Prespa Lakes: The Hidden Wilderness at the Triple Frontier

The Prespa Lakes are one of Europe's great natural secrets. Two lakes—Megali Prespa and Mikri Prespa—sit in a high mountain basin at the point where Greece, Albania, and North Macedonia meet. The area is an important national park and an internationally recognised wetland of extraordinary biodiversity. It is also completely, staggeringly unknown to most visitors to Greece.

The village of Agios Germanos, the main settlement, has fewer than 400 permanent residents and a Byzantine church from the eleventh century decorated with frescoes of an immediacy and emotional power that many more famous churches fail to achieve. The church is unlocked during daylight hours. There is no admission fee. No queue.

The lakes support the largest breeding colony of Dalmatian pelicans in the world. In spring and early summer, they nest on the small rocky islands in Mikri Prespa in vast, noisy, extraordinary concentrations. You hire a small boat from one of the fishermen in the village of Psarades and approach slowly. The pelicans tolerate a respectful distance. The experience—the noise, the white bodies, the smell of water and fish, the surrounding mountains—is one of the most affecting wildlife encounters in Europe.

Brown bears live in the forests above the lakes. You will almost certainly not see one. But knowing they are there—invisible in the beech forests above the treeline—changes the atmosphere of the place. This is what rewilded Europe feels like: larger, stranger, better than the domesticated landscapes that occupy most of the continent.