Right on the border with Albania, the Macedonians set up their national park, Mavrovo. You can easily spend 2-3 days here. The park is huge with tons of trails, hills and mountains for every skill level – and it's absolutely beautiful.

The staff at the info center were super helpful. They gave me detailed advice on which trails to take and which to avoid. They mentioned that over 200 bears live in the park, while all of Slovenia only has about 600. So you need to be careful on the more remote trails. That said, there haven't been any documented bear attacks on people.

A night rain messed up our plans, so we ended up taking a different route than we'd originally planned. Looks like we'll have to come back! :)

Overall the park is wonderful, but along the roads it gets pretty messy in spots. People literally throw bottles and chip bags out of their cars. The trails themselves are clean, but walking along the highway you just feel 😢

And get this – when I drove through the toll booth, I watched the cashier toss a piece of paper out of their window onto the street. Like it was totally normal. Why would you do that? :(