Daytrip: Naum Springs, North Macedonia — A Day Two Interesting Things Happened

Spoiler alert: at one stop, the tour boat left guests behind because they were two minutes late!

This is a regular feature about “daytrips” — daytrips or weekend getaways — we’ve taken while living in different places around the world. If it’s featured here, that means we loved it!

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Three years ago, we spent a month living in Ohrid on Lake Ohrid, North Macedonia.

Three and a half years ago, I wouldn’t have known where that was either.

Why We Went There 🧳 🗺️ 🤔

We’d been living on the Balkan Peninsula for much of the year, visiting various countries: Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (which is one country with two names).

But everyone kept saying, “You need to go to Ohrid on Lake Ohrid in North Macedonia!”

And so we did, and we loved it.

But once we were in Ohrid, everyone kept saying, “You need to take one of the tour boats down the lake to see Saint Naum Monastery and Springs!”

And we did, and we loved that too.

Even better, two truly interesting things happened along the way.

The Naum Quickstart 🏃‍♂️🚀⚡

Lake Ohrid is a “rift valley” lake, which means it’s old and deep, on the border between Albania and Macedonia, and shared by both countries.

(Macedonia is technically called “North Macedonia” because of a name dispute with Greece, which also has an area called “Macedonia.” But the locals always refer to their country as just Macedonia.)

Lake Ohrid and the town of Ohrid are both UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The Monastery of Saint Naum is a historical site at the southern end of the lake — an old Macedonian Orthodox Church complex first established in AD 905 by, yes, Saint Naum of Ohrid, who is buried on the site.

In fact, legend says that if you put your ear up to his stone coffin, you can still hear his heart beating — which, frankly, I find more alarming than inspirational.

Fortunately, I didn’t hear him trapped inside trying to claw his way out.

The monastery outside and inside.

The monastery was nice, but the real attraction here is Naum Springs, located next to the monastery. It — they? — ended up being one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen.

But more on that in a bit, along with pictures of the springs.

And, of course, details on the two interesting things that happened along the way.

What We Did 🏰🎭🚶‍♂️📸

In the Ohrid harbor, Michael and I caught one of the tour boats with our New Zealander friend, Chris, who happened to be in town for the day.

Michael and Chris, right.

Our all-day tour stopped at several spots along the lake, including something called the Bay of Bones, and this is where the first interesting thing happened.

The Bay of Bones

This is a pretty little bay that now includes the 2005 recreation of a Bronze Age settlement dating back to 1200 BC. The “bones” are the remains of animals hunted by the prehistoric occupants that were found on the bottom of the bay. Some of the bones are on display.

Before disembarking, the captain of our ship warned the people on the boat: “We are leaving in exactly forty-five minutes. And if you’re not back on the boat by then, we’ll leave without you.”

Michael, Chris, and I looked around the site, which was fine, nothing exceptional, and forty-three minutes later, the three of us were back on the boat.

But not everyone was. There were even people walking on the dock toward the boat.

The boat pushed off and left anyway.

Regular readers know that one of my pet peeves is guests on group tours who are not considerate of others. They don’t listen to the guide, they don’t return on time (screwing up the overall schedule), and they always expect that, because they’re paying money, they should get special treatment.

But I still couldn’t believe the boat actually left with seven or eight people standing at the end of the dock, waving furiously!

This tour boat is piloted by a captain with big brass balls.

In truth, the boat did finally turn around and went back to pick up those “late” passengers, who climbed back on board displaying an interesting mix of embarrassment and indignation.

That night, that particular tour company probably took a hit on their Yelp and Google reviews (partially counteracted by my rave review).

I don’t know if this was a particular strategy on the part of the captain to keep us on schedule, but if it was, it worked: when it came time to leave each stop after this, every single person was back on the boat well before we were scheduled to leave.

Naum Springs

The Monastery of Saint Naum is a fine destination that includes a lovely garden famous for its many peacocks.

But the real attraction here is a little waterway next to the monastery: the springs.

Lake Ohrid actually has a sister lake higher in the mountains, Lake Prespa, which North Macedonia, Albania, and Greece share. And this lake — which is itself technically a network of two lakes — has no outlet.

All of the water from these upper lakes filters down through the limestone of the mountains and emerges exceptionally pure at, yes, Naum Springs, and it then feeds into Lake Ohrid.

The waterway — and the swath of primordial wilderness surrounding it — are extraordinarily beautiful. It’s a river of water and grass.

And this is also where the second interesting thing of the day happened.