Albanian Autumn Adventures

It’s been a while since my last post, which was when we had just arrived in Albania. In that post we were still so alarmed by the driving experience that I didn’t get a chance to write about anything else! Over the last two or three weeks we have become desensitised to the mad road antics and have had an amazing and varied time between mountains, coast, a few towns and our first “workaway” experience: volunteering in a remote village on a project to create an “ecovillage”.

That paragraph above was written and abandoned ages ago, and in the intervening period, Elina has told you all about our time back-in-time in Zhulat, where we really shifted out of tourist mode into the last backwaters of Albania. Mercifully, we made it out of there, thanks to the grit and determination of our Ford Galaxy, dragging the ancient caravan up rocky steep tracks, through rivers and back to tarmac, throwing rocks from its wheels which clattered against the eggshell-like front panels of the caravan. I had considered removing the large Holy Virgin stickers from the caravan as they are not really our thing…but now I would’t dare as she has definitely done a fantastic job so far.

We are now in Greece, so I thought we better do the last Albania blog before I forget what it was like….

We entered from the north, crossing from Montenegro into the mountainous area of the Albanian Alps, stopping by lake Shkoder for the night in extremely heavy rain. After the heaviest rain in over 100 years had showed us most of the leaks in the old caravan in Montenegro, which were then smeared in anti-leak-goop at the first dry opportunity, we were now able to enjoy the hammering of rain and hail on the roof. Sort of. I still spent the night jumping around touching the leaky spots and checking that the lake waters were not rising around us… we awoke to sunshine and, bleary-eyed, headed for the hills.

We stayed at campsite so that we could leave the caravan by day and go off adventuring in the car, as the roads turned un-caravanable at a certain point. The idea was to do some hiking. There is one very famous hike in that area, but to avoid the beaten track I decided to lead the family to some alternative peaks that are much less travelled. The first one involved crawling through thick hazelnut bushes for a couple of hours. We emerged, scratched and irritated and had a lovely lunch of hazelnuts and then went home. We got about 10% of the way to the intended peak.

The next day’s hike was was to a rocky spire, high above the Theth valley. After an hour or so of easy hiking we headed up a rocky gully, sending rocks bouncing down and arriving at an impossibly steep section. From there we could see that the remaining part of the route was a deadly mix of loose rocks and crumbling cliff. So we turned around and decided to head for a mountain pass, a well trodden route to “goat’s gate” where, in olden times, shepherds crossed from one valley to the next. We got a bit lost. I could see a much higher pass up ahead, so, rather than backtrack, we set off in its direction. Crossing increasingly difficult terrain, we eventually got to some extremely steep forest and rocks which we climbed while I prayed (to my stickers) that we would not have to descend. Luckily, we reached the ridge to find an amazing view over the Theth valley and a little path that walked the knife-edge ridge to the Goat’s Gate pass. Then we descended the easy path back to the car. Not sure how we missed it on the way…

For the final day of hiking, Elina, keen to actually go on a “real” hike, did the famous Theth-to-Valbona trail which is easy to find and really goes somewhere. Too big a day for the kids, I took them to the “blue eye of Theth” an amazing deep blue pool where two rivers meet, accessed by the most dangerous bridge I have ever crossed. Aran danced across it before I could say a word, then I gingerly followed and looked back at Zev who was standing before it asking if it was ok for him to cross… my lucky stickers had been very effective so far, but I didn’t want to push it, so I had to say “no” and head carefully back across to him and appreciate the blue eye from above. Aran danced back and then crossed again and then danced back again until I told him to stop and we headed back to the car.

At this point, we decided that we couldn’t hide out in the mountains for ever so we wound our way down to lake Shkoder to discover some more about Albania. We passed through small town of Koplik where we really noticed that we had left familiar Europe behind and were in a new world, it felt more akin to Morocco than next-door Montenegro with bustling markets and rubbish everywhere. The lady in the bakery gave Zev free biscuits. Another lady in the street stopped Zev to give him money. People were friendly and open, not like stiff, serious Montenegro. But also things seemed a bit wild and intimidating, especially the dogs. The kids had made friends, as always, with every dog on the way, but the dogs in Albania were not easy to approach, scared of people, and aggressive if cornered. Most had scars and bite-wounds all over them and only the toughest survived…Daisy was terrified, but the kids were not too phased…yet.

Keen to get to the beach, we headed South, our lucky stickers working marvels with the Mercedes-Benzers, and stopped at a seemingly idyllic self-service campsite. We imagined, based on prejudices and movie characters, that Albania might be a place to be alert for theft and watch the caravan carefully, a shame after enjoying such safety in Montenegro. However, this was a campsite where you choose a spot, leave your money in a little box, help yourself to beers and snacks and leave the beer money in the box…a situation that is unthinkable in Spain where the beers, money and possibly the fridge would be gone on the first day; and nobody would even consider paying for the campsite. This turned out to be the way all through Albania, where there was no need to lock anything and people left all their stuff unsecured and unguarded everywhere. Our experience of this otherwise idyllic site was ruined promptly ruined by clouds of voracious mosquitos from the nearby swamp.

We headed further south down the coast the next day, and free-camped at the beach of Dhermi. Google maps satellite-view shows this area as a wild coastal forest with some nice spots to camp. On arrival, however, we found that this area is huge construction site, where they are building a giant tourism complex in the form of an old hill-town but made entirely out of reinforced concrete. Albania is equipping itself for a future in high-end tourism, and the whole building site is plastered with giant billboards of blonde tourists playing tennis and having hot stones placed on their backs.

The rubbish-strewn beach is home to packs of filthy wild dogs with bite scars all over them. Daisy doesn’t stray far from the caravan. We stay a couple of nights and head even more south.

The next town, Himare, is more developed and has a thriving tourist strip mainly peopled with French tourists. We park our 12 metre camping-train right on the front, wondering if this is a good place to camp. I decided to wander around the corner with Daisy and the kids and find a really nice, clean beach just 50 metres away, but away from the shops and restaurants. I tell Zev and Aran to wait there while I go back and get the car and caravan and Elina and pull it around the corner. Just as I get to the corner I hear a a crazy screeching and yapping. Daisy had barked at a cat, and the local dog pack had taken this as an act of aggression and were attacking her right in front of the kids…in that second, a local man, seeing the action, skidded his car and beeped his horn loudly, then jumped out shouting and dispersing the wolfpack, leaving a whimpering bleeding Daisy and two very frightened kids on the pavement. I ran over and picked her up…she had some bleeding wounds on her ears and legs, but was ok.

We stayed a few days at this beach, exploring some idyllic coves on our kayaks as well as a submarine bunker from the cold war. Daisy has recovered nicely but is now (as is Zev) very wary of beach dogs, even here in Greece where there are many, but are very cute and well behaved.

There is more to say about Albania, but this post is getting a bit long, so I’ll save it for another time!