone to call a taxi, but this is a gypsy settlement and no one has a phone. We finally find a house with a phone but we are already on the asphalt road and wild taxis are parked there. We get to the station about 0 minutes late but we are lucky, the bus didn't pass through, it is coming from Skopje and is a bit late because of road constructions. Goze is really relieved that we did not miss it, his mother but a special cream on the bus. Giving the driver something to bring to an other destination is very common and i think i mentioned it already. He gets a special herbal cream from a very special person he calls his Oracle, she is an alternative doctor. Her story is very interesting, she was a medical student, the best in school and as she had passed her final exams, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and given 5 more month to live. She decided to live those last month and go travel. In Moscow, she heard of a special medical institute and there she was told that in 5 month she would be healed. And she did. So she decided to be taught there, not classic medicine but alternative medicine with magnetic fields, lights, herbs etc... And she soon became the right to practice and a certificate from that institution. She is now practicing for some years and has sent him a magical cream for hemorrhoids. This solves the problem in a couple days instead of a long week for the classical remedies.
As we talk a lot about alternative medicine and how it is not always the best solution, Goze constantly states how much he lost confidence in modern medicine. He give me the example of his cousin, the ones wedding he is going on this weekend, well she had multiple sclerosis and was curred by the Oracle.
On the bus we are a little sleepy and hungry, as we are dropped in Ressen, we are starving and go look for chorba, but not any, the bes soup ever with intestines... Not really my sort of food but i will taste. After walking around we finally find a restaurant serving it. It is the restaurant of a former communist hotel now pretty much abandoned since no tourist comes to Ressen. The soup is tasty in deed and fills our hunger. We get some food for our expedition, 2 loafs of bred, some pastete, cheese and chocolate of course! We still need to get a couple kilometers further to get closer to our remote destination before walking the last 8kms. No hitchhiking, we would loose to much time, we get a cab, he brings us there for a good price.

After a stopover to get Gozes phone, we are in the last village connected by asphalt road. After drinking a bit we head for the last village, i can not tell where this is since i promised to keep it secrete :) Here we try to get in touch with th authority to signal our destination, but the first office sends us to the police with tells us the responsible guy is not here we should check his home. We do and have no success finding him since he is not home. His wife cannot do anything for us she does not know the procedure. We just have to leave our id details. She cant do this... ok This is balkan! When you want to get paperwork done it is impossible but once you are in infraction, then everything is done without problem, they stop being lazy. We take the longer way, along the shore, trough stones and sand. After a long walk and some beautiful setting like these low, red plants on a white beach of dead shells, we arrive in the village. Goze finds our boat driver and w stop for a while at hs house. We are offered to taste the freshly made Ajvar. Bright red slightly orange paste made of mainly red peppers is so good and tastes slightly different in every house. This one is sweet and delicious. We head of for the mini island. The sky is dramatic again and when we approach the island, we make a little noise and hundreds of cormorans fly out the trees. Normally there are also loads of pelicans and snakes. The first migrated already and the second is hibernating. We step on this magical island an soon i find what i was told, green magical setting. We walk up some stairs and find the little church that is still standing there. We set camp here and after a good meal, we go for a little exploration. The night is falling and the environment becomes more mystical. We walk trough thees woods where many trees are hundreds of years old. They have magical shapes and often a huge base that died of a couple times. some trees are dead, some well alive but all have these curves and hooks. The ground is green and moist low growing grass and every now and then we can see a rabbit hole.
As we walk the path that was put there some time ago by archaeologist who started excavating here, we find remains of basilicas and houses dating from the Roman period and sometimes built on a Hellenistic base. We stop for a while in a basilica where the ground has been almost entirely conserved, probably from the roman period my guide says. He has studied a bi of archeology but is mainly a photographer and proposes to do an artist shot here. i stand in the basilica and he draws an archangels wings around my body with his torch. The result is pretty amazing.
It then starts to be more adventurous and get better as we get of the track and loose ourselves in this old forest. We find other excavation spots with pieces of huge jars, probably more than a meter wide. They are covered with little green mousse and sometimes a couple centimeters of earth. The buildings and remains have not been buried very deep on this island and a lot can be seen. We find the cistern, build right on the top of a cliff, sit there admiring the moon and the calm waters around.
Finding our way back to the church is not easy, we are slightly lost in those woods but the island is so small that we soon find the path and follow it. This does not get us home however, we are completely disoriented from circling around in those woods without outside orientation point and walk the wrong path. It takes us a while to find our way but no problem, we get there!

We light a couple candles in the church, this creates a magical environment where we go to sleep on the rugs of carpet and blankets we were borrowed by the fisherman's wife.