Matka Canyon — where Thailand meets Macedonia
A travel by bike and boat — bike touring just got weirder
This time we headed towards Macedonia for two different reasons — explore biking in the capital of Macedonia — Skopje and visit the famous Matka Canyon. We have been told that the canyon is a divine beauty and the perfect spot for Macedonians to explore nature. It took us zero hesitation to pack and load and off we went towards what turned to be a little piece of heaven.
What makes the Matka Canyon so spectacular is that it is one of the largest dams in Macedonia — a funky mixture between rocky gorges and ice cold water which makes it quite desirable during the sizzling summer days. And again, we were biking/boiling in a 35 C temperature, from Skopje towards the canyon. Summer time sadness for two bikers on their way up.
The Canyon is very attractive for all sorts of nature lovers. We spotted a group of rock climbers as well as plenty of kayakers (easy to rent on spot). There is also a tradition concerning religious tourism as the Matka Monastery (build in the 14th century) is quite close by, St. Andrew’s monastery is literally within the Canyon. However, we were not here neither for kayaking nor for prayers… we wanted to cycle the s**t out of this beautiful place.
We started our trip from the centre of Skopje slowly making our way towards the Canyon. It was hot and biking conditions were as tough as usual biking conditions in any Balkan capital (stay tuned for our biking conditions review of Skopje). A 17 km ride with some elevation — easy peasy.
What we were quite thrilled to discover was a semi abounded, once glorified and majestic recreational complex. It had several pools, swamped and out of use , large open space areas, a gigantic artificial lake and this very big wading kiddie’s pool, where Ivan decided to chill in with his bike. It was a huge place of several thousand square meters and looked like a ghost park except for the fact that there was a security guard to ambush us… we were being told off and asked to leave. Shame we couldn’t explore more but managed to get a few shots.
Well yeah, we got kicked out and off we went towards the Canyon. The road was passing through the muslim village of Glumovo where we discovered the outstanding mosque of Glumovo.
Treska river is the reason for the Matka Lake to exist. It is not only a source of natural delight but also serves as a very, very refreshing body and mind source. We dived into the river and quickly realized that if we spend another 30 seconds inside the water — there will be no more posts on Medium. It was so cold, that my feet began tingling in under 15 seconds. Our guesses about the temperature of the water were at around 12–15 degrees Celsius. That, in a blowing combination of 35 C outside temperature left the sensation of white death approaching.
Eventually we managed to reach the Matka Canyon. We were very hipped to discover this truly beautiful place. The entrance of the touristic path going around the canyon was blocked by what looked like a very decent restaurant. Beer was a good idea, but cycling around the Canyon — even better. Better ideas, however, sometimes remain mythical. We couldn’t enter the Canyon for two reasons. Reason one (less important) cycling was forbidden. Reason two — there were sooo many people on July Saturday that we had no chance of cycling. We had to come up with a solution, otherwise somewhere a baby koala will start crying (that is how we motivated ourselves that we need to find a solution — mind games lead to bike solutions). The solution was pretty easy — we get the boat!
Ned is the peoples skill guy so he negotiated a fair price for our bikes to get transported to somewhere nice. It turned out that somewhere nice meant more carrying than cycling. We got deep into the Canyon and managed to explore a very short path, but on the other hand we got the chance to carry our bikes around the lake. It was beautiful anyways…
So there it was our Matka adventure where we did more sailing and hiking than cycling but what is definitely worth mentioning is that this place is shockingly beautiful and we enjoyed uniting with it.
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