August 2018
From here on, the posts for our summer 2018 journey are based on notes I wrote during our travels, rather than once we'd finished, so they may be a little more piecemeal.
-Michael
Exhausted we landed in Tirana, Albania. The first thing I noticed was how green it looked after the brown and dry Greece and Turkey, and how tall the hills were nearby. It felt quite different.
We took the bus in to the city and checked into our hostel which was definitely a cut above the last two - curtains for each bed for privacy, more of a chill out area downstairs, fast internet and a bar serving good beer (where I'm writing this right now). Our host was kind enough to take us to a nearby restaurant for lunch with another guest staying at the hostel. I had Fergese (meat cooked in a mix of cheese and oil) and Rach had eggplants stuffed with mince - neither of which was photogenic but both of which were tasty.
The hosts at the restaurant didn't speak English but made us feel welcome. According to our Austrian companion, this had been the case everywhere in the Balkans she'd travelled so far, with strangers generally being friendly and helpful where they can.
Since lunch we've been chilling out, planning our next steps in Albania (south to Berat and hopefully north to hike the Accursed Mountains) and enjoying a delicious beer downstairs at our hostel. We've also met the hostel pets - two unnamed tortoises.
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Dinner last night was at Mullixhiu, a fairly modern take on old Albanian foods. We had the degustation menu which in hindsight was probably a bit too much for us. Highlights were the rich pastry to eat with a yoghurt based drink to wash down, baby goat cooked in cheese and yoghurt, and the shepherds diet (pickle, white cheese in a potato skin dumpling), along with the tasty main of beef cheeks.
This morning we slept in a little, enjoying our hot breakfast of fried eggs and omelette before doing the 10am walking tour.
The tour was excellent, better than many of our previous walking tours. Our guide Gasi was very knowledgeable and his talk brought home just how brutal and repressive the Communist regime was for Albania. I had no idea beforehand that it was so isolationist and harsh and he was able to tell stories of his childhood before the fall of communism to show it. For example, before he was 9 years old Gasi was taught that it was good to identify any suspicious people for the authorities. Hoxha sounded a maniac, ruining his people's lives and gradually isolating his country from its only political allies.
The tour also covered other bits of Albanian life like the blood feuds in rural villages that ran hundreds of years before communism halted them but are now renewed in some areas. He also outlined the reason why we saw older men in the streets with scales trying to make money - reflecting both their dire financial situation and a throwback to old times when weighing more in tough communist times was a sign of health.
After the walking tour we nipped into a shopping mall to get Rach some shoes for the mountain walk then dropped them off at the hostel. We tried a couple of places for lunch which were unsatisfactory (too expensive or not being served when we sat down) before settling on pizzas out of desperation.
Then it was off to Bunk'Art 2. We hadn't done enough research on it beforehand and we'd (naively) thought it would be art in an old bunker. The first part seemed to be a very detailed and slightly dull history of the Albanian police, gendarmes, and other law enforcement. The second bit was more confronting, outlining what the authorities did during communist times to keep order, spy on citizens, pursue political crimes and, most harrowing, torture suspects. There was even a list of the 36 methods they used which included things like drilling through flesh to a person's bone, putting a cat inside a woman's clothes and hitting it, and putting suspects in a cold puddle of water during winter. The horror of it was in some ways enhanced by the musty and heavy air which caused us both slight headaches or dizziness. The only art was at the end in a small section by which time we needed some fresh air.
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Dinner was at Oda, where we had stuffed peppers, rice balls and roast lamb - all were delicious but the rice balls were probably the unexpectedly most tasty.
The next morning we took a bus to the southern bus station to go south to Berat. As our hostel host had explained, all we needed to do was follow the shouts. "Berat Berat Berat Berat!" one man yelled at us. We nodded and he pointed us to a bus yelling "Berat Berat Berat!"
