Prespa

Prespa is the high lake: a great sheet of water at about 850 metres, shared three ways — the borders of Albania, North Macedonia and Greece meet in the middle of it — and older than almost any lake in Europe except its neighbour Ohrid. The Albanian national park takes in the western shores of Great Prespa, the dry limestone ridge of Mali i Thatë behind them, and Albania's small tail of reed-fringed Lesser Prespa to the south. The lake has no river outlet; its water leaves through the karst of the mountains, sinking into the limestone and re-emerging as the great springs on the Ohrid shore — the celebrated underground plumbing it shares with Galičica across the border, where the same story is told from the other slope.

The park's emblem stands offshore: Maligrad, a cliff-sided island in Albanian waters whose rock overhang shelters the church of St Mary, built in 1369 under the local lord Kesar Novak, its frescoes darkened by candle centuries but intact. Boats cross from the shore villages, and landing on the island — pelicans overhead, the painted apse under the cliff — is among the finest small excursions in the country. The birds are Prespa's other glory. Greek Lesser Prespa, just over the water, holds the largest Dalmatian pelican colony on earth, and the Albanian shore is their feeding ground; on summer mornings the fishing flotillas of pelicans work the shallows in squadrons, sharing the water with pygmy cormorants and herons.

The shore villages — Pustec and its neighbours — belong to Albania's Macedonian-speaking minority, and the double naming, the Orthodox churches and the lake-facing agriculture give the district an atmosphere unlike anywhere else in the country: a quiet, far corner that history repeatedly made a crossroads. Transboundary cooperation arrived early here — the three states declared Prespa a shared park framework in 2000, the first of its kind in the Balkans — and the lake needs it, since its level has been falling for decades, a slow emergency the three shores can only face together.

What's worth knowing before you go

Korça is the practical gateway, with the road crossing the Zvezda pass to reach the lake basin; Pustec is the main village and the place to arrange a boat to Maligrad — ask the day before, and expect the trip to depend on wind. Spring and early summer are best: birds at their busiest, the shore meadows in flower, and the light on Mali i Thatë extraordinary toward evening. There is simple guesthouse accommodation in the villages and better choice back in Korça. The connoisseur's combination is to pair the Albanian shore with the Macedonian park over the border — Galičica's ridge road and Prespa's water are two halves of one mountain system, and passports are the only difficulty.