The
Hike Over the Hill
to the Reservoir
on the Road to Gjilian
On a warm spring day Rob, Fuji & I decided to take the hike we'd been talking about since our first hike in Germia (follow this link to read that Khronicle). On the first hike we got close to the summit but were running out of daylight so had to stop short of the summit. But we saw enough to know that we could follow the trails and with some luck end up at the reservoir that is on the road to Gjilan.
We'd start at Germia park and followed a road we hoped would take us to the radio towers at the top. From there we'd head south and hopefully see the road and the reservoir after awhile. As it turns out were were right on the money and followed a ravine to the middle of the reservoir.
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We started early as we had no idea on how long this was going to take. We actually met Rob at 8 am at the Metro Cafe. Here we cheated a little bit (as compared to our first trip) and we took the bus to the park. We followed the dirt road out of the park past the bombed out buildings for about an hour. Then we broke on through and saw these views of Pristina (population approx. 400,000). A good section of the town can't be seen as it is to the left in the picture and the hillside was in the way. |
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It was so bright out that we really couldn't see the LCD monitor on the camera so we just shot some pictures and hoped they'd come out. In the distance are the power plants. The picture above has the largest and the smaller ones in the picture to the left are about a kilometer or two away from each other. They burn brown coal, when working, which luckily for us has been blowing away from Pristina for most of spring. In the winter we weren't so luck as it would blow straight into town and create its own inversion. It was truly ugly for most of the winter. |
| As we started again looking for the radio towers we heard the sounds of generators and followed it. We came upon the towers but saw that they appeared to be protected by KFOR troops in bunkers. Maybe they'd have a map! |  |
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We slowly approached the complex making noise and staying in plain sight. Rob wanted to make sure that the stop sign was only for vehicles and not for people. As it turns there were only bunkers and no troops. The place was deserted. So we explored what we could then moved on. |
| After awhile as we were moving to the south side of the ridge we ran upon this turtle and about 6 others. We couldn't figure out why they were on the top of the ridge line when the water was about 3 kilometers below. Maybe they knew something we didn't? We tried to follow on for awhile but quickly realized we were going to get no where fast! |  |
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Ahhh here is the final destination. Now that it is was in sight we could figure what drainage we wanted to go down, take a compass reading or two and wander down for a nice swim. At the bottom we
had lunch at an outdoor cafe. Even tried wild boar for the first time
and the first pig/pork we've had for the first time since we got here!
It was good. |