The trip was around two hours south and we arrived at our expected accommodation around midday. I say expected because we late round there was a mix up to the booking. However an old man who spoke no English directed us to our room and we left our belongings there to explore the castle and the town.
We first walked over to Gorica, the traditionally Orthodox Christian area on the other side of the river then back over to the area we were staying in Mangalem. Both had white houses with big windows (Berat is called the town of a thousand windows) and very picturesque steep cobbled streets. Next it was up the steep hill to the castle at the top. The castle walls encompass another suburb of Berat in which a few hundred people still live. It was a nice area to spend an hour or two walking around in, and we had a cold beer at the top. Several times in the narrow streets old ladies would be sitting and call out "kaffee, maramalada" to us as we walked by which we politely declined.
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| Inside the castle walls, Berat |
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| Gorica, Berat |
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| Mangalem, Berat |
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| Entrance of our accommodation |
We headed back down to our accommodation to find our bags had been moved to another room with only bunk beds. We rang the doorbell and a middle aged lady who spoke no English came and we tried to explain we had a double room booked. She had to call her son and we tried to explain over the phone, then a few minutes later he came along. We eventually realised that our booking was accepted on booking.com but hadn't been received by the guesthouse. They had that room free so we stayed there anyway. We also agreed to have dinner on their terrace at 9pm which Rach had heard from reviews was good.
We chilled for a bit in our room then went for a walk down to promenade in the more modern part of town that our accommodation overlooked. It really came alive at night with people at cafes, selling food and just wandering about. The houses of Mangalem also looked stunning in the evening light.
It was soon time for dinner, which was huge and tasty: salad, bread, cordon bleu, and rice-stuffed peppers each, with a bottle of wine and a plate of olives and white cheese.
The next morning we packed up and checked out to find the meal was worth 25 euros - not expensive in the scheme of things, but compared with everything else in Albania, slightly extortionate. We checked out and as I write we are on a slow bus on the outskirts of Tirana. We'll soon transfer to another bus to take us to Shkodra to tomorrow begin exploring the Accursed Mountains.
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We got off the bus in Shkodra and checked into our hostel. We headed out later to wander around the city centre - there's not a lot to see but in some parts there are nice old Italian style buildings - and then for dinner at Peja Grill.
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| Shkodra |
It was yet another delicious meal, of fried potatoes, spicy sausage and baked peppers. We also got to try the tres leche cake, which was even better than we'd hoped for - soft, moist and flavourful.
As we ate we also had funny sight of a Franciscan looking monk (ie the order with a vow of poverty) walking into a church complex with a designer shopping bag. A few minutes later a rugged off- road jeep pulled up with three nuns in and entered the complex.
The next morning was an early 6am start on the minibus to Lake Koman. It was a windy route there, the last part of it unsealed, with some great views. We managed to get on the ferry after some minor verbal altercation between our driver and ferry officials and the views on the two and a half hour journey were pretty stunning: sheer cliff faces, rocky mountains, green water and lush forest. In some parts there were houses that could only be accessed by boat, and in many cases small farms growing an acre or two of corn.
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| Lake Koman |
At the other end of the lake we were taken by our guesthouse host on a further 45 minute drive to our accommodation with a brief stop in a nearby town. There were a couple of odd moments on the drive: the car window wouldn't wind down so he grabbed the handle off my window and stuck it on another door; and he later pulled up near a shop and called out, and a man brought over two watermelon for him.
Valbona is set in a stunning location, in a valley surrounded by soaring mountains rising up almost vertically with lush forest near the base. Our guesthouse is run by a family who live in one of the buildings.
We rested and relaxed for a while after our lunch then set off for an hour's walk to nearby hamlet of Kukaj where we'd heard there was a cafe. After an exerting walk we got there and found it was a farmhouse with an outdoor area that served drinks to those passing by. I had a Turkish coffee while we admired the views then we set off back to our accommodation.
