Zaovine Lake - Tara Mountain
Zaovine Lake (Zaovinsko jezero) is an artificial lake located on the Tara Mountain in western Serbia. It was created between 1975 and 1983 as a reservoir for the Bajina Bašta II reversible hydro power plant.
Zaovine Lake lies at an altitude of 892 meters and the max depth of it is 110 meters, but the depth varies a lot as you can see on the shore lines.
In case of low water level in the Drina River, the lake is emptied to run the hydroelectric plant turbines. When there is excess water and flooding, water is pumped vertically into Zaovine Lake.
At the moment the lake was at a pretty good height, but in 2019 there were some questionable decisions made, there was money to be made by selling electricity and the lake was pumped out to a record low. And that caused some serious landslides.
I didn't take the photo of a house we were staying at from the side, but you could clearly see that it moved a bit and was on an angle. And they were the lucky ones.
The place where we were staying, taken from the view point on the opposite side of the lake.
The whole region of Tara mountain is a National park and it is still not overcrowded like some more "famous" mountains (Kopaonik, Zlatibor).
There is a good amount of hiking trails and most of them are going through the forest so it could be pretty pleasant even in hot summer days.
We had a mixed weather so after one abandoned hike we decided to stick close to the house. Not that it was bad :)
And just siting on the porch of the house was an experience
On the way down from the mountain to Bajina Bašta there are few stops where you get a beautiful view of Drina river.
There were some nice views on the road home too