This circular hike is 17 km long with 900 m ascent. It starts in the village Peshtani at Lake Ohrid and goes via the village Elshani to the picnic area at the Korita Spring in Galicica National Park.
Note that for hiking in Galicica National Park you may need to register yourself in the forest fire season. You also need to buy a ticket for hiking and other activities. See here and their website for the most-up-to-date info: https://galicica.org.mk/
Quite close to Elshani we noticed animal droppings, most likely bear scat. A local told us that they regularly see a bear here. There are quite a lot of plum trees in that area that likely attract the bears.
A bit further there were tracks that are probably from wild boar.
After about 4.5 km, a pretty steep climb starts that lasts about 3 km. This trail leads through an interesting old forest. I saw a deer here but it was too quick to take a picture.
Then it is downhill to the Korita Spring and the picnic area. Before you reach the Korita spring, there is the possibility of a short detour to the Alpinist Cave (https://mymacedoniablog.com/hiking/alpinst-cave-from-korita-in-galicica-national-park/)
We had a break there in one of the gazebos at the Korita Sping and met a Dutch guy who just had climbed Peak Magaro and was hiking back to Peshtani via the same trail that we would descent back to Peshtani.
It’s actually an interesting way to climb Magaro from Peshtani, in particular if you don’t have a car to drive up to the Lipova Livada Mountain Pass where the hike to Magaro starts. Just follow the trail that we used to descent to Peshtani (which is shorter with less climbing than our way up) and connect to this trail that goes to Peak Magaro: https://mymacedoniablog.com/hiking/magaro-and-kota-f10-peaks-in-galicica-national-park-from-trpejca-30-km/
The way back to Peshtani is easy via a well maintained trail.
Overall, it was a nice hike, lots of forest trails with shadow and some good views now and then. It gets 3.5 out of 5 stars.
You can view and download the GPS track of this hike here: https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/peshtani-elshani-korita-spring-in-galicica-national-park-274569131
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