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| Kukaj |
As I write it's nearly 7am and we'll soon set off for the bike 6 hour hike to Theth. We're slightly shorter on cash than expected up in the mountains (there are no ATMs) so we'll need to be economical with our cash. Thankfully last night we had lunch and dinner, and breakfast and lunch today are provided. However Theth accommodation costs extra for lunch and breakfast so well try make our food stretch so we don't spend on it. The economising started last night where we got cake and onion pastry and smuggled them out for lunch, so we can use some of the "lunch" for dinner. Hopefully we have enough money for the bus back to Shkodra!
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Well, we did the walk! We set out at 8am, after breakfast and getting a few extra lunch supplies. Oddly, we were the last people to set out for Theth, out of around 15-20 staying in the guesthouse. We were taken the 5km to the trail start by the host and began walking at 8:10. We had just our blue backpack with clothes and supplies and Rach had her little bag with passports and money.
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| Starting out from Valbona |
It started off inauspiciously with a wrong turning a couple minutes in near the hamlet of Llomi where we saw a kulla and some farmhouses but lost sight of the trail. Going past one of the houses we heard stirring inside and thought it might be either a curious or irate owner - but turned out to be a white horse waking up and gingerly stepping outside. We backtracked and got back on the trail, costing us around 20 minutes total.
The first part of the trail was on the white, wide riverbed. Then we hit the village of Rragam and began to go uphill into the forested area. All the while we had the beautiful scenery of the Accursed Mountains as a backdrop.
We climbed upwards until we got the first cafe and refilled our water bottles at the nearby mountain stream with ice cold water. We also had a hard boiled egg for energy. Shortly after a gentle climb upwards (by now 2 hours in) we hit a stunning expanse: the wide sweep of the land sloped upwards with few trees, and we saw people walking up but there seemed to be no way ahead. It looked like they were simple approaching a sheer mountain cliff face, not a pass! We followed the trail upwards in a punishing climb, and among the people we saw a man walking barefoot as a horse carried his and a companion' s suitcases. The path continued upwards then wove to the left and still up, eventually reaching the narrow Valbona Pass, at an elevation of 1800m at around 11:10.
The view from the top was stunning, over both the Valbona Valley and Theth Valley. We climbed up slightly further for lunch (another egg, bread, cucumber, white cheese) with a view before beginning our descent to Theth.
The descent was long and slow, and coming up from Theth it would have been a relentless climb for hours. We did in fact see a large number of people coming up to the pass within a minute of heading downwards, but oddly enough barely anyone else after that came the opposite way to us. We stopped at another cafe to top up our water before continuing on.
We were overtaken by a group that seemed to have an Albanian guide, and at one point saw them picking and eating wild strawberries by the path. Shortly after we did the same. Eating delicious wild strawberries in the Albanian mountains will remain one of my fondest memories of this trip.
As we descended the landscape changed from alpine to thick, lush green forest. We kept going and reached our Theth accommodation at around 2:10pm or so.
After a shower and some much needed relaxation time we set off again for a short walk to view the nearby church and a kulla (tower houses) that featured prominently in the excellent Broken April book I'd recently finished reading.
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| Tower house in Theth |
Thankfully our guesthouse has both WiFi (patchy) and free breakfast so we finished off our remaining food for dinner and can have a fresh breakfast tomorrow!
The Valbona to Theth hike was amazing and such a great excursion that is different from what we'd normally do.
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The next morning we left Theth via a 4 wheel drive that our accommodation arranged. The drive was horrible and I felt more sore from the drive than the hike! The road out of Theth for an hour was bumpy, rocky and joltingly unsealed. In a four wheel drive seemingly with no suspension, jammed in with four other passengers on uncomfortable seats, it was a painful trip. Two and a half hours later we were thankfully back in Shkoder and we just managed to scrape together the cash to pay our driver.
After picking up our bags and a lunch again at Peja Grill we were on the bus to neighbouring Montenegro, and the next part of our our adventure!
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