Prespa is one of wildest parts of Greece, and one of the most beautiful.

Despina and I drove through the high, precipitous, forested scenery from Kastoria to Florina, passing through gorges and little villages perching like tiny, giddy splashes in the mountains. The sky was azure blue, the light coruscating off little buildings and bathing the forests, where bears and other wild animals were rumoured still to live. I imagined Despina and I romping through the forest, and several times nearly asked her to stop the car, but we pressed on.
We arrived in Florina, a pretty enough place, had a quick walk around it and a breather in a forest above it, then we went and ate an indigestible pizza, before we continued our journey to the Prespa Lakes.
The Prespa Lakes are at the very edge of Greece, and by European standards are large. Shared between Albania, Yugoslavian Macedonia, and Greece itself, they are a sanctuary for birds and other wild animals, and also have strange dwarf cows that wander along the hills. The water is clear and unpolluted, and the main activity is fishing.
The wildness of the place is belied by the placid island in the middle of the 'small' lake, Mikri Prespa, which has the evocative ruins of a Byzantine monastery on it, and a strange huge cross that looks, like the Meteora, though on an entriely different scale, as if it was hurled down from the heavens and left stuck in the hillside. In fact, the cross is modern. I still have a picture of Despina walking towards the cross, like a lost soul approaching some object that has been out of reach for so long, or a sort of female Saul on the road to Damascus, or a pilgrim nearly at her journey's end, which I will try to add to this Blog in the summer, when I am reunited with all my pictures from that time.
We drove first up to Ayios Germanos to get the steep and sudden view of the 'Large' lake, Megali Prespa, and then down to Psarades to stay the night at the Sintrofia.
That evening, we took a walk along the peninsula on the left hand side of the bay, and I looked back at the few lights of Psarades, their reflections on the water. This was an even more remote Gavrion, a village of old houses and a small population, the only area of warmth and humanity for miles, or so it seemed in its tiny spark against the darkness all around. We had remembered to bring a torch, and so we wandered about, revelling in the stillness of it all, but also a little apprehensive at the wildness. I started to tell Despina a ghost story and added, for good measure, something I made up about the revenge of the dwarf cows; I was just teasing her, but in the process I scared myself a little, too.
There is something frightening about the elemental, the night on a bare mountain; here you are alone against the forces of nature and the unseen shadows of the night. We knew we could run back to the warmth of the village if we got too scared, and the first line of resistance to any beastly force was us together. We thought about the depth of the lake if we should accidentally fall over the side, one pulling the other, before we stopped our speculation, sat down and held each other tightly and then warmly, our legs dangling over the edge of the peninsular top as we watched the moon rise; it was a cold night after the warmth of the day, and we said nothing for a while, each lost in our own thoughts, or thoughts about each other. We now told each other little things that made us laugh, not out of fear, but out of a knowing contentment in this peaceful place, whether there were shadows of spooks dancing or not, or imaginary wolves pawing leaves in the forests some miles behind, or strange monsters in the lake. It made no difference, we were here, that was what mattered. The moonlight reflected across the lake, giving it both mystery and temptation. It was too early in the year to scramble down to a little cove, fling off our clothes and go for a swim, our way of taming the big water and having some fun at the same time. So, we stayed up there on the top of the peninsula and scanned the horizon for other lights of other villages, maybe far away in neighbouring "Republic of Skopje" or Albania; but we saw none, just the brooding presence of the mountains all round, most hidden in the darkness, some given ambience by the moon.
The following morning, we were taken on a little tour of the big lake by a boatman, who showed us a hut-shrine in the rocks overlooking a cove, which was also a hermitage. The weather was perfect for the whole weekend, except towards the end, when on Ayios Ahilios, the little island with the monastery, weary grey clouds started to build up over the edge of the mountains, and rain started to pour over one part of the lake, before moving towards the boat-taxi that had taken us there and was now picking us up.
For all lovers of remote parts of the world, bird watchers, and lake lovers, Prespa has to be on your list, before it is too late. It is a deeply romantic place, too.