Lake "Zaovine" on mountain Tara

Never been here! Ofcourse!

This hidden lake in the very heart of mountain Tara is world for itself. With seven kilometers in length and its wild beauty this lake could be tourist paradise...but, on the contrary it is not yet! The lake is very rarely visited even from home tourists, even from people who migrated from this area, even there are private houses offering you lodging...Why? Every answer to this question is confusable. Firstly, main luxury hotels are located on the eastern side of mountain which gravitate to the main routes and cities Uzice and Bajina Basta from where visitors come. The Lake Zaovine is about 30 kilometers from these hotels!...Too long? But nearby lake is resort Mitrovac, and, as we mentioned there are villas and private lodgings in local villages...waiting for tourists, visitors. So you come to the second part of the answer...

Zaovine - Far from Mad Crowd!

You come to the Lake and first what you notice is peace and silence. Silence! Simply, unbearable peace and silence! Haven't you come here to escape the noise and hurly-burly of big cities? Yes. And you find that you can not stand peace and serenity of Lake Zaovine. After a two hours you feel this valley surrounded by mountain peaks as isolated, separated from other world. The massive mountain peaks around, as being guarding the virginity and beauties of Zaovine. You feel being captive of mighty guards of lake Zaovine. Adoration to nature bauties, bit by bit gives way to boring and annoying. Then you realize why there's so few people, why people have gone, migrated from here..why there's no pupils in primary school...why so rare households even have no domestic animals. I asked my friend,who lives there, from what they were living? From round-timber, he said. Let me explain. All there-born people have inherited acres of forests, woods, from their fathers and are legal successors and proprietors of wide areas of woods and sell it. On the whole scope of high Tara there's only one mill-saw. They plainly sell the round-timber further to manufactures, not exerting to manufacture it to sawn-timber by themselves. That's good profit for them and all of them (almost all) have made houses in cities of Uzice and Bajina Basta and sent their families to live there while they stayed on Zaovine trying to earn a dinar more by renting their houses to rare tourists. So is why you rare see youth here, or younger playing football or swimming in lake.

Zaovine - Accumulation lake

Up to 70th. years of past century it was a peaciful valey hard to reach, where lived isolated inhabitants selling timber and planks, and access to that world was available exclusively by horses or other animals. Then came civilization and asfalt roads in the same time of building hydropower Perucac and Lake Perucac on river Drina and additional subsidiary reversible lake Zaovine where water was pumped upward through mountain to Zaovine. Asfalt roads did not bring benefits to inhabitants, rather became the ways to escape from this solitary villages to the outer world. Migration began. The water from Drina covered the valley and formed lake Zaovine.

Come here or not?

This Lake is on 1000 m. altutude and is on all tourist maps of Region of west Serbia. But this is not yet touristic destination. Do I suggest you to visit Zaovine. Visit Zaovine, Yes! But spend your holiday, you should thik over...Wander and roam around the lake, climbing mountain peaks, seeing here and there some fisherman or camper... You should be affecionate to nature to spend seven days of your holiday . So, that's the whole story of Zaovine. To me Zaovine present unexpected vanish of a population of inhabitants with distinctive, featured way of life, the end of past time with no